Two Secrets to Share…

As winter slowly morphs into spring, there are a couple of things going on that I’ve keep close to my chest and I’m now ready to share with you.

April 1, 2022, will mark my two-year anniversary in Decatur, located in Central Illinois. It’s basically two hours east of St. Louis and three hours from the Quad Cities and three hours from Chicago.

With that being said, last month, I signed on to stay at WAND as the morning meteorologist for several more years!

I absolutely love my morning crew and I’m looking forward to spending more time with them!

After making that decision, I had the opportunity to move into a more modernized, updated apartment and I took it.

In the past, I’ve had good luck moving into new places sight unseen, but that wasn’t the case with my apartment here.

While it was in a great location on Lake Decatur, it was old and run down — basically, a dump. So much so that I didn’t invite people over for dinner other than my sister. (The pandemic helped with that, too.)

While I’ll no longer have a view of Lake Decatur out my bedroom window, I still have woods to look at instead of a parking lot!

And, I can still do my four-mile walk around the Lake a couple of times a day, weather-permitting.

When I loaded my U-Haul in Duluth, Minnesota, in late March 2020, to move to Decatur, six inches of new snow greeted me that morning, but my move-in day in Illinois was perfect.

For this move, 11.5″ of snow fell a few days before I started moving things into the apartment, but the melting snow posed no problems!

At this point, my new apartment is my favorite since Panama City, Florida, in 2017. While I hated my time there, I loved that apartment which was destroyed by Hurricane Michael less than five months after I left!

After more than a week of unpacking this mess and having fun decorating, it’s time to share my new place with you. I’m very excited about it!

First up, my living room.

Two more notes about my living room entertainment center area.

One day, I was visiting my sister, Tammy, and I commented on the lamps on her desk. And, just like the person that’d give you the shirt off their back, she made me take them!

I didn’t protest much and now they’re two of my most prized possessions!

And, of course, since I’m still waiting to see Kylie Minogue in concert, I’ll just have to enjoy the “Golden Tour” in the luxury of my living room!

You know I love wine and champagne (and vodka), I still absolutely love the wine rack I bought back in 2004 and the “art” work above it.

I took these photos while visiting the Sonoma Valley wine region in California years ago and I found the vintage metal “wine” sign at a yard sale for a dollar!

Cheers to getting wasted, classy people! 🍷

While I learned from my last apartment that not all come with lights in the living room and bedroom. I can understand that.

But, what I was shocked to learn about my new place — no light or light fixture in the dining room! What is this, the 1800s?

Should I have just saved money and invested in a couple of lanterns and candles for entertaining? Or, just dine in the dark? 🙂

Well, I chose the more updated approach and treated myself to a couple of new lamps to accentuate my dining room!

Now, I can’t wait to have more dinner guests and small Christmas parties!

I love my bedroom with the tulips prints and framed personal photos of my 50th birthday celebration (champagne at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, a view of Tel Aviv from Old Jaffa, and my favorite meal ever at Benny the Fisherman on the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv).

Also, photos of meeting my idols, President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, and Former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton.

And, of course, there’s my beautiful Reba “Read My Mind” album cover painting that my friend, David Krumwiede (Fifi DePraved) made for me when I left Chicago in 1996 to begin my television career!

And, I love this cool print, too, and the view out my bedroom window!

Also, the plants make the room feel so warm and inviting.

And, finally, the hallway from the living room and the dining room to the bedrooms is now the koi walls.

I picked this one (and the green ceramic tile one in the next photo) up when I visited China in 2016.

And, this beautiful one means the most to me. It was painted by my dear artistic friend, Katie, as a going away present when I left Duluth!

She knows how much I miss my koi pond from my former life and how I hope to have a pond again one day.

Oh, this one which I’ll likely have re-framed in black, I picked up at second hand art store in Urbana, Illinois, a few months ago, for only $4.

Well, that’s it.

Thanks for visiting!

Anthony