Wall Bar

Coffeehouses sometimes run a long bar along a wall to expand their seating capacity. You can mimic this in your apartment. Choose a long table with a surface that should fit a laptop and can double as a place to enjoy a meal or display decorative accents. Choose chairs or stools suitable for work or social purposes.

Hall Table

A demilune, or half-circle, table looks great in the front entryway or behind a sofa. It makes a cute desk when you need to break out your laptop at home. You could place one in your entryway, behind the sofa, or anywhere there's space. It has the added benefit of doubling as a display area for photos and treasured decor.

Reinvent the Traditional Desk

If you prefer a regular desk, there are many models that are modern and blend in well with most decor. Place an attractive desk at the end of a sofa with a lamp to double as an end table and workspace.

Small Desks in Place of Nightstands

A small desk can double as a nightstand or vice versa. You just need enough room to fit your legs under comfortably. It also makes midday nap breaks a cinch!

However you customize your space for work and living, do it with flair and functionality in mind. Our apartment community offers one- and two-bedroom apartments as well as two-bedroom townhouses. If you'd like to review available floor plans for our apartments in Flagstaff, give us a call today!

The post Set Up a Clutter-Free Work Space in Your Flagstaff Apartment appeared first on Country Club Terrace Apartments Blog.

5 Ways to Display Books Without a Bookshelf

1. Stow Books in Pretty Baskets

Baskets make any room look cozier. Invest in one or two pretty square or rectangular baskets and place them near a seating area. Then stock them with your favorite books. When the mood to read strikes, all you need to do is reach down and pull one out.

2. Make Coffee Table Centerpieces

You may not want to take up your entire coffee table with a spread of large books. Instead, stack the most impressive books in your collection to make a tower and top it with a paperweight, shell or another decorative item. 

3. Add Height to Table Lamps

Place a stack of same-size books beneath the base of a table lamp near a favorite reading area. Choose books that you’ve already read so you don’t need to disrupt the stack when you want to read.

4. Store Books Inside Ottoman

Purchase a storage ottoman with a hinged lid. Stock it with books that you want to keep but not necessarily display. This is a great way to add a functional piece of furniture to your Flagstaff apartment without sacrificing space for book storage.

5. Emphasize Bowls of Fruit

If you have favorite cookbooks that you refer to on a regular basis, why not keep them at your fingertips while you cook? Make a stack of cookbooks and top it with a bowl of fresh fruit for display on your kitchen countertop.

Even if you aren’t an avid reader, these five ideas for displaying books can be used to add warmth to your apartments in Flagstaff. To view available floor plans in person, please contact us today. 

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How to Redecorate Your Apartment on a Dime

Shop for Affordable Art Online

Liven up your blank walls with some art! You can find affordable art prints online that'll change the entire look and feel of your apartment. These days, there are tons of ways to hang art on your walls without damaging the surface. Look for adhesive picture-hanging strips that are specifically designed to come right off without much effort at all.

Switch Up Your Colors

A colorful area rug can really put a lot of cheer into your living room or bedroom. Buy a few accent pillows that match your rug, and top your new color scheme off with a throw rug or two for good measure. If you have room in your budget, consider purchasing new lamps. You'll be amazed at the change a new lamp can give your space!

Redo the Bathroom

Bathrooms are often the easiest rooms to redo because they're smaller than the other rooms in the house, yet they can hold lots of accessories and fun items. If your current shower is a neutral tone, look for something with vibrant hues. Follow it up with rugs, towels and a toilet seat cover that play on the shades in your shower curtain. Don't forget to get new accessories for the sink, too! A new toothbrush holder, soap dispenser and lotion container will leave you feeling renewed when you start your day.

Get a Cool Ottoman

Ottomans are great because they provide extra storage and more seating at the same time. Look for one with fun textures or interesting patterns to liven up your place.

Are you ready to come home to an apartment that feels welcoming and comfortable? We're ready to show you around our Country Club Terrace Apartment Homes. Stop by so we can take you on a tour!

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5 Green Juice Recipes That Actually Taste Good

1. Mean Green Juice (makes two generous servings)

Ingredients:

• 6-9 fresh kale leaves
• 1 cucumber
• 1 medium carrot
• 2 stalks celery
• 1 green apple (peeled and cored)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (add this last by hand, after you’ve juiced everything else)

2. Popeye Spinach Juice (makes two generous servings)

Ingredients:

• 5 cups fresh spinach leaves
• 1 cucumber
• 5 stalks celery
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (add this last by hand, after you’ve juiced everything else)

3. Mint Refresh (makes one serving)

Ingredients:

• 2 cucumbers
• 1 pear (peeled and cored)
• 1 cup fresh mint leaves
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (add this last by hand, after you’ve juiced everything else)

4. Fruity Greens (makes one serving)

Ingredients:

• 2 cucumbers
• 4 celery stalks
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 green apple (peeled and cored)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger (add last and stir in thoroughly)

5. Melon Blast (makes one serving)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup green melon (cubed)
• 1 cucumber
• 4-5 leaves Swiss chard
• ¼ cup fresh mint leaves
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (add this last by hand, after you’ve juiced everything else)

Tips For Preparing

To make it easier to process your green juice each day, keep your juicer on your countertop. Make things even more convenient by assembling all your ingredients in a bowl the night before.

Would you like to see available floor plans and view a model Flagstaff apartment? Contact us today for a personal tour or for more information.

The post 5 Green Juice Recipes That Actually Taste Good appeared first on Country Club Terrace Apartments Blog.

Tips for Making Friends in a New Area

Introduce Yourself to Your Neighbors

One of the easiest ways to make new friends after moving is to introduce yourself to the neighbors. By introducing yourself, you can learn their names and a little bit about them. From there, you can greet each other and exchange pleasantries when you see each other. This is a good basis that friendship can slowly grow off of. Once you are better acquainted with people, consider having a dinner in your house or hosting a barbeque in a common area, such as by the pool. 

Volunteer

Another great tip for making new friends in a new area is to volunteer. Everyone has causes that are near and dear to their heart. If you have the time, volunteer. As you do so, you will be meeting people who enjoy the same causes you do. You get to socialize with others and you can feel great about yourself for helping out. Be sure to ask the organization about their volunteer process before just signing up though, as many require you to take a class or sign a waiver. 

Find Local Social Events

Lastly, when you are new to an area, start looking for social events. Many social media websites or community web pages list social events. This may include things like singles mixers, 5K runs, pub crawls or local festivals. Going to these events is a great way to get out and meet new people. 

Are you looking to relocate? Want to call the Country Club area of Flagstaff, Arizona, home? If so, be sure to check out Country Club Terrace Apartments today to find a beautiful new home and a desirable area. 

The post New to the Area? Tips for Making New Friends appeared first on Country Club Terrace Apartments Blog.

Fresh herbs are a wonderful way to add taste while reducing calories and sodium levels in salads, marinated meats and more. Residents of Flagstaff apartments who are looking to enjoy a healthy lifestyle and a whole food diet, including fresh herbs, can help reduce inflammation and pack more flavor into every mouthful of food. Here are some tips for creating an herb garden in your Flagstaff apartment:

Growing Herbs on a Balcony

• Start with common herbs. Herbs that will be placed in potted plants need drainage. Therefore, it is important that any pot chosen has one or more drainage holes. A drip tray or small plate placed underneath can help catch excess water. Both annual and perennial herb types may be grown. Easy common herbs to start planting include basil, rosemary and dill.
• Know the lighting requirements. It is possible to grow herbs on a balcony. Herbs need to be placed in an area that can receive a minimum of six hours of sunlight daily. Pots should be rotated weekly and fertilized on a monthly basis.
• Enjoy herbs throughout the year. It is possible to harvest leaves from both perennial and annual herbs for year-round enjoyment. Harvest leaves as needed and freeze the excess for later use. The best time to harvest leaves is while a plant is actively growing.

Reduce sodium levels in favorite dishes without losing flavor with the addition of fresh herbs.

Healthy Living at Flagstaff Apartments

Country Club Terrace provides a relaxing community and spacious Flagstaff apartments for optimal living. Make the most of every day in a residence located near the Continental Country Club & Golf Course, the Flagstaff Mall and popular hiking trails. Community amenities include concierge service, a dog park, a seasonal swimming pool and an outdoor fitness center. Speak with an associate at (844) 832-9940 to check out our community and lifestyle today.

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How do you choose which lighting to use for your apartment? With so many options, it can be helpful to have a little guidance on how to light your rooms.

Lighting and Your Apartment

1. Learn about the different types.

Most lighting options fall into three basic categories:

• Ambient lighting: The ambient lighting you choose will be the primary source of light in each room. Ambient light can range from a single fixture on the ceiling to multiple lamps scattered across the room.

• Accent lighting: As the name suggests, accent lighting is meant to draw the eye and accent a particular part of the room. An example of an accent light would be one focused on a piece of art.

• Task lighting: Task lighting helps you do different things throughout your house, like reading, drawing and preparing food.

2. Decide what you are going to do in each room.

Knowing what you want from each room will make it easier to choose lighting options. You may have an office where you work on tasks, so you will need task lighting for each activity. Your bedroom is where you sleep, making the right ambient light important and a task light for when you are in bed.

3. Mix up sizes.

Having different sized lights in a room helps to make it look more interesting and comfortable. Try to choose three or four light sources for each space.

4. Pay attention to the bulbs.

Different bulbs are appropriate for different things. Some are a bright and clear, while others are warm and soft.

5. Have fun!

Lighting a room is an art form, so express yourself and have fun.

Your Apartment Team

We want you to enjoy your apartment to the fullest. Please contact us with any questions about your apartment home and amenities, or to learn more about our available Flagstaff apartments!

The post How to Choose the Best Lighting for Your Apartment appeared first on Country Club Terrace Apartments Blog.

We walk through the rooms of a storm soaked apartment in Houston, Texas, as Mary, a twenty-plus-year resident of Nob Hill Apartments, points out the items she hopes she can keep, but we can clearly see are lost. The safety masks covering our mouths and noses do nothing to block the rank smell of stagnant flood water and growing mold. The air in the apartment is warm and humid, the air outside buzzing with mosquitos preying on the exposed skin of anyone walking through the community working to salvage what they can from the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Even with the flood waters receded, we feel the sense of loss that weighs heavy as a storm cloud over the apartment community we’ve come to serve.

We try to prepare Mary for the worst—the disheartening fact that most of her worldly possessions must be declared casualties of the hurricane’s destructive force. But Mary’s determination outweighs our own, and pushes us in a new direction. Where we strive to prepare her for despair, she insists upon building us up with hope. And as we tell her we will help her as best we can, she leaves us with these words: “When I was a child, my teacher told me that the good deeds you do are added as stars to your crown in heaven. Your crowns are going to be full of all the stars in the heavens.”

***

Our group of volunteers left Arizona in the early hours of September 6 to make our way to Houston. Our team was made up of multifamily housing team members from Bella Investment Group in Flagstaff, AZ, who had committed to partner with Apartment Life, an organization that places CARES Teams within apartment communities to “look for ways to love their neighbors as themselves.” We have often seen the outpouring of love CARES Teams deliver to the residents of our Bella communities—now was our chance to take the CARES mission upon ourselves and make a difference in the lives of those impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

After spending Wednesday evening assembling and loading U-Haul trucks with Resident Recovery Kits, we headed into the community on Thursday to see where we could help. As we approached Nob Hill Apartments, a 1300+ unit apartment community situated on Brays Bayou in the Meyerland suburb, we saw streets lined with debris and abandoned furniture, clothing, toys, even cars—all casualties of the surging flood waters. Nob Hill is where we met Mary, along with dozens of other residents who were packing up what they could to leave the community many of them called home. We expected the despair in the faces of the people of the community to match the destruction we saw in the streets. But where we expected despair, we saw hope.

One of the first young men we spoke to assured us that he had not been hit “too bad” by Harvey’s destructive power. “For me, it wasn’t as bad as for other folks,” he told us as we walked through one section of Nob Hill. “Other people got it much worse.” I learned later that for him, “not too bad” meant he “only” lost his car and about half of the possessions in his apartment. He counted himself lucky, despite his losses, and assured us that now that he knew we were there, he would help us find people who needed more help than he did. And he was true to his word. He eagerly came to us with the names and addresses of neighbors who could “really use your help,” and seemed overjoyed to be what he considered a “small part” of our work. The misery we expected seemed to have receded with the flood waters, and in its place love, humanity, and hope had blossomed.

For the CARES team in Houston, the Relief Kits and resources they handed out seemed like only a “drop in the bucket” of the recovery that needed to be done in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. An office team member, who had been pulled from a different property to assist at Nob Hill, described her efforts of pointing residents toward resources and gathering contact information from those who needed to move as “a drop in the bucket” compared to what she felt the people around her needed and the losses she knew they had endured. Even as we gave resources, monies, and hugs to those we met, we began to say that we knew it was only “a drop in the bucket” for those who had lost so much so quickly.

Yet the enduring power of hope outshined our perspective. The more people we met, the more we got the sense that in creating for themselves a sense of normalcy even among lost possessions, abandoned homes, and more, the residents of this community were finding something beyond the despair we saw on the news. Make no mistake—there remains much to be done to restore what has been lost in these communities devastated by the storms. But even beyond the knowledge of loss is the hope of helping hands. We saw donations from across the country pooled together to fan the flames of this hope. We witnessed police cars lining the streets from around the country to lend aid and relief to first responders who had not yet even had the chance to assess and accept their personal losses. We saw barbecue fundraisers and Red Cross vans delivering lunches and dinners on a daily basis where they were needed most. We saw neighbor reaching out to neighbor to lighten each other’s loads. And we saw tears of sorrow become tears of joy as people heard how far folks had come to help.

“To help me?” one woman said to me, stepping back in shock from a tight hug when I told her we had flown in from Arizona. “Y’all came all this way just to help me?”

“We know it’s just a drop in the bucket,” I found myself saying, but she cut me off.

“A drop in the bucket?” she gasped, clasping my hands in her own. “Child, it’s the whole ocean!”

I left Houston with news of the impending impact of Hurricane Irma ringing in the background on every television set we passed from our hotel lobby to the airport terminal. In the shadows of yet another destructive storm, it’s hard to ignore that there remains so much need along the Gulf Coast as residents there work to rebuild. Hurricane Harvey’s impact will be felt in this area for months, if not years, to come.

But even in the shadows of these destructive storms crashing upon our shores and cities, we see the silver linings illuminated by the selfless acts of people who keep their heads held high, their spirits lifted, and the hopes of their communities blazing against the dark times ahead. We can all be a part of bringing hope to these communities. Apartment Life continues to raise funds for relief efforts for both Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. The Red Cross continues to step up their efforts to prepare and provide relief. Countless other organizations are out there, waiting for each of us to step up and impact lives by being beacons of hope in the midst of despair.

Please join us in supporting the ongoing relief efforts, and make your own "drop in the bucket" contribution to those impacted by this year's hurricane storms:

Donations for Apartment Life Harvey Relief Kits: https://tiny.cc/alharvey

Donations for Apartment Life Irma Relief Kits: https://tiny.cc/alirma

The post Beacons of Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Local Hurricane Harvey Relief Story appeared first on Country Club Terrace Apartments Blog.

Make It Personal

Personalization is huge now, so why not bring some blooms into your space in the form of an oversized initial? This is much easier to accomplish than you might imagine. Grab some small artificial flowers, a glue gun, ribbon for hanging and a large wooden initial. Use the hot glue to press flowers directly onto the wood—after removing the stems, of course. 

Paint Some Pots

While you can purchase some cute flower pots, why not spend a relaxing afternoon creating your own? Pastel painted mason jars or plain terra cotta pots can be made your own. Add some fun polka dots or other design to keep it interesting. Place some spring flowers in your completed masterpiece for an instant pick-me-up every time you or your guests see them. 

Add Some Green

Green houseplants are not only beautiful, but they are good for you as well. Stay oxygenated and bring a fresh, new energy to your Flagstaff apartment with stunning indoor beauties. Aloe plants are a great option that are functional as well as lovely—if you get a sunburn, simply pluck off a leaf and soothe cuts or burns. Peace lilies also make an excellent low-maintenance plant with lovely flowers in the spring. 

Living at our community in your Flagstaff apartment is relaxing and fun, especially when you brighten things up by bringing some of the outdoors into your living space. Learn more about our fantastic amenities you will find at Country Club Terrace or check out our floor plans online. 

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Keep Your Refrigerator Running Like a Top

The refrigerator is probably the biggest electricity user in your apartment. Regular maintenance will keep energy usage down. At least once per year, you should vacuum the unit's condenser coils. Defrost the unit whenever the ice in the freezing compartment gets over one-fourth of an inch thick, and replace worn gaskets on an as-needed basis.

Be Water-Wise

Showers take significantly less water than baths, and 10 minutes provides plenty of time to lather up, rinse off, wash and condition hair, and even shave. Having a low-flow shower head installed saves approximately five gallons of water over an average bath. You can also save water by scraping your dishes rather than soaking them before you load them in the dishwasher, and making sure that you only run your dishwasher when the appliance is full. Doing your laundry in cold water whenever possible also saves on energy costs. 

Unplug Your Devices

Consumer electronics take up about 15 percent of the average person's energy costs. Most electronic devices use energy when they are plugged in even though when they aren't turned on. Unplugging these items when not in use. Using a power strip for your personal computer and its accessories will allow you to turn everything off at once when the device is not in use. You should also unplug cell phone chargers when they are not in use. 

Please feel free to call our office at your convenience to learn more about how apartment dwellers can keep energy costs low. 

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