Growing a Home

Some of our furniture stayed behind in West Virginia and, in retrospect, we could have brought it all without much more expense, but this meant we needed to grow a home without some of our usual "staples."

Neither Doug nor I have a lot of decorating sense, so we tend to recreate our original look in each place we live. And this look is functional, if not necessarily breathtaking. We make lots of compromises and probably spend more than we ought to (but I'm the disciplinarian in this area, and I try to make us behave). Without our staples, we've bought a few things new, a few things old, and we've inherited a few more items from family members to give us the "look' we've got going on right now. Here is some of the homemaking going on in our basement apartment:

First, we have the blessed sun-bleached couches. Doug saw them on State Street with balloons attached to them and a vibrant for-sale sign. Not one to miss a sale, he got out of the car, sat on the couches, talked with the people in the furniture store and cajoled me to go take a look that day. He'd already put the couches on reserve.

Because these beauties had been OUTSIDE EVERY WORK DAY FOR MONTHS, they were marked off 50%. I really liked them even though I hate spending money and I don't know how bad sun-bleaching is for couches. Don't tell me if you know how terrible that is, because it won't make life any better for anyone:). I told Doug that if they would knock another $50 off the original price, we'd take them. They did and we did. Behold:
Next, we have the bookshelf from Big Lots, the entertainment stand, TV, side table, lamp, and tacky toy-box creation a la Walmart bins. The bookshelf was pretty cheap at Big Lots, the entertainments stand, TV, side table and lamp all came from one girl moving to Alaska (thank you, KSL.com!) and the bins were already ours.

And here is Lucy's room as it looked about a week ago. It's not that much better now, but at least all the boxes are out of our home. We're down to bins and cribs that need to be assembled! Isaac just woke up so I'll post more updates soon.