Friday, April 2, 2010

Out with the old....

and in with the new?! I don't know how many times I've been able to say that when it pertains to new THINGS. My family never had much money growing up and Andrew and I have lived on love, paycheck to paycheck (if THAT!) most of our marriage. But that's alright! I know that fancy stuff does NOT a happy life make.

HOWEVER!

Recently we have a little bit of extra money to get some things we've really needed around the house, and let me tell you! it's felt GU-OOOD! A lot of the furniture we have we bought/was given to us as newlyweds and we never dreamed we'd still be using it. We'd say, "well, we don't have the money now so we'll buy cheap, and when we can afford it, we'll get something better" (famous last words, my friends, famous last words!)


But are a few of the changes we've been able to make in past few weeks:
We've used THIS
as our "dresser" ever since we said "I DO." It was actually a storage cabinet at Home Depot that was all dusty and on sale cause it was used as a model. Fast forward nine years and three moves later, and still it stands in our bedroom holding all our clothes.


When a lovely white dresser at IKEA caught me eye, I put my hand on top of it, looked at Andrew and said solemnly...."this is the one. It's time to store our clothes like normal people do." He heartily agreed and nodded...."YES. It's time!" So we got it!
Now I don't I have to see all 5 levels of rumpled clothes that we can never seem to keep folded each time one of us has to grab a T-shirt. I'm very proud!

Yes, that's much better!
I also re framed the photos in our hall. I don't have a "before" pic, but most used to be hung in plastic black puny frames from a "10 Frames for 20 Bucks" box. They did the job, but were swallowed up on our super-ginormous long hallway wall....so.....here is our updated picture wall:







This was a bigger job than I ever thought it'd be ... especially for someone on a 20 minute cycle of standing/needing to lie down. Phew! But I love the look of the outcome. It's a mishmash of my favorite old and new photos. I sparkle with a sense of accomplishment every time I walk down the hall!

And then there's our dining room chairs. Oh, our dining room chairs. We've only ever had hand-me-downs. When a friend saw we were sitting on boxes to eat after we got married, he gave us his used, green fabric director's chairs. We used them til two literally tore down the middle at different times when guests sat in them. Embarrassing!
Around that time, on the way home from a road trip we saw a sign that CrackerBarrel was selling their old used chairs for 8 bucks a piece. We stopped, stuck 4 of those suckers in our trunk, threw away the torn director's chairs and the CrackerBarrel chairs have been in our dining room ever since. Seriously. They're the one's from the restaurant. Scroll down and you'll recognize them. We call them the chairs of a million booties. Guests never notice it til we point it out, then their faces will lighten with recognition "oh, yea....these ARE from CrackerBarrel, aren't they?"

Once again IT WAS TIME to spring some real chairs of our very own. No more hand-me-downs. Pier One had a perfect match!

Next on the agenda....cleaning and organizing closets. Not nearly as much fun as buying new things, but necessary to help maintain my other old stuff that used to be new, and I'm sure someday I'll be saying needs replacing. Ah well, the circle of life! ;0)

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