Finally! We Can Sit Down!

Our fabulous table and chairs! Woo hoo! No more eating sitting on the floor or standing at the bar! It has been SUCH a relief to finally have a place to sit. I'm already learning that keeping a glass table-top looking clean is tough, but we feel like this set is perfect in every other way. We can put fold out chairs on the ends to seat 6 when necessary, it's just right for the size of the space, and it is way more elegant-looking than anything else in the price range.

On Saturday, Marty came down with his truck and helped us get a couch. We looked at a bunch of stores, mainly big furniture chains at perimeter mall, and the cheapest, crappiest looking couches were more that $700. And we wanted a more sleek looking couch, maybe leather. The cheapest fake leather couches were mostly $1500+. Ouch! So, we headed to a consignment shop a little out of the way to take a look. I was nervous because consignment shops are sometimes way overpriced because their items are "antiques", but this place was very reasonable. We found a few really nice couches that we liked- but most were still around $700-1200. We were almost ready to give up and consider a cheap micro-suede couch that I saw on sears.com, but there was one couch without a price tag that we decided to ask about. Turns out that they had just gotten it in the day before, so they hadn't priced it yet. She made some calls and checked some records while we investigated the couch. It was way comfy, has 2 reclining seats, a sturdy steel frame, and not a signle sign of wear. She came back and told us that it was going to be marked at $695. We were thinking that sounded pretty good, more than the cheap sears ones but much nicer. Then she told us that because it had only been there a day and was not yet officially marked, she could give it to us that day for $495. We were totally sold. So, the men loaded it and brought it home, they got it into the livingroom with Marty only suffering a mild heart attack and vioala!

It didn't come with the sleeping man or dog. I added those after.

This place just feels SOOOOO much more complete now! And we can finally enjoy watching movies on the TV without bringing the air mattress down the stairs.

With all the big expenditures this week, I wanted to wait as long as possible without buying groceries. By Sunday night, I was looking for anything that I could stick together into a coherant meal. I've done this many times before, but this time it actually turned out good! Not just edible, delicious! And made entirely from leftover ingredients that I had laying around!

The sauce had a little sour cream, some cream cheese, a little shredded cheddar, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and half a leftover cheeseball from Mark's reception. That's what the broccolli was from too. I wish I had measured what I put in, but I just threw in as much as I had left of everything, so now I can never recreate it just the same! Oh well, at least I got good use out of our leftover foods.