On our first date I told Greg I wasn’t high maintenance, I just liked nice things. It probably didn’t help that I worked at a high-end residential interior design firm for three years either. Your reality becomes very skewed. All of a sudden any bed under $20,000 seems like a great deal! It’s sad when reality sets in and you realize how much higher that high-end really is ; ) All that to say, we made a trip to Ikea this weekend. I so wanted curtains cause our living room looked so very stark and I hated being in it but every place I looked was way over our goose egg budget. Enter Ikea. We now have a bit more warmth to our place and I am tremendously more pleased. We also got a cool cow hide rug but had to take it back cause it was just too weird to be walking on animal.. I think Bentley was a bit weirded out by it too… he recognized his kin under him. So we headed to Pottery Barn instead and found a floor model rug in just right size that was $400 less than it would be new! Sure it has one large spot of sticky on it but we all know our furniture is going downhill at double speed now that that dog has entered our lives, so it’s no big deal. I am currently sitting on a wet couch because he knocked an entire glass of red wine onto our not as white couch and it had to be vigorously scrubbed. Sigh. Anyways, back to the happy parts.. now we have cush under our feet and our hearts are happy. Look! It looks sorta pretty now!

The corner to the left is desperately in need of a chair but it also is the perfect place for a CHRISTMAS TREEEEE so I thought that would give us time to save up for said chair : ) We also got a new bookcase! Here it is in the dark cause I haven’t had time to properly decorate it yet ; ) Notice Stan (the pumpkin) is back! He has a special voice that goes with him.

This is a classic example of why I much prefer having my furniture delivered, fully intact. I got something wrong on step 3, putting this together, but didn’t notice till step 53. Apparently this whole thing is held together by itself. And this is where angry, annoyed Hillary emerges. Pesky screws. Oh! but the real miracle was getting that sucker in Greg’s car! The Lord sent a very nice man to help this weak lil lady and somehow it miraculously fit. Happy Hillary. We also took off the doors to some of our kitchen cabinets to have some makeshift open shelving. I’m very excited about this because our cabinets do not operate in a functional way. If you think it will open one way, you can almost be sure it will open on the other side. I don’t think that anyone logically thought about anything while installing lights or appliances or anything at all in this house. This was made clear when we put in a new light above the sink and it became even more obvious how not centered it was.

^^yayyy open shelving! booo giant microwave

Oh well. Greg even moved the mirror over in the bathroom because again, it was not centered on the sink but shoved in the corner, centered on nothing and jammed up against the towel rack which allowed for a continuous shoulder bruise every morning. It’s these sorts of things that made me angry at first but now I’m realizing this house just needs a whole lot of attention and love cause apparently it hasn’t ever had any : ) aren’t we good people! Let’s see, we also got big curtains to cover up our ugly hallway laundry room and made it a bit more pretty by taking down the dinky, crooked, falling down shelf and putting up two new semi more sturdy shelves! Slowly but surely, things are making me more happy! Ooo and we got some more curtains in our bedroom so our window doesn’t look so silly above our dresser : )

^^LOOOK! ample room for legitimate bedside tables someday!!!!

I even ironed and hemmed all the curtains myself. I felt so very domestic. I think that’s about all we did this weekend. In other news, Bentley is getting huge! LOOKIT!

He also learned to catch.

Sometimes he’s a good dog, sometimes he’s a bad dog. He likes to bite me. I think it’s because I’m getting squishy. I must be fun to bite. Well, I’m going to go enjoy the cozy rain. It finally feels like fall!! I miiiiight have listened to some Christmas music today because you never know! It might be sunny all winter down here in sunny Southern California, so one must take advantage of such dreamy, Christmassy feeling days! Happy Monday everyone! We really really miss you all!