Ever since Chris and I bought our house I've been trying hard not to get too carried away day dreaming about all the great things that we're going to get to put in it. I love being surrounded by beautiful things, and I love flipping through design magazines and putting my mark on my living space, but living in an apartment it can be frustrating to not be able to do all the things that I'd like to do. I've always put up art and taken pride in painting and decorating my apartments, but lately, work has taken over about 90% of our living space and no matter how much I "decorate" around it there is just no prettying up the fact that I have 7 boxes full of yarn stacked behind my living room sofa. And though I could always add nice tea towels or candles, I couldn't change the ugly counter tops or cheap ceramic tile in my apartment kitchen.
Anyways, my point is I am very excited to know that we are going to be living in this new house for many years (another drawback of apartment living, for me it always felt a bit temporary) and that we can finally invest in furniture that will really suit our space.
We have never had a dining room, and the fact that we will have one in our house is soooo exciting for us! As I've mentioned before, Chris worked as a professional cook for over 10 years, so preparing meals (and eating well!) is a very big part of our lives. One of the first things that we hoped to be able to purchase for our house was a dining room table. And we knew just the style that we wanted! I had been looking online and found a couple photos of the exact style that we wanted, I e-mailed them to my mom just 'cause, but we never actually thought that we would find the table or even more, be able to afford it for some time. We were planning on eating picnic style in the dining room for the first year or so! This is the style we were looking for, like this but larger, like this but not so country/shabby chic and with square legs and less chunky.
So, my mom got my e-mails and said "that's lovely dear" and then we both went about our lives, not giving it that much thought... until Friday when mom was casually walking through an estate sale that her friend helped to organize. She browsed through the whole house and then finished off in the basement, and wouldn't you know that in the corner of the laundry room she spotted the perfect table! Solid oak, in perfect shape, perfect rich colour, two drawers, square legs with just enough detail, unbelievable! And it had a coordinating small hutch/cabinet thing that is super multifunctional, we probably won't use it in the dining room, but it will be great in another room. Plus, they were practically giving it away! Mom called me and I headed over there in a hurry, we snatched it up immediately. Because we were feeling lucky we headed into a VON furniture store near my parents house, there we found a really great, really large desk with drawers for $20! I thought that it was a steal at $40, but was thrilled when I found out it was on sale for 1/2 price. We've been using a small-ish table as a desk for the last little while, and it was killing me not to have drawers to hide my papers and pencils in, right now they are cluttering up my little work surface in a bad way. Thinking we had done pretty well for ourselves mom and I called it a day, but not before running into mom's neighbour and making a deal to purchase her year old washer and dryer for a very good price because she was desperate to get rid of them.
So, on Saturday Chris and I borrowed a friends truck and drove around picking up our new purchases and storing them in mom's garage until we move to our own house on May 22nd. Thats why I have no photos of my lovely new furniture, it's all stacked in the garage! Not exactly photo friendly, but I will definitely be taking lots of pictures once we move in (in less then a month!) But so not to leave you with a photo-less post here is a shot of some silk waiting to be packed up and shipped...
I've been knitting to... more on that another day. I'm too busy day dreaming about eating our first meal in our new home at a real dining room table! Mind you... we still don't have chairs...
