Party!

We had a party last night with some of our friends, mostly because there were 2 people here in Utah from out of town who frequent a message board we've all gone to at one point or another. This party is the reason we bought our couch last week instead of waiting for a while longer.

I spent the last week working on getting the house in good shape. Most of it wasn't too bad to begin with, but I always want it to look really nice when people come over. Funny how it works that way, eh?

The party was A LOT of fun, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and it was nice to see everyone again.

This next week is going to be spent getting ready for a craft fair that I'm participating in with my mom on the 29th and 30th. Going to sell (or try to anyway : ) as many of the cards I've made the last while as possible. Hopefully this one will be more successful that the last craft fair we did together. Not much seemed to have sold at that one. I'm going to start the cards at lower prices than I did last time, I'll still make money, but it won't be as big a profit as I was trying for last time. I figure I made these cards because I enjoy making them, selling them will just be icing on the cake. Still need to figure out a display technique. Last time I think part of the problem was also that people couldn't really see what I had without flipping through tons of stuff. This time I also have a greater variety of cards styles too, and I have to say that my cards are definitely more artistic now, for the most part. They just have more to them and are more interesting than ones I've made in the past.

Anyway, hope your weekend is going well.

Danielle

Our new couch

My husband and I decided that since we finally have a living room that's big enough to hold two couches, that it'd be nice to get either a sectional or a second couch to go with the one we bought last summer. We spent 5 hours last Saturday couch shopping, but finally found one we loved.

We originally were going to get either a love seat or a couch that was exactly the same as our existing one (probably a couch because the provide more seating and are usually only about $50 more than the love seat). We found the couch we have, but decided to look around some more, see what else there was.

Originally we tried to go to the clearance center that we bought our first couch at, but they are no longer open on Saturdays. So we went to one of their regular retail outlets (RC Willey's), but nothing really reached out and said "You need to get me."

So we decided to check out the new Ikea that just opened in Salt Lake last month. We had fun wandering around, found lots of low price kitchen stuff to replace some of older kitchen items (we've been married 15 1/2 years and some of our stuff is that old), but really didn't like any of their furniture enough to pay the price they were asking for it.

Then we went to the other RC Willey's clearance outlet in Salt Lake. We found a sectional we really liked, but it only came in a very light tan, not really a good color with 11 year old and 13 year old boys and a 2 year old nephew I babysit 5 days a week.

We then went to Granite furniture, another furniture store. They basically had the same things RC Willey's did, but for about $50 to $100 more and the store was just kind of scary, it smelled funny and almost had an abandoned look to it.

So we were just going to give up when we drove past a John Paris furniture store. There we found a leather sectional we LOVED, but we decided we didn't really have $2000 to spend on it, so we kept looking through the store. One of things we loved about the sectional was the recliners on both ends. So we kept looking through the store and finally found a reclining sofa that was leather that both of us liked. The best part? It was only $750 including tax. It just got delivered about 20 minutes ago and can I tell you how much I love it? I'm impressed that it really only needs about 6 inches of clearance for the recliners on both ends, I was expecting it to be more like 1 to 2 feet. And it's so comfortable!

Our 13 year old son relaxing in the recliner

These are 2 pictures of other couch. I'm going to look and see if I can find some throw pillows that are black and tan to kind of coordinate the two couches together.