Here's a laugh for everyone....tonight I was about to walk inside carrying a huge armful of clothes (our washer and dryer are outside) with the kids following me when a bird literally attacked me!! So I'm screaming, running, and swatting around trying to get the thing off of me with clothes flying everywhere, Avery (completely terrorized) screaming louder than me, and Noah laughing. When it finally flies off me we get inside as fast as we can without letting the crazy bird in! It's been an hour and the bird hasn't budge from right outside our door, and our clothes are still all over the yard. (I'm too scared to go back out there!) And of course Steve is in the field this week! What a night...
Yes, this really happened, and my heart is just now starting to slow down! I'm thinking maybe we were too close to it's nest or something. I don't know, but last I looked I didn't see the bird, but I think we'll be using our other door tomorrow.=)
Back to what this post is about...Steve and I have realized we made some mistakes with purchases for the house. I think we were in a rush to just get everything, that we didn't love anything. We just thought it would work. I tried and tried to make the brown shag rug, the brown futon, and the way too small Japanese couch work but I never really loved the results. But I knew there was no way I could buy another couch or rug because we had both - each less than a year old. And we only have 2 more years here. I should just deal with it. Well, that was until I was strolling through Yellowbox (American furniture store) looking for a storage ottoman when I found this:
I've been wanting that gray/blue shade of couch for awhile now. It's such a nice neutral color (like blue jeans!) The cheap, simple, small Japanese one has been a pain in my side since we got it. It's not for lounging at all, and our whole family can't fit on it. Well, this couch was the last one left, and enormously marked down to $247. A comfy, microfiber, blue/gray couch that our whole family can fit on for that price! And I just love the nailhead trim too. Of course I had to call Steve, but this was the week my phone was not working. So it was up to me with Noah in stow. I figured if I went home and immediately posted our rug, futon (we thought it would be more functional, but all it does is take up space in Noah's room and collects dirt like you wouldn't believe), and couch on Okinawa yard sales, we could make enough money to cover the new couch and then some. Even still, this new couch was a total steal. I got it. We all LOVE it. It was nice to get rid of this:
Seriously! So small! Steve may or may not have been the leading voice in the "non loungey" couch decision ("I've got my bed to lay in!" haha love you hun!). It's not that I hated it. In fact, I tried to petition to keep it by sticking it under the window in our dining room:
I don't have a picture of the actually couch being there, but what I did was scooted the table closer to it, and used the couch like a bench....yeah, Steve thought I was crazy. I thought I was going to pull it off, but in the end it just didn't work. The length was all wrong, and I prefer the table in the middle of the room. I really only tried that set up when I thought there was no way we could sell that couch because of it being so small.
But we did! It found a home with a nice couple who had a very small apartment. They had just sold their big sectional and wanted something much smaller. They even gave us a tip for delivering it, so we got $235 for it. Almost the price of the new couch, and much more than I thought we could sell it for.
Also happy to be rid of this big, HEAVY (soo heavy!) thing in Noah's room that was not too comfortable either. I think our blow up air mattress is more comfortable for sleeping! Steve will be happy he will never have to lug that thing up any more stairs (I may have had him move it around our house a few times....that's how I roll with just about everything I buy).
I probably had about 30 people contact me about this futon. It was piece of cake to sell. Since Noah doesn't have a bed waiting for him back in the States, I wouldn't mind getting him a bigger bed here which can also be used for guests. His room is huge!
In the midst of all the crazy selling our house looked like this for a day and it drove me crazy (we had one no show for the futon which was why it was in our living room and had to stay there another day.)
So we took the amount of money lost on furniture and added it to our $247 "Steal of a Couch." It was like we bought a great couch for $750. So that makes me feel better about all our mistake purchases. We've now learned to not buy a thing for the house unless we LOVE it. If I say "this will work," it means "don't buy!"
Hopefully I didn't put anybody to sleep with this post. I'm trying to just write whatever's on my mind, instead of always playing catch up with all the sites we've seen. I think a blog should be written in real time. Even if it's about boring house stuff.=)
Here's a picture of my two cuties from this week - the first time Avery held Noah off the ground. She asked if she could hold him, which I didn't think she could do. Low and behold, she's stronger than i thought!
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