Out with the old and in with the new(ish): on pre-finished unicorn puzzles, cat eroticism and our MCM living room

So. CLEARLY it’s been a while since my last post. Lots and lots has happened since October, but I won’t bore you with the details (okay, okay, so we *may* have taken a tiny trip to London – more to come on that). We got rid of old stuff (always challenging but so refreshing) and we accumulated awesomer stuff, with two finished unicorn puzzles at the top of the list. I created a new badass twisty hairstyle for my in-between stage. I ate a lot of candy corn.  I crossed Abbey Road. I learned that juicing carrots, apples and ginger is OHMYSOGOOD. I watched Dirt McGrit chase his tail while Spike made sweet love to our bath mats, which was oddly erotic (JK cats aren’t erotic, FOOLS!). Oh, and I ate a lot of gingerbread cookies.

So with no further adieu – I’d like to introduce you to our 2013 project, the living room:

The cool thing about it was – EVERYTHING was a steal. We got the sofa on sale at Macy’s, the chair from Ikea, one of the American of Martinsville side tables from Kudzu Antiques for next to nothing since it didn’t have a match; and THEN we found a match on Craigslist. The Lane cocktail table was another steal from an antique market in Rome, GA. The shag rug was from Overstock (and is craaaaazy-soft). The pillows were $20 a pop from Society 6, and the sunburst wall clock was yet another steal from The Ice House (our new favorite store) in Chamblee, GA.

Why yes, that IS a Lance Link and the Evolution Revolution Record! Great show or Greatest show?

This amazing mid-century cart was on sale at Kudzu. We bit without hesitation.

And it all works fabulously with our Union Jack table, purchased in early 2013 from The Icehouse

The infamous Dirt McGrit seal of approval

This was a most-of-2013 project and it was done on a super limited budget. But it was probably one of the most fun, memorable things we’ve done together as a couple. At first, we thought we’d just pick out a room in Ikea and recreate it at home, but since we’ve discovered antiquing (and craigslist for furniture) we’ve opened SO MANY new doors. And we learned that it’s okay to be picky. If you’re not completely sold on something, don’t do it! I think we slept on pretty much every single purchase we made.

This was a huge deal for us because for most of our marriage we’ve had a mismatched living room full of hand-me-down furniture. Forcing slipcovers over things just to try and half-assed-make-them-match got old.

Sure, this all may seem pretty tiny, and perhaps not a big deal to folks who can afford to do a lot more. But it has meaning to us and always will, not so much for the things we’ve acquired but more for the experiences we had acquiring them.

And we put a unicorn horn on Spike.