The entryway table

I'm linking up with Miss Mustard Seed for her Furniture Feature Friday Party!

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I've always wanted a proper entry.  In Southern California there aren't a lot of houses that have such things.  So you can imagine my glee when we moved into this house in Washington and it has one!  

One problem.  What the heck goes in it??  

It sat empty for a long time...until this past August to be exact.

  

I finally got tired of looking at the random stuff I put in there trying to figure it out and went on a hunt while the boys were on a camping trip.  I mean, what better time to hunt than while alone? No dinner to make, no one to entertain, no one but me!!  :)  While making the rounds of all my favorite thrifting places, I hit Spencers Antiques last. I should have gone there  first.  

I found this table in the last booth I looked at.  Perfect!!

  Just a few random things I wanted in this space.  

After shopping the house, I came up with about 95% of what is in it now.  It was quite a relief since I didn't want to be out shopping anymore.  I wanted to be fiddling around!

One day I got sick of all the brown and remembered an 'oops' paint I had and decided to paint.  I sanded the top and realized under the ugly brown was some nice wood.  I didn't have any stain on hand, but I did have scratch cover.  So that's what I used along with a poly coat. It turned out pretty OK if you ask me.  

During a recent trip to Seattle I found this rug at Ikea. Side note: you have no idea how much I dislike being 4 hours from Ikea.  I used to be 10 minutes from one.  

The chair is also from Ikea and the pad is from Homegoods years ago.  The gum dispenser belonged to my grandparents.

(I'm fairly embarrassed to say that the gum in there is about 3 years old.  Yuck.  Thankfully, nobody wants any!)

The long basket here is also from Spencers and has 5 wire dividers inside, so I used it to put canning jars in each one to hold flowers in the beginning.  When they died, I used it just to fill space, but I love it! To keep some small things organized I found three wire baskets (I couldn't decide on a color, so we each got our own color) to throw hats and floppy purses and such in at the end of the day.

It looks really blue in this ↓ picture, but a truer shade is what you see in the shot above.  It's a flat paint and at first I wasn't sure about it, but in the end I liked it a lot. I distressed it here and there and love these little nail holes.

One of my favorite things about it are these little curvy bits.  Second to them is the top which is two wide slats of wood with a few marks here and there and a bit of a gap between them.  It has a great lived in feel that I love.

I finally feel like this area is finished thanks to this find.  Of course there's always something to rearrange or redo altogether. I love to keep the front door open now and I'm not embarrassed when someone comes a callin'!  :)

(I apologize that my pictures are more on the yellow side than I would like.  It was nighttime when I took most of them, but they do get the point across!)

New living room...

In our new house we have real living room! Amazing, right? I know you're jealous. ;)

In our last house the living room was teeny-tiny and oddly laid out...if you can even call it 'laid out'. At any rate we had odd and end stuff in there. Very make-shift and it made me unhappy.

Fast forward to now.

We had an empty living room. Also making me unhappy.

I recently saw some new furniture on CL listed by a home stager; a whole living room set for a great price and it's a great color/style, to boot. YAY!

Problem #1? It's in Seattle and we're in Spokane. Only 297 miles, not a huge deal, really, but still an all day excursion. Our 13 yo son wanted to stay home! NO, I don't think so, what if something happens?

We make the drive in one car and pick up a U Haul truck there in Seattle. Um, yeah, so Seattle is VERY confusing to drive around in!! Tons of twists and turns, streets that stop and start elsewhere, just craziness all around. Before we left, we looked online for maps of the few places we needed to hit, but didn't really get a 100% exact map of our destinations.

We thought "How hard can it be?" Very hard, that's how hard! After we got the truck and hit up the bank, I got online, borrowing wireless from someone who didn't have his access locked, (Jim grabbed the laptop for some reason) and was able to find directions from where we were to the furniture. And we're off. Separately. With one cell phone between us. (I had lost mine and had it turned off and haven't replaced it yet.) Awesome.

Problem's #2 - 736? THE DIRECTIONS ARE WRONG! We don't know where the other is. It's pouring rain. Getting late and dark(er). I'm horrible at direction (even with my handy temp./direction thingy in my car. No GPS. etc., etc. You get the picture.

I drove lost for probably only about 10-15 minutes, but it felt like hours. In complete distress, I get on the freeway. I had the phone, so I finally call the guy with the furniture and thankfully my move to get on the freeway is the right one and he gets me to the warehouse in about 10 minutes with no problem. After that, we wait for an hour and a half for hubby to show up with the truck and $$! I started thinking the worst about where he may be along with the fact that my son and I are at some warehouse in the bowels of Seattle and NOBODY knows where we are. It felt vaguely like a Lifetime movie. Not a good feeling. Thankfully the guy at the warehouse is nice and waits and waits and waits with us.

Finally Jim finds his way and we load up and are off back home. Keep in mind that we left at 10 am and it's now 6:30 - ish. We don't get home until after 11 pm! Exhausted. Jim more-so than I, since he had just retuned home from a whirlwind driving trip to Cali in which he drove straight through there and back!! (With 48 hours in between, but he was busy busy.) Ca-razy! To add to the fun, we stopped once to get gas and a little something to eat and got separated from each other and Guerin went with dad and was very upset (crying a bit) that I was lost for good. Poor guy!

Once we finally got home, Guerin informed me that I wasn't allowed on CL anymore!! :)

Good news is that the furniture is great and I've been having tons of fun decorating and putting stuff together...it's been a long time! When I delete some pics from my camera, I'll get around to taking some pics up!

Hopefully....