And it’s a whole lot bigger than our old ancient set.
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I can’t say I’m overly thrilled to have an outdoor recliner, but my husband sure is.
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You may notice that something is missing.
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And by missing, I mean on a table inside the barn.
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You’ll see there are five throw pillows. The set came with six. But the day after I set up the furniture and went outside to read?
There were four.
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I retrieved number five from under the barn.
Number six seems to be gone for good and I’m sure Momma Chuck is to blame. She’s been on an insane search for nesting material this year and it seems our porch furniture is irresistible.
😡
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So since I can’t have color contrasting pillows due to thieving critters, I’m thinking of adding a rug .
My real life friends are very helpful. Knowing I’ve been looking for coffee and end tables, one of them sent me this…
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And while I’m sure His Lordship would love it?
No.
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This is a church I pass every now and then while running errands.
They have a sense of humor.
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Or try to…
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Now that’s what I call a backyard rainbow.
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This is what $150 worth of handmade gourmet candy looks like. We thought it would be a nice way to say thank you to the nursing and surgical staff for being so kind to an antsy (and sometimes unintentionally violent) patient.
*Note- I wanted to give them a healthy and attractive Edible Arrangement filled with fruit… but the damn stores have closed up shop and left the state of Maine.
I’m all about buying quality furniture. The dining room set we’re replacing served us well for almost 40 years and I’m hoping this new set will outlive us. It was pricey, but sometimes you get what you pay for. Of course cost is relative. $11,000 is a good chunk of change to us but clearly a pittance to others.
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Yes, you read that correctly.
$80,000 for a mattress.
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Horse hair?
For 80 grand it should be stuffed with cashmere.
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Granted, if you levitate like that every night it may be worth it.
Furniture shopping continues and my snarky friends are still being helpful. Their latest suggestion?
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Well, it is green.
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The dark eyed Junco is a small bird of the sparrow family that we never see until the snow flies. They’re always the first to appear after a storm and we’re not the only ones looking….
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Lord Dudley Mountcatten keeps a close eye as well.
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Well, that’s rude.
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Trim work has started on the bedroom windows which means the man cave has once again been taken over….
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And reeks of wood stain and polyurethane.
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It’s odd how sometimes you read a passage in a book and it just gets you. This choked me up the other day. I hope it’s true….
He didn’t believe me when I told him how hard it’s been to find fabric for the furniture he chose so I’m continuing to show him firsthand.
Seeing is believing after all.
In my search I’ve discovered that even though different stores sell the same brand, they’ll often have different fabric available and I’ve made it my mission to check them all.
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Hence our trip to Waterville to a small but 5th generation family run store.
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Their showroom is a two story barn from the 1800’s.
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And while they didn’t have the particular style set we wanted, they can order it…. at what turns out to be $600 less than their larger competitors. Free delivery included. I’m all about supporting small local businesses so this is where we’ll purchase it.
If we can ever decide on a fabric.
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Green is still nonexistent. And even the blues that I didn’t really want are muted. But I pulled and pulled hopeful something would catch my eye.
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This photo perfectly portrays how thrilled my husband was to be on the journey.
🤣
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I’d tentatively narrowed it down to these two with the husband bored out of his mind behind me.
Until…
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He discovered a huge computer loaded with the company’s app.
With it you pick your style…
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And punch in the fabric number for a peek at what it will look upholstered. He had fun with this for quite a while, laughing at how horrible some of the patterns were. But when I gave him the number for the fabric I was considering?
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I stopped laughing because he said the cushion had two eyes staring at him.
Since I’m not on board with any of the hideous fabrics associated with the living room set my husband chose, shopping continues.
I stepped it up a notch last week and took him to an Ethan Allen showroom. And aside from the fact it was the smallest store we’d been to, they only had one hard backed sofa.
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Which was too low, too square and too soft for my Goldilocks spouse.
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Factor in most of their couches were over $5,000 a piece, even the simple ones like this, and it was a hard pass.
Next up was the store where I started my search with my girlfriend a few months ago. They had two sets I thought might work.
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But Mr, Picky vetoed this one because of the T shaped couch cushions.
Really?
At this point I thought he was just being obstinate on purpose and didn’t want new furniture. But when I brought him to set #2….
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Hard backed, rolled full arms, not too deep, available with firm cushions.
Could it be?
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A long discussion was had with the (very patient) salesman about features and quality…
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These arms were an eighth of an inch different in size… noticeable to no one on earth except my husband who worked quality control in the Marine Corps.
But despite the glaring anomaly, the husband agreed that this set might work. They even had the pattern he’d picked out at a previous store, seen on the back of the chair above.
I vetoed that as it was probably too light for our white walls and rather liked this one.
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When I asked if I could bring a few swatches home, I was told yes… for a price. For a deposit of $50 each I came home with 5. The $263 to be refunded to my card when I returned them.
Geesh.
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Lord Dudley seemed partial to this one.
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But as I suspected…. it’s too light and bright for our all white walls not to mention my husband’s feet on an ottoman.
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I need more contrast of color and though I really didn’t want blue….
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This one might work.
😊
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 