New Bedroom Furniture

It's official: we're grown-ups. While this doesn't mean we have to ACT grown-up, at least we're now operating under the visual pretense.

Yesterday two guys came at 8:25am and set up our new king-sized bed frame, a full dresser, two night stands, a coffee table and two end tables in less than an hour. Definitely worth the $89.00 delivery/set-up charge!

We're extremely pleased with not only the furniture but the way it transformed our room. Please see changes as they've occurred since I moved in:

Bedroom #1. Jungle-meets-leprechaun green on the walls. Sparse (non-matching) furniture.

Bedroom #2. Warm, mellow, inviting wall color meets new comforter. Still no matching furniture. Only 1 picture on the wall.

Bedroom #3. Almost-final product. New (matching!) bedroom furniture adds to overall look and feel. Adults definitely sleep here.

The dresser is larger than the old one (which my parents bought for me when I was 10) so I love that. Also, Clint even gained some drawer space since our nightstands each have 3 large drawers. Bonus. Last thing I need to do for this bedroom to be complete is order three black-and-white prints to hang above the headboard.

Feels good to have good-looking – matching – bedroom furniture!

Our Wedding Gifts Are Almost Here

I'm very excited. Our wedding gift from The Parents arrives tomorrow*.

For the first time in my life – since I was 10, anyway, which really doesn't count – I'm going to have grown-up, matching bedroom furniture. We, sorry, WE will have grown-up bedroom furniture. Granted, it's only from Slumberland (let's be honest, while I love Snottery Barn, ain't no way I'm paying those inflated prices) but I think it's a set that suits us nicely. Better than the hodge-podge, bare-bones bedroom we have now...

Called the Diego Collection, it's a great blend – IMO – of modern-meets-classic furniture style. We both love dark wood (it's darker than in the picture), it matches our bedroom color scheme, and it was the right price, which always works well.

My parents gave us the bed frame – headboard, footboard & side rails – which is exciting since we won't have to stub our toes anymore on the cheapy metal frame throne our king currently sits upon. They also chipped in for the delivery charge, meaning we don't have to carry, haul, assemble, sweat, chip nails or in any way stress ourselves about set-up. Nice. Thumbs-up to Ma & Pa.

Since my ma-in-law was along for the ride, she ended up getting us the two nightstands AND the mirror to sit atop the dresser. I told her that was way too much, but she insisted. Sheesh. In-laws :)

Since at that point we were all set to have damn near the whole set I splurged and got the dresser, too...okay, not really since it was the slightly-scratched floor version but still. One cannot have a mostly-completed bedroom set, now can she? They. We. US**.

All in all, with discounts, sale prices and some haggling, we pretty much stole this furniture from the Slumberland Clearance Center in St. Louis Park. And I'm fine with that. I'll of course have to document the "After Meets Before" once it's all set up (by the furniture people, no less) so there'll be a sequel to this post.




*Let it be known here that while we're just now receiving our wedding gifts from our parents, they weren't the ones stalling. No, no, the onus is on us for this one. It's just taken us this long to decide a) matching bedroom furniture would be nice to have and b) which set we'd like to have.

**Please know that I DID talk this over with The Hubby before settling on this; also I called him from the store to ask if he wanted a picture before I gave the go-ahead to our very nice sales lady. He's extremely open and trusting of my judgment, style, etc. so I was thinking "we/us" while in the store.

A Very Web 2.0 Day

It all started with Google Analytics being down this morning. When what you do for a living revolves around Google, any time there's a 'glitch' the world just...stops spinning. Thankfully, whatever was going down behind-the-scenes at GA was fixed so the Earth is again rotating.

That being said, I had all intentions of working hard today – setting up goals for a new client, checking a new Adwords campaign's traffic, not leaving 'til 7pm*, etc. – until I was locked out of the entire GA dashboard. With no other billable client work to do, I waded into the Web 2.0 world.

With my sights originally set on blogging, I of course kept veering off-track and heading to Twitter – the ultimate resource in up-to-date info when something's amiss – and somehow remembered a video I needed to upload to YouTube for my mom. Had a few issues with the format and this and that, but finally was able to open it in Picasa to edit the length and upload it. From there, I of course had to write a blog post about said clip – a video demonstrating an exercise to get a horse to use its hind end correctly – and then tell Mom it was finally posted (we shot it last summer).

Still keeping a wary eye on my Twitter feed and the latest results on Google regarding the Analytics problem, I moseyed to Facebook to see if any of those friends were saying anything about it. Of course they weren't (different crowd) so I played around with my mom's blog some more – cleaning up labels and whatnot – and then my phone rang.

My sister doesn't usually call me at work – she prefers Google Talk – and when she said, "I have a really random question to ask," I settled in for a weird conversation. To my utter shock she says, "so, Twitter...how does it work?" I about had a heart attack (she's very anti-Twitter/Facebook/blogging and anything "social media") until she clarified, "don't worry, I'm not on it." Whew.

Turns out I was the phone support for her boss, who was trying to learn about tweeting. Pretty sure I inundated my sister's brain with some very odd-sounding jargon for a non-Web-2.0-savvy person. Still laughing to myself about the conversation, I zipped to my co-worker's office to relay the story and she floors me with her own news: she started her first blog.

What's the world coming to? Everyone's jumping on the social media bandwagon, which is great. I suppose I shouldn't think it's a big deal – even my AUNTS and mother-in-law are on Facebook!

Anyway, so my friend's blog is going to be about gardening – she gave it the cutest name, Gardening Plots – and it was evidently fathered...sorry, Ma Nature...MOTHERED by none other than our short-but-fun trip to Puerto Vallarta last month. Of course, spending almost a week in a tropical, sunny environment where the bougainvillea is blooming in the middle of winter would get any gardener hankering to get her hands soiled. In this case, it also spawned the birth of an online presence. Welcome to the blogosphere!

As I sit here finishing this up (and sipping whole-heartedly on my Bells 2-Hearted IPA) I can't help but think...what a very Web 2.0 day!



*Yes, I WAS at work until almost 7pm. Central time, that is. 

Another Trip to Puerto Vallarta

While I always love visiting my vacation-away-from-home, Puerto Vallarta, I especially love to go along with someone who's never been there before. It's always a treat to see someone see it for the first time and "re-live" it through his/her eyes.

This past month I got the privilege of heading down with my friend and co-worker, whom I shall call "Phoebe." Not only had she never been to Mexico, she'd never stayed anywhere tropical. Oh, what fun to see her reactions! Thankfully, she loves Mexican food - REAL Mexican food - so she was in seventh heaven. (Enter home-made guacamole at our restaurant table; Phoebe's face lights up like a flashlight and from there it was love at first bite.)

Speaking of guacamole - I don't even LIKE it. Never have. Despise it. BUT, I'll eat it down in Puerto Vallarta. Probably 'cause it's SO incredibly good. Fresh. Tasty. Made-right-at-your-table. It's beyond good - it's a damn drug. Especially when it's from Los Arbolitos. But I digress...

So we spent ~4½ days down there, checking out the market in the mornings, lying in the sun during the hottest part of the day, heading out to my family's favorite restaurants in the evenings. Of course, we only got to choose from 4 restaurants. We actually took a recommendation from our Canadian friends (eh?) and tried somewhere new. I had an EXCELLENT dinner of coconut shrimp at Lindo Mar (coincidentally right next to one of our sunset favorites, El Set). Delish.

Alas, all good things must come to an end; with slightly burned skin and heavy feet we made our way back safely to Minneapolis. We're already looking forward to next year's trip :)