Hello New Furniture!

What did David and I get each other for our anniversary this year? I am sure you have been laying awake at night worrying about this. I bet you have a pool going with your friends and loved ones, right?

Well, even though you may not be really wondering, I am going to tell you.

We got new furniture! Yee-haw!

When we got married, we lived in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. Seriously. Tiny. And we had nothing but wedding gifts. No furniture, but we did have 12 5-piece place settings of fine china and 48 crystal stems, darn it. Our only new, real piece of furniture was our mattress and box springs, a wedding gift from Mimi and Poppy. Our kitchen table was a card table that we borrowed from my mom for a while.

That is one fancy card table, huh?
Our clothes were in those cardboard drawers with plastic handles. Our "couch" was a crappy futon that sat on the floor. To make it look more like a couch, we had it up on cinder blocks.

Pardon the silly picture of David sleeping, but it was the only one I could find.

The barrels and milk jug lamps were Momma and Daddy's when they first got married.

We did get a few pieces of furniture from goodwill. (Picture it: me, mom, a rented U-haul pick up truck, a kitchen table, a coffee table, an old chest of drawers, and a small desk, AND a second floor apartment - all for under $100.) You get the point, right? We were pitiful babies just starting out in the world.

When we got to Germany, we had what they call "Quartermaster Furniture." Basically, you can borrow furniture from the government. We had guest beds, couches, dining room table, a hutch, etc. We had that in Bamberg and also in Mannheim. Not the nicest furniture ever, but it worked since it was all we had and it was FREE!

When it was close to head back stateside, we bought our first real, grown-up furniture.

We bought it at the end of 2001. We loved it! We were SO proud of it. We moved it 5 times. It had been loved by many dogs and cats. It had been covered in baby spit-up, formula, juice, ice cream, snacks, and then there was me! I was even harder on it. It had survived David pulling out all the stuffing to "wash" the covers, only to never have the cushions lay right again (I was out of town, bless his sweet heart, he was only trying to help). So when our sad, old, stained, thread bare furniture was unpacked into our brand new house, David looked at it and said (as old Rafiki once said in the Lion King), "It is time."

He was right. I agreed. BUT I was worried because the dogs LOVED what we had.


But we went shopping, and then I got excited! We got a great deal at LaZBoy for 2 new couches. We were planning on a couch and love seat, but for $20 more you could get another couch and way more seating. The lady was somewhat confused because I was so worried about the dogs. I was against leather. She started telling me that the leather is not easily damaged by pets. And I laughed and said, "Oh, no, I am just thinking that the dogs would not be very comfortable on leather." I guess some people do not consider their dog's or cat's comfort when purchasing furniture. I needn't have worried, though.

We finally got our new stuff, and we are all happy with it. Even the dogs:

I did not even get one good picture of the darn stuff when it arrived. I was so tickled that the dogs were happy. . .

We chose the darker color to hopefully not show dirt as much (we also paid for the Guardsmen thing where they'll clean bad stains for us for free.) It does show the lovely white hair a bit. But Momma gave me a sweatshirt once that sort of epitomizes how I feel about that: "No outift is complete without dog hair." I believe that can apply to furniture, as well. Don't you?