Thanksgiving Thanksgiving

Sorry for my abrupt hiatus.  I keep getting into this, "I'm going to be the best blogger ever!" thing, where I think that being the best blogger ever means posting 5 days a week, and commenting on others' blogs, and playing on Twitter.  That is fun for a while, but eventually I'm sitting on the couch, no pants on and no clean laundry done, no lunches made for the week to come and no blogs written, and I think, "I'm a blogging failure! I suck! I must go away and hide!"

That's silly.

Also, I spent the last couple of weeks being very social.  I haven't gone out so often in a long time.  My budget was not thought of, or at least not given the sort of serious thought that would lead to me NOT paying $7 for a drink, or staying out until ungodly hours on a school night.  Ahem.

Back to reality.

I need to realize that I don't have to post 5 days a week, and that there is no valedictorian of blogging, and if there were, it would be Dooce anyway, so I need to get real.  I'm going to try to post at least once a week, and try to continue to visit my bloggy friends.  Deal?

Deal.

In other news, ny mom and I traveled to Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving.  My time with my mom in the car was wonderful - we cracked each other up.  My time at my extended family's house was made way, way, way more pleasant by the little airplane bottle of Smirnoff Citrus I brought with me.  My mom thought it helped, too.

I caught some sort of Black Friday related fever this passed weekend.  I think I caught it from the enormous newspaper my mom brought in the car with us.  I cannot believe the volume of advertisements there were.  I ended up getting my brother and my mom gifts at Big Lots this weekend.  No, it's not local, but it was frugal.  Brother got new dishes, mother got a really cool weather radio that she admired while we were shopping.  I also made out like a bandit at Big Lots...

You see, my sweet mother, she has very strong opinions about many things.  One of those things is the state of my living room.  In addition to being in nearly constant disarray, covered in dog fur, and dusty, my living room is lacking furniture.  I have been living for several months with an old futon mattress perched on top of a pile of shipping pallets.  Four pallets makes for a nice high perch.  It was hideous, but functional.

Hideous, but functional, right?

I think it actually caused my mom physical pain.

She mentioned it every time she was over here.  I would always tell her, "Well, it was free, and buying new chairs isn't a priority." Isn't a priority - I tell myself that all the time.  Many things are not a priority right now.

Apparently, new chairs were a priority for mamacita que bonita.  She had coaxed me into imagining what I wanted several times, and I kept coming back to the idea that a couple of slipper chairs would do just the thing.  The room is long and rather narrow, and small by today's standards, so larger furniture like a loveseat would be too much.  Those tub chairs that are very in right now aren't comfortable to me.  Recliners aren't my thing.  So slipper chairs, I told her, they'd be just the thing.

Inspiration from www.tailored-interiors.com

Enter the Big Lots ad.  Saturday morning, these puppies went on sale for $97 a pop.  Holy guacamole.

Paisley is one of my favorite patterns.  Do you have favorite patterns?

Mom and I were there at 7 a.m. - we didn't want to miss out!  We loaded them in her car and took them to my house - she didn't want them to camp out at her place and I was desperate to get them!  I Craigslisted my futon mattress (yay!), moved the pallets to the backyard (perhaps to become one of these fun projects?), and got to work rearranging the living room and assembling my darling new chairs.  Thanks to a $1 connector from Big Lots, I was able to attach a longer coaxial cable to the rooftop digital TV antenna.  Now that my tv could slide down the wall, I had real furniture design options!  Oh, the joy of it all!  Behold:

I was going to move the coffee cans, but I'm keeping it real.  The coffee cans are empty save a few nails or screws.  They make a noise that scares my dogs when they move, and they keep the dogs off of the furniture.  I call them, "Mr. No." I pushed the two chairs together for now.  They are adorable that way.  They also look adorable with the end table between them.  I'm in love.  I had the Ikea throw blanket and pillow floating around in my linen closet.  They look nice, no?  My mom spoils me rotten.  I'm a happy girl.

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