Home Decor Road Trip

This weekend we went on a quest for patio furniture.

We tried to catch the end-of-season sales in August and September, but it turned out that there weren't really any. Unless you count the plastic bench that we scored for $17 at the grocery store -- which has been great, but doesn't really do the whole job when we want to have people over for a cookout. We've been making do so far with our folding tables and a makeshift collection of kitchen and camping chairs, but we figured it was time to move up in the world.

So, Friday we went to a garden store in Greensboro that our neighbors recommended. The store had a large selection of stuff -- if you want artificial flowers or throw pillows (or pots or party supplies), it was your place. But the patio furniture options left a little something to be desired.

Saturday we went out to Raleigh, and on our way to find a patio furniture store, we stopped in at a rug store, since we've also been looking for a living room rug. Mike and I both like the really modern designs, and this place had an awesome selection of them. So, we found one that we thought would work well for the living room, and Mike fell in love with another one for the bedroom. And even better, we got the bedroom one at almost half-price because it turned out that the edges had been a bit damaged from hanging up (it's a heavy, thick rug). When we got home, we ended up doing some repairs on the underside of it with caulk. I never thought that caulk and rugs would go together, but we'll see how it works. (The rug guy recommended latex, but we didn't have any of that around.) The rug itself feels great to walk on!

Then we hit the mall, and ended up finding a patio set that we liked at Sears (on sale for President's Day, woo-hoo!). We should have it by the end of this week -- well in time for the barbeque season. It'll make it a lot easier to just have people over on the spur of the moment for drinks & snacks!