A Shopping Excursion

Hey kids, grab yer best bonnet and hitch up the horses, it's a shopping trip all the way up into town!

That's how it felt, anyway, to leave the digs and head out to our major shopping center to make a few exchanges. I've been holed up here for awhile (aside from a sojourn over the river and through the woods to help Aunt Beth paint Drew's new room, but more on that later) without really poking my head out into civilization. Different little errands have popped up, but I have been putting them off, mainly due to the whole three-days-without-a-bath thing. Nobody needs to see that, you know?

But today I had freshened up and decided that, darn it, I was going to take back the dining room seat cushions that didn't quite fit our chairs. And also to look for a few different kitchen textiles and such. There's something about trying to unpack and decorate that just doesn't WORK when you look around and feel like your brand-new decor items just aren't feng shui-ing for you.

So off I went! Little did I know that it was to be one of the most highly successful Ross (Dress for Less!) ventures of my life to date (considering I didn't even know about Ross until three years ago, that's saying something!). To understand what made today so special, you should know that I have been eying (yes that is the correct spelling) the many patterns of knock-off Talavera-style serve-ware that Ross carries. Unfortunately, most of the patterns that catch my eye tend to have something like a big rooster front and center. Ugh, right? I am not a rooster girl.



So imagine my delight when I found this gem:


Beautiful blues, greens, even some of that warm red to tie in with the living room, and NO ROOSTER!! I don't know why this is so difficult for the Chinese fake-Mexican artisans who paint this stuff, but my heart rejoices at the poultry-less fruit of their labors. I bought this pitcher as a main accent piece, and two bowls, two square plates, and four oversize mugs. Oh, and a spoon rest, considering mine has been in two pieces for a solid year.

I was so pleased with these purchases that I promptly also purchased a new kitchen rug and towels. Yes, after all the effort of buying a pretty rug on Craigslist before we moved. But like I said, when you are without feng-shui, something's gotta give - and in this case, that something was our seat cushions and kitchen rug.

Getting these new things home was enough motivation for me to motor through all of our remaining boxes - the crowning achievement of a momentous day. The last boxes were all of our decorations, photo frames, candles, etc. I learned that when you move from a modestly-decorated house into a smaller apartment, it will look as though a decoration store threw up all over the place. We are down a piano and bay window, so we are short on decorable surfaces. The result is a shrine to ourselves on top of our one bookshelf (seriously, we are going to start replacing wedding photos with pictures of other people ASAP...) and a fun hodge-podge of glassware and Willow Tree figurines on our china cabinet.

Good times. Do you even care? Doesn't matter...my life has been reduced to living alone, with the highlight of my week being a shopping trip into town. All the excitement needs an outlet, and that outlet, my friend, is the two minutes you just wasted reading my blog.

Fear not, Joel is visiting this weekend and you will enjoy a break from my aimless ramblings. Perhaps I will even remember to post a Psalm on Sunday...