Replacing College Furniture

Ever since graduating college (for me anyways), I have been looking forward to the day when we could start replacing some of our college furniture. However, since we had just been living in apartments, I didn't want to buy a big piece of furniture with the fear that it wouldn't work in our next place or our house. So we dealt with the floral couch and hand-me-downs, all the while pinching pennies, waiting for the day when we could splurge on some stuff that we actually like.

Remember my floral couch? You can kinda see it here in this Christmas picture...

That was our main couch. I bought her my junior year in college, had it in two apartments in Bloomington, and kept it for our apartments in Harrison and Columbus. She was a trooper, but she was just not as fashionable as I wanted her to be. I guess she was stuck in her old ways. So we brought her with us to Cincinnati with the mindset that she would go in the basement in case we needed seating down there, but she was getting a replacement.

Insert replacement:

Our living room is so big that we knew we would have to fill it up with a lot of furniture or a big piece. And we opted for a big piece. Kyler doesn't really fit on normal-sized couches, so his criteria was that he could lie down on the couch, but other than that I got to choose what it looked like. To Kyler's embarrassment, I carried that floral pillow all around the furniture store until I found the exact size, shape, and color that I was going for with my future color scheme.

Next up:

Bedside tables.

One of the coolest things about our new location is our proximity to Ikea. So our first Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati, we took a trip to Ikea.

We picked up two end tables and a dresser. Kyler put our end tables together that night. We were so excited to replace the plastic Wal-Mart table he'd been using and the hand-me-down that was on my side. [Caution to future guests, those old pieces will probably end up in your room. You're welcome.]

Here's mine:

And his:

And our dresser is still in the making due to some missing parts that we have to go pick up...

All three pieces are the same style, but even the side tables don't match. It's not really my style to have everything match perfectly. But I do like the unified look...

And it feels good for all of our months of saving and just 'dealing' with what we had to actually own things that we truely love. And I know they're just things but doesn't everyone like being surrounded by pretty things? :)