show off

I have to show off my new baby.










And say that I have the best husband in the world. He spoils me.
We've been looking for dining room furniture... we have a kitchen table, and we have my mom's old dining room table (with no chairs) that I intended to refinish... but we really feel we want something bigger that will seat more people. We love to have people for dinner, and while we love having just another couple or two, we would love to really be able to accommodate big dinner parties. So we want a table that will fit more like 10 people.
Also, this is the area I've decided to try and designate as my craft room. I don't want to use the spare bedroom upstairs (besides the fact that it will someday be a babies room) because the kids don't hang out up there much, and our plan for the basement doesn't fit a craft area or space very well. So I thought, why not use the dining room? People always complain that they don't use their formal dining rooms much, and it's right across from the kid's playroom, so if I were working on projects in there, I can see everything that's going on with the kids. Still part of the living space, yet enough removed. Perfect. But how do I make a craft space look like a dining room instead of a craft room?

Well, I knew we wanted a dining room cabinet/buffet/whatever you want to call it, so the trick was to find one that might accommodate some of my craft stuff, so that it's all put away and out of sight so when I'm not working, it just looks like an innocent china cupboard in a nice dining room. I didn't know how I would find anything with enough storage space, but nice enough looking, and not spend a million dollars or custom build something.
But then I found this.








And I loved it.

The price in the store was $1400. Yeah right. I was so bummed. But then I made my way back to the clearance room and as I walk into the room, specifically thinking "what are the chances they'll have the one piece of furniture in the whole store I want in here..." lo and behold there it was. Someone had returned one and they were selling it "as-is" for almost half of the regular price. I searched that thing over, opened every door and drawer and could not find anything wrong with it. I brought Ryan back later that day to look at it. He really like it too. However, we were not actually planning on buying any big furniture anytime soon. It just really wasn't worked into our budget yet. I knew that, but I was still so disappointed.
So we left without it.
But I could. Not. Stop. Thinking. About. It!
I actually stopped back in the store each week to see if it was still there in their clearance room.
So last night we were talking about it (again), and Ryan just says, "let's just go get it".
We go, and it was still there, and today it came to live at our house. YAY!!!
I cannot believe how excited I am. I just sit in my dining room and look at it. It is so pretty, and "dining room-ish", but it holds ALL MY CRAFT SUPPLIES! I knew it had a lot of storage space, but as I started organizing my stuff, I couldn't believe the space! It really will hold everything I need it too.
And it has this fold out buffet, even though I'm sure I'll mostly work at the table, this extra work space will come in handy...










And several of the drawers are even divided for all my little stuff...










And for the dining room look, we have a wine glass rack and touch dimming lights...










So now I'm going to paint my mom's old table black to match, and that'll do for now. Eventually we will get a nice big dining room table (there's one at the same store I really liked and it was very reasonably priced) with multiple leaves that will seat a roomful of people for us to feed and entertain. In the meantime, I'm happy organizing all my art, craft, and scrapbooking stuff in it's new home in our new home!