I took a lot of things away with me from college, knowledge, experience, my husband and a lot of mismatched furniture. Freshman year, I lived in the dorms (which will be a whole other column entry one day) and furniture was provided in the 25’ by 25’ foot room. Coming to my senses, I moved out at the end of the second semester and found a four-bedroom apartment on party row Avenue.
Desperate to get out of the dorms, I took any piece of free furniture I get my little, eager hands on. My three roommates had the same attitude and in the end, we had two couches, a 25” TV, a dining room table and a wine opener. We were going to be all right!
Living arrangements became considerably better from there. I moved each year and always picked the apartment on the highest floor. I’m sure my friends and family members appreciated my ‘elevated’ choices and annual move. My smorgasbord of furniture followed me to graduation, where I dropped the couches, desk and anything else that wouldn’t fit in the truck, at Goodwill. I like to think that another little, naïve freshman discovered the couch and took it to a good home.
When the time came to move to Denver, I had to go on the hunt for furniture again. My parents bought me a pink couch for $25, which I promptly covered with a couch slip and a chair. One of my aunts had given me a TV and I had my bed from college. Again, I was so excited about moving out and living in Denver, the array of furniture did not bother me one bit.
When I married Parish, he brought a new couch and a much bigger TV into the marriage, thank goodness! He did bring an awkward coffee table and an ugly, black TV stand. Until about a month ago, we tolerated the arrangement of furniture and have been thankful to have a place to sit, put a drink and relax. It also doesn’t help that HGTV (the Home and Garden channel) is on almost 24/7. Watching people decorate their houses with fun, matching furniture is hard to watch night after night! We reached the breaking point and visited Furniture Row in Conway. The only place to sit in the living room is a couch, so we set out to find an additional sitting piece, whether it be a recliner or overstuffed chair.
Parish did some pre-shopping and found the perfect piece, a chaise lounge (think one-sided fainting couch) that actually matched our couch. The lounger came with a huge pillow. One side of the pillow matched the couch; the other side was covered in a funky, colorful, square design. Furniture Row did sell smaller matching pillows; unfortunately they were $50 a piece. I didn’t even look over at Parish; I knew he was already shaking his head no. The lovely addition was picked up a week later and looks great next to the couch.
Unfortunately, the current pillows (on the couch) didn’t match the new, big one on the chaise lounge. Perhaps that is a minor detail to some, but for me, the old pillows jumped out at me every time I walked in the room. The hunt for perfect pillows began last weekend. My momma raised me to be a bargain shopper, so we headed to Big Lots, Hobby Lobby and then Pier One. I need to mention an important part of the story; I was carrying the over-sized pillow from the chaise lounge with me.
Regardless of how silly I looked, we found some affordable, matching pillows at Pier One. Our minor design project was complete and a success. Now onto the TV stand and coffee table, to be continued…
