The Perfect Thing

You know how it's painful when you search high and low for the perfect thing and when you find it, it's out of reach due to price?  Then you know how I'm feeling.

I want a new dining table.  Our kitchen is not "dine in", and our dining area is between the kitchen and the living room, so it functions as a very visible room/hallway.  The table we have now is fine; I actually picked it up off Craigslist for $40, and it's the right size for the space.  My gripe is that I don't actually like it very much as it's not my style.  It's also not expandable, so whenever we have a bigger dinner party, we have to pull out a folding table which makes me feel not very grown up.  I know, I have such debilitating problems.

Anyway, I have been searching for the perfect expandable table, and I found it:

It's the West Elm expandable farm house table.  It's on sale, and we have a gift card, but oy.  I'm having a hard time plunking down my CC...  Any thoughts?

The DIY Not Taken (yet)...

I'm embarrassingly overeager when it comes to DIY.  I like big, splashy projects.  That said, I panic when it comes to accomplishing them.  Even little DIY projects sometimes take me forever to finish.

So here's a little project I think could be undertaken without multiple trips to the store, fist-shaking, or tears:

It's a lovely wood framed mirror hung by a chain from Anthropologie.  At the bargain price of $224 on sale.  Yeesh.  

How about this instead:

Home Depot mirror set (you could make multiple!): $14.96

A couple screws: $.50

Two feet of chain:  $4.98

Total cost: $20.46

West of Elm

After a sofa debacle with our friends at West Elm, I was somewhat dubious to make another big purchase, but I was lured by a 15% off area rug sale.  After someone had a little accident on our natural fiber (hence uncleanable) bedroom rug, we had to find a replacement.  We bought an Ikea rug, but it's not big enough, so I've been hoping to find a new one on the cheap.  Not free, but on sale, we picked out a light grey jute rug for only $237 for the 8'x10' size. Not bad.

I was also in their Portland store and found a delightful little plant display.  Why not sell cute pots and the plants to go in them.  Evil genius!  Looks like they're also doing small pop-up shop events.  Alas, I live in Southern California so I couldn't attend, but it sounded worthwhile...