Monday, November 9, 2009

A little weekend home decor fun

This past weekend, husband and I finally had some time to play around with the house. We went on a field trip Saturday to downtown L.A. where you can buy just about anything on the cheap. We're talking $1/yard fabric stores, discount apparel, shoes, bedding, and...the reason for our visit...rugs! We have been getting tired of the relentless collection of dust under the dining room table and decided that a new rug was totally the way to go.

The trip was very successful, but also very entertaining. Firstly we found a $5 parking structure where we handed the attendant a fresh $20 from the ATM. Turns out, as we were paying for the rug a little later on, he had actually handed us back 2 $5 bills and 10 $1 bills as change. Free parking? OK. Taking a walk through to find a rug shop, husband kept giving me a "no, we cannot stop for (socks/tank tops/shoes/buttons/trims/fabric)" look and hustled my easily distracted self onward. We get to a rug shop and find 4 or 5 designs that we like and want to pick between. The prices were already fantastic, but then husband starts with the "ok, we're going to check another shop and come back" game, where the guy promptly gives us an additional 20% discount. We got a 5"x8" rug for $80 out the door - although husband now had to carry the rug 3 blocks BACK through the melee of shops while trying to keep me from wandering off in an "ooh, shiny" kind of way.

So, new rug in place, we also got started with putting up some artwork around the house. I know we've been there for a year already and have very little hung on the walls, but we've also been very particular about putting things in the "perfect" place given that we're going to be living here for a while (it's a renting not owning thing I guess). The advantages of being a photographer I suppose is the never-ending supply of prints to put up around the place...the disadvantages being choosing which ones to frame and hang. A couple of the larger wedding photo prints are now hanging in the corridor just outside our bedroom, a fantastic photo of the Santa Barbara courthouse in our bedroom, and a set of 4 abstract foliage prints in the downstairs bathroom.

It's amazing how happy these few additions make me as they've given a little more personality to those areas and makes me realize that the simple things are the best.

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