new living room!

Before:
After:

This last weekend was great for many reasons, the most important for my daily sanity being the re-stylization of my living room. On Friday Kristin and I went looking for frames for a couple of my black and white photos to put up. I was happy with that small change, but fate would lead to more changes on Saturday. We were about to go out for something or other and we drove by the dumpsters in my complex and we saw that somebody had thrown out some old furniture. We both noticed that there was a very sturdy looking bookshelf/entertainment center stand sitting out there so we decided to do the switcheroo and throw out my broken black entertainment center that took up my whole wall. I never really liked that thing, but I got it because it was $20. I broke it during transport and made it look even worse, but hey, I just got out of college. Nobody in college had good furniture, so I didn't think twice about it. Over the past year and a half I realized that all my friends with jobs and their own places had nice living room furniture and slowly, I became upset with how cobbled together my living room looked. It still isn't perfect. But now it is a lot better, that's for sure.

The new entertainment center is not nearly as imposing as the last one and it it relatively symetrical, which makes my eyes happy. Since there was a big open space in the wall where the entertainment center used to cover, I decided to hang my aunt's painting of a Grecian church and a painting from Jamaica in the blank space. Now there is a nice symmetrical triangle on that wall too. Yay for symmetry! Kristin suggested that I put the wavy mirrors I bought on the wall vertically, so we did that also. It left a big space over the couch so I printed out some digital pictures I had taken and framed them too. Problem solved! Now I am happy with my living room for the time being. The next thing I'll replace is that saggy futon I have. But that's for another day...

My friend James came into town this weekend also. So I went down to Chicago on Saturday and Sunday. I really enjoyed going back to the city. I'm also glad that it reminded me how much I'd rather prefer to stay in the burbs because of all the traffic and parking issues. If I didn't have to drive or commute 45 miles to work, I'd totally enjoy the city though!