This weekend, Mike and I realized that we are going to be hosting guests soon, and therefore, we should probably finish making our house look finished.  While most of the big things were in place, we were still missing a few key items- a place to put (some) of our books, a desk for me, a coffee table, and a dining table.  (Until now, we’d been using a filing cabinet and two metal shelves as a coffee table/dining table.  Shut up.)

So on Sunday, it was time for another Ikea run.  Ugh.  I hate Ikea.  But it’s cheap.

First, in order to balance out our planned gross consumerism, we stopped by the Sustainable Ballard Fair, where we learned how to save the Earth and saw stuff like this:

An actual Bag Lady

A booth that taught you how to make “Trash Art”

And a dog wearing vegetables.

After wandering and checking out the booths, we hopped in the Mini and drove to Ikea, where we proceded to stuff the Mini with particle board goodness:

I freaking love my car.

When we got home, we started putting stuff together.  I was super excited to finally have a desk- originally I had said I would “share” the one desk we already had with Mike so that we could get a fold-out couch to put upstairs, but after 6 weeks our couch had become my desk, and that is just not comfortable.  So, sorry folks, no fold out couch for you, but we still have our regular couch downstairs and a pretty spiffy air mattress.

Once my desk and bookcases were set up, I ran down to get my camera while Mike brought up the office chair we had scored in the as-is section for half the regular price.  However, when I came back to the office, Mike was laughing at me.  “Your corner looks like an American flag,” he told me.

Ugh.  I had been so excited about the as-is chair that neither of us had noticed that I would now be sporting this look:

Ugh again.  Thankfully, Mike had a black chair, so we decided to switch:

Better.

This is very exciting.  We now have a semi-organized, though still rather bare, room.

We didn’t find a dining table though.  At least the coffee table is an upgrade from the filing cabinet.