New stuff

My husband and I had an impromptu date on Saturday night and went to IKEA. When we went in December we saw a table we liked, and as I was looking it up online, we found out that it wasn't in the catalog OR on their website. Afraid that they were discontinuing it, we decided to go buy it. That's a big deal for us. See, other than our crib/dressers/rocker that we got when I was pregnant with Scott and we were both working AND the parental units kicked in funding, we have NEVER had a new piece of furniture. Even our "new" bed that we bought last year after my mom demanded we return the one we were borrowing from her was actually a reconditioned one. Crazy, isn't it? The timing isn't great, with just getting a new fridge, but we are blessed in that we had a delayed tax return that will cover the fridge and kitchen stuff, and so we were able to buy the table. It helps that IKEA's stuff is so cheap. I'm thrilled and so is my husband. Our old table wasn't actually ours, it too was my mom's. And, it only had 3 matching chairs (the 4th one had broken) and we were using 3 others (two that matched each other, and one that was totally a misfit, but so solid that I broke my toe on it right after Sari was born). We couldn't ever seat more than 6 at that table, and we have 6 in our family, so that made having guests eat with us hard. The new one is square, and seats 8 easy, and could seat 12 if you enjoy feeling a bit like a sardine. We even got 8 matching chairs, and 8 chair pads. Here are some pictures of the old one coming down, assembling the new one, and us eating our first meal at it that night.
This is why we love the new table. Plenty of space, but it still feels so intimate for it seating 8 people.