If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

My living room is suffering from If You Give a Mouse A Cookie syndrome.  You know the children's book, right?  If you give a mouse a cookie, then he will need a glass of milk...If you give a mouse a glass of milk, then he will need a mirror to make sure he doesn't have a milk mustache...and so on.  

Well, my living room has something similar going on right now.  It all started with a new couch.  Adam and I decided we needed a bigger couch.  The one we have now is the one I bought when I graduated from college and moved into my first grown-up apartment.  It has served me well, but it's time for a new one.  Plus, Jazzy hogs the couch now and makes Adam and I sit on the very ends so she can stretch out in the middle.  

So, we headed off to Nebraska Furniture Mart and sat on about a million different couches before we settled on an L-shaped sectional.  Of course it was one of the first ones we liked, but had to make sure we weren't missing something better.  We went with a sectional because we needed to maximize our seating in front of the tv.  Let's face it, the tv is the most important part of a living room.  We have a very long living room with a fireplace in the middle of one long wall and two doorways in the middle of the other long wall.  We've struggled to find a good furniture arrangement for the space, but think the sectional will help.  Now if only it would get here!  It's supposed to be delivered this weekend and I can't wait!  

It turns out, if you give a living room a new sectional, then it will need a new accent chair.  When we first moved into our house, we (mainly me) thought we needed to fill it up with furniture right away.  So we bought two accent chairs for the living room.  They ended up being a little bigger than we thought and I went with an ugly geometric pattern.  Adam had given me the license to pick between a girly, paisley pattern and the geometric pattern.  Instead of choosing what I wanted, I chose what I thought Adam wanted.  At one point, I told Adam my life's one and only regret is not choosing the paisley chairs.  So, Adam being the best husband in the world, said while we were buying our sectional, we could buy a paisley chair!  We just got one since the sectional will take up more space than the couch did.  

Well, after a living room gets a new accent chair, it will need a new ottoman.  We had a glass coffee table prior to the ottoman.  It was also one of my first grown-up furniture purchases.  I will never buy another glass coffee table.  You can't comfortably put your feet up on it and it shows dust, crumbs, and fingerprints.  So, we decided we needed an ottoman.  We looked around a few places and found out that ottomans are expensive!  Instead of buying one, I decided we should make one.  

Thanks to Adam's mathematical skills and strength (yes, you need strength to tuft buttons) we got it made!  Jazzy approves of it.  

If you give a living room an ottoman, then it will need a tray to go on top of it.  Which is exactly what happened.  I found an unfinished wood tray at Hobby Lobby and it ended up being $6 after using a 40% off coupon.  (By the way, don't ever buy anything for full price at Hobby Lobby. You can get a 40% off a regular-priced item coupon if you sign up for their weekly emails.  Or you can print it right off their website.)  I slapped a few coats of leftover chalk paint on the tray and it's now the perfect place to set our drinks.  

I'm not finished yet!  Now I think I need a different rug (shhh...don't tell Adam) and I might need to change up the fireplace mantel.  It's the sectional's fault, not mine.