Blessings In The Form Of Furniture

I just have to say it again, we have been so so blessed with our furniture and being able to furnish our home.

I am a Craigslist Fiend lately, because that's all that Southern Utah offers, so I check it constantly. It makes me laugh, because some people are so willing to help people out, or they think things that I feel are SO nice need replaced and renewed. Other people charge WAY too much for things that are old and not nice at all.  "We paid $1000 ten years ago, yours for $850" (lady i'm sure it was expensive once but this is a floral couch with broken springs.)

Anyways, Craigslist has been really good to us since we moved into our new place. We have had a way tight budget, but badly needed furniture. We didn't even have couches for the last 6 months, just a futon that was so uncomfortable I couldn't sit on it. We had two chairs to go with the kitchen table, but on the rare occasions that people ate over, we were sitting on the floor/our TV stand/plastic storage boxes.

A few days after Christmas, we got these beauty's.

FOR FREE.

I found the post, woke up Colton, we borrowed a truck from a friend down here who was so so good to let us use it last minute, and we picked them up. The guy we picked them up from said that we were the first of 10 people to call and want them, so we feel very lucky. He didn't post pictures, just said he had couches, and when he sent me these pictures I was SO excited. Free couches are usually dirty, old, floral and misshapen. These were gorgeous. We are paying to have them professionally cleaned, and then they will be like new.

Back in November someone was giving away a free highchair. Colton (grudgingly) went to pick it up for me (after I woke him up and asked him to go out in the Snow to pick up a high chair that I had never seen :). We ended up with a food covered, filthy, Colton refuses to bring it in the house after he gets home, Eddie Bauer solid wood high chair. After a lot of Pinesol, and the work of my mother, we now have this beauty.

Basically, the lady was too lazy to clean it, (her poor child!) and she let a $150.00 high chair get a years worth of baby food on it, then got rid of it.

I've been feeling a little bummed because I really wanted our babe to have a cute nursery and a place to grow up. We had bought a matching swing and bassinet set, we paid $5 for the swing and then I found the matching bassinet a month later and paid $30.00. But we had no place to store clothes or anything else for him. It felt like there was tiny furniture in a huge room and nothing solid. Maybe it's my nesting instincts, but I just felt sad about it. I love the print but I didn't like having his bed be a portable play pen. Well Colton and I went to Walmart  yesterday and bought some plastic drawers and storage things for his room, and were going to work on getting it all set up and ready for him. He went to work and I was trying to organize and make due with what we had.

Then I got on Craigslist on my iphone while I was putting my feet up. A lady in St. George was selling a three piece crib, changing table and dresser set for $175.00. I called my mom (not Colton) to ask her what she thought. I had gotten money for Christmas which I was trying to decide what to do with, and we sold our futon a week ago for $100.00, and replaced them with couches that we paid nothing for. Plus Colton worked a ton of Holiday hours so I knew we could make it fit in the budget. My mom said go for it, so I called the lady, told her we wanted it, and asked if she would take $150.00. She said yes! So this morning we rented a truck from Home Depot, and trekked to St. George.

And we picked up this:

Can I just tell you, the set is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It is all solid wood, Tai has a better bedroom set than we do. Everything matches beautifully, and it came with the mattress and the bedding and a toddler bed conversion. The people we got it from were SO nice. She said that people tried buying it from under us and she was getting calls about it while we were there. Craigslist is full of crazy's, but there are also some way nice people. They plastic wrapped all the furniture, helped us get it in the truck and tied it down for us, it was such a blessing.

As we were driving away, I was telling Colton about how we finally had everything we need furniture wise in our apartment so that we can have guests over. I mentioned that it would be a LUXURY to have a queen size bed since the one we have currently is a full, and maybe its just my big belly but it feels SO tiny.

As we were talking the lady who sold us the baby furniture called me and said, "I have a weird question for you." She went on to tell me that they had an Olympic Queen mattress that was under a year old and it wouldn't fit in any of their bed frames. She asked if we would be interested in it, since we already had the truck. We said DEFINITELY. We got a barely used mattress and boxspring for free. And since our frame is adjustable we can use the one we already have!  So we are going to put the full in the spare room for guests (and grandparents who are going to be visiting a lot,) and use the new nice mattress in our room.

We also picked up a set of bar stools for our bar for $10 dollars, something I saw weeks ago (again, on Craigslist), but wasn't prepared to drive clear to St. George for. I contacted him while we were there and he said they were still available! So we killed a lot of birds with one big stone today :)

I feel like I am finally prepared to have this baby. We are going to be doing a lot of furniture moving in and decorating tomorrow, while Colton is off work, and hopefully I can post some pictures!

Man we are blessed.

When all is said and done I know we must be doing something right. We have been able to furnish our apartment completely and be completely prepared for baby with a very, very tight budget. All I know is that someone is watching out for us, and that we are going to pass along the help when we can afford to. There are so many new families with kids struggling to make ends meet, and i'm thankful that despite how hard this journey has been, we still have our heads above water.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make this situation a little easier, we have had so many friends, family members and neighbors give us little things, words of encouragement, advice, diapers, clothes, formula, lotions, coupons, you name it. And it means SO much.

Trust me, I know.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Mary & Colton