Decorating a New Room & Hi/Lo Thursday

Recently, we “unveiled” our guest bedroom. We finally got it looking like a normal room! Anyway…we needed to buy a guest bed to finish up the room, and we took care of that this past Saturday.

Unfortunately, it was raining and quite cold. We John had to tie down the box spring and mattress on top of our Xterra and drive the 20-30 minutes home, part of which is via the Autobahn. Of course we drove slowly, but driving 40 mph on the Autobahn isn’t exactly safe either…people are expecting you to drive like you’re on the freeway (since you are).

Ok, this isn’t the point of my post, so I’ll move on.

I was looking forward to having a new room to decorate. Since the only other things in here are our desks, the room was a blank slate color-wise. I wanted to pull some of the dark red from our living room rug (see a photo here) or perhaps an orange that we could tie in with the color scheme of our place.

Last weekend, we drove to Ramstein, so I visited the BX in hopes of finding more of a linen selection that we have here. Nope…Tell me, do you think an entire military community wants to have the same 3 options for bed linens? No? Really? Then, AAFES, why don’t you supply your stores with more of a selection?!

Bummed, I came home and began my internet search for some bedding. We need the bedding within a month, which is pushing it with the way the mail works here, so that we have something for my parents to sleep on when they visit. (Have I mentioned they’re visiting at the beginning of March? We’re really excited about that!!)

I looked at every option for bedding at Pottery Barn, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillard’s, and Target. I liked Pottery Barn’s stuff but was trying to spend a little less than what their bedding costs. The rest of the stores were completely void of anything I found remotely attractive (except for the white linens, but I don’t want another white room). The only linens I could find that I liked ended up being $900-1000 or more. I’m not paying that for a guest bed!

Finally, my sister sent me a link to a linen set from West Elm (in the same family as Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, etc). We still have $140 in gift cards to Pottery Barn from our wedding (the last of our wedding money), so we’ll use that to put toward the bedding. Now to just find a bed skirt…

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I have been reading the Riggs’ family blog, which I believe I found from MckMama’s blog awhile back. Brent & Michelle Riggs adopted 4-year-old Abby from Guatemala awhile back, and last summer, they found out Abby has a high-risk, aggressive form of Leukemia. Certain genetic complications have put her chance of surviving the treatment at about 20%. I have been following her progress and treatments as well as they lives of this wonderful family. They do a weekly post (blog carnival, if you will) called “Hi/Lo Thursday” where you write about your highs and lows for the week. In the interest of making more people aware of Abby and hopefully praying for her, I will post this when I have Highs & Lows I can think of for the previous week.

This post is part of “Hi/Lo Thursday” on the Riggs Family Blog. Check out their blog to read everyone else’s “Hi/Lo” posts and for a chance to win $100.

(Ok, so yes, I can win $100 for participating. That was a motivating factor, because I haven’t found a job still, BUT I also really want more people to read the Riggs’ blog.)

Highs:

• My birthday was incredibly special thanks to my amazing husband and wonderful family & friends. Thank you all again!
• Getting the guest bed
• It’s a 4-day weekend this weekend. I’m pumped!
• We indulged in Pizza Hut (Hawaiian style).
• I made it to our workout on Saturday.
• We’re starting to feel more a part of the community at the Haus. This is really good for us. We really need a community of friends. We’ve been here for over 8 months without any, and it’s really hard.

Lows:

• It was raining when we got the guest bed. And cold.
• Hawaiian style Pizza Hut pizza is not good reheated.
• I missed our Tuesday/Thursday workout. We’re supposed to work out on Friday as a “make up” for one of those days. We’ll do it!

I guess that’s it. It doesn’t feel like much, and I’m sure I’m forgetting bigger points, but since this was my first time doing this, I wasn’t really prepared. I’ll get better at it! (I hope!)

– Sarah