In the past eight months, my wife and I have expanded our family by two. No; we didn’t have twins. We did have one baby – our amazing daughter, Hanah. We also found a scrappy little mixed-breed dog roaming around the neighborhood near our apartment. After putting up flyers and searching for his owner to no avail, Stubby became a permanent part of our household…and Hanah’s guardian and best buddy.
We’d been looking for a house since before my wife got pregnant and a few months ago, found and bought the perfect place. Hanah now has her own room. Stubby has a yard to run in. And my wife and I have…lots of space for furniture we still don’t own!
We decided to only buy pieces we absolutely love, sticking to an eclectic, Old World style. One of the biggest pieces we’ve purchased so far was a gorgeous French Provincial bookcase for the living room.
My wife and I are both readers with an extensive collection of books that we love to look at, as well as read. Because of this, it was important that we have a bookcase with plenty of storage, as well as one that had open shelves to display our old favorites and newest finds.
We started our hunt locally, checking out furniture stores and secondhand shops. “We’ll know when we see the right one,” we agreed. After days spent wandering through showroom after showroom, it was obvious that we’d have to expand our search, so we went online.
I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me before that the online selection would be much better than anything we’d find in a brick-and-mortar store, but we were insanely happy with the choices that opened up to us once we started looking on the net. We were able to find an amazing bookcase with just the right amount of Old World charm and plenty of storage – both on the open shelves and in the drawers and cabinets beneath.
So now my wife has her entire set of Harry Potter books (the ones she plans to read to Hanah someday) displayed proudly next to my selection of Dan Brown novels. Mixed in nearby are choices that provide a road map of the past several months: Brain Rules for Baby; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; and 101 Dog Tricks. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful year.
