Date (Shopping) Day

Julie and I were dropping Grace off at her Aunt's house so we could go out to lunch and out for a date, but it turned into more of a shopping trip than anything. We made it to Algonquin to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise which was just alright. It wasn't a special burger, but the strawberry lemonade was good and the onion strings were really good too. After that we wanted to run over to Lowe's to look around and pick out some paint colors for the upstairs bathroom.

First though we stopped at a home theater store and were looking at furniture. They really only had one brand Barcolounger. They obviously aren't new to the furniture business as they've been in that business for about 70 years, but they are new to the theater seating furniture business and their prices likewise show that as they are trying to regain some of their R&D dollars by charging so much for their product. So we probably will stick with the furniture we have already picked out but we did learn a few new things. If you get the power version of the theater chairs it will stop in the position you stop it in. If you have the manual version which generally operates just like a normal recliner, you only have a few positions it will stop in. So the power option is the way to go; something we had never considered.

We also discovered another option for a row of seating. It's a HUGE bean bag chair that would seat two adults and probably 3-4 kids. It looked really comfy and I think it'd be a great option. Plus when you don't need it you can store it somewhere else and have the extra room.

After that we headed over to Lowe's and found the tile section. We ended up buying new tile for our entryway. Not sure when I'll start installing it, but we got the tile. There was a matching border that went with it, but it was quite expensive and we aren't sure we want to spend the money, but after bringing it home and laying it on the floor to see how it looks, we REALLY like it and we just might end up going back to get more.

We also brought our picture from our trip to Michigan earlier this year where we were on the beach and got some great shots of the sky, the water, and the sand (and even Grace.) This was what we were looking for to pick colors to paint our upstairs bathroom and when we got there to the beach, we both knew that as long as the pictures translated the colors the way we saw them that it would be perfect. It did take us a few minutes, but the colors we picked are really close. I brought home some of the actual sand from the beach and we brought that with us too. So we have some really good colors picked out. I can't wait to work on that too! Here is the picture we based the colors on:



Here are the colors we selected:



Here is the new entry tile we bought and the one strip of the border we bought:



Here is the one sample I already painted for the ceiling of the family room:



I'll finish painting the other sample tomorrow and add that picture then.