The Universe was talking to me, too.....

There are so many things I love about this neighborhood, and the people are basically #1. I'm sure we're not as pretty and fluffy as all the lovelies in Green Hills and Brentwood, but we are fun and quirky and really HELP each other. And thank goodness we drive less gas guzzling SUVs than those people.

Growing up in Midtown Memphis (ooooh....scary!! =) ) if you didn't want something you put it out on the curb and someone would take it. Easy, breezy, gone. The thing about living middle class is that you share your fortunes and pass things on to people who need it, no hoarding allowed. Brent and I completely furnished our first apartment with things we got from the side of the road and from people's trash piles of stuff that didn't sell following their yard sales.

With the front den reno into a guest room nearing completion, it was time to get rid of the remaining couches. In the past few months this room has consisted of: one old coffee table, one old sofa sleeper couch, one old loveseat, one old futon, one old couch, an old desk and one very cool vintage sofa. None of it in bad shape, most of it just stuff we didn't have a place for in this house. All.in.one.room. At.the.same.time. We gave the loveseat, coffee table and desk to a charity similar to Habitat that helps people get a fresh start. The sleeper sofa went to Salvation Army. The vintage sofa finally has a perfect spot in our spacious dining room. So that left us with a futon and our old couch. We're getting ready for the final touches to this room, which is going to involve scaffolding, drywall, and the resulting drywall dustmess, and since we knew we weren't going to keep this stuff it was time to pay it forward.

After lunch we decided to drag out the futon, a shelving unit we don't need and an old TV. After some serious finagling to get the futon out the doors but we made it out and put it on our corner with a big FREE! sign. We were still sweeping and vacuuming from where the futon was when a couple of guys in a PT Cruiser pulled up and starting loading the futon. Did I mention the PT Cruiser??? Brent went out and helped them - the mattress sort of fit in the back and they put the frame on top and held it with one hand each!! It was quite the sight and I can't believe I didn't take a pic. (They live less than a half mile away). About 10 mins later someone else stopped for the shelves and TV. At this point we decided to go ahead and put the couch out and maybe we could get rid of all the furniture in one day! We were having some issues when the original PT Cruiser guy was driving by, saw us, and stopped to help! How nice!!! We ended up taking to him for a while and he actually lives across the street from a couple of our friends. He has a futon mattress, but no futon and said this morning he was really hoping he could a futon frame for cheap - and voila! We were so glad it could find a good home, and glad he stopped to help us! (It's friggin hot outside and this morning as we were walking into church I asked Brent if we could move up North! He said we could have a summer house up North! Yay!)

It took the couch less than 20 minutes to be gobbled up by a guy in a truck, so all our hand-me-downs have happy new homes. And we have a very, very cleaned out front room to finish converting to a bedroom!

I've got loads of pics to download of all the continued construction on the stairwell. There's been a lot more mudding and drywalling and sanding. The hall closet door is up now, and we've bought a lot of wood to start the trimming out of the stairs (the skirt for those of you who know things about building....) Hopefully within the next few days the living room side wall will be all painted and we'll no longer have a cluster of living room furniture huddled in the middle of the floor. There's such a furniture trap in here that Pippin couldn't even figure out how to get to his bed this afternoon!

I've also got some pics of the "interesting" place we ate dinner last night to share. Friday night we had Indian which was AWESOME! It's been ages since we've had Indian. I've been wanting it for a while but when my throat was so sore during my sinus issues I knew it wouldn't go well, so it's been a long time coming. And it was SO.GOOD.

Anyway, that's all the news around here (mostly!). Have a great week!