Table time

We have a table. 

It's funny how you take a normal human sized table for granted. Seriously. Before we got ours, we were using a table fashioned out of a cardboard box, a laundry basket, and an ironing board. Yeah. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. I didn't snap a picture of it before we excitedly kicked it over to make room for our real table, but I think you can get a mental picture. 

Anyway, thanks to a housewarming gift from Michael's awesome sister Kelly and her fiance Erik, we were able to run over (read: speed  drive the legal speed limit for 1.5 hours due North) to IKEA and get this beauty with 4 matching chairs:

Of course, nothing from IKEA actually comes built, so my personal builder Michael put together all the chairs and the table. The table is a really light pine, and didn't come finished- so after our IKEA trip we headed to Lowes and grabbed a can of polyurethane. We wanted to keep the table with as natural of a wood look as possible, so we went for a satin finish instead of a super glossy one.

Once Michael had finished sealing it with 4 layers or so of polyurethane, I finally got to decorate it. Of course, we're not fancy enough to actually have a table set this nice every night, but I figure once we have visitors I can impress them with my Martha Stewart wanna-be table settings.

 See those awesome napkin settings? Also a gift from the stylish Kelly!

 As for the fall themed centerpiece- you may remember the pumpkins I painted here. The leaves I picked up off the sidewalk from one of our Monument Avenue walks and just pressed them between book pages for a few days until they dried.

 So there you have it! Although now that it's all set up, I miss our ironing board/laundry basket table a little bit...