Bookcase Bonanza - Awesome Ikea Sale

A couple weeks ago, we went to Ikea during one of their free food sales. Basically if you spend over $100 on home furnishings, your food purchase is deducted from the bill. So.... we treated Eric's whole family to lunch and spent $84 on food. (The Swedish Meatballs are excellent if you were wondering.) We planned to get two expedit bookcases (normally $70 each), which put us at $140, but... subtracting out the food, we spent just $56!! For anyone in the Twin Cities, I think the Ikea here has two more free food weekends coming up this month.

Anyway, on to the bookcases.... First, remember what it looked like when we bought the house?

And after adding the bookcases, an Ikea poang chair (we found it in a garbage pile while we lived in Chicago), 2 storage ottomans (wedding gifts off our Target registry) and a sofa (hand me down from Eric's family), a new fire screen ($7 at Goodwill... the old one was too brassy and beat up) and some books and accessories, here's what we've got: 

Not bad, huh? As you can see, the area near the fireplace is set up with a little seating area. We're planning to put up a big world map above the mantle with pins to show the places we've been. We also want to get a slip cover for the sofa (still deciding what color would be best) and some fun accent pillows (okay, maybe that is just me... Eric's not so in to accent pillows). 

The other side of the room is our office area. Eventually we want to get a big wrap around desk to share or two matching desks. But for now, it is working out pretty well. My desk is the one facing the center of the room, and I really enjoy being able to look out the window while I'm working during the day. 

Gizmo likes the new arrangement too! (I think he would sleep on my lap in this chair all day if I let him.)

The really exciting thing about finally moving furniture down into the basement is that our dining room can now actually be a dining room (rather than the office it has been for the past 6 months). I'm just now finishing up painting that room and am on the lookout for a Craigslist hutch for some extra storage. We haven't figure out what artwork to hang there yet, but I'll show you the progress soon!