Besides decorating our place, we've also been wanting to find some new furniture for the dining area and living room.

• Dining room chairs - We only had two chairs for our dining table, so we knew we had to buy at least two more to have enough seating since our families are coming to visit us in a few months. We weren't really crazy about our current chairs. I wanted to get a whole new set, but so far we hadn't found anything that we like much at all. We eventually decided to go back to IKEA to get some chairs that would match with our table. They're a little bigger and heavier than our other two and they go fairly well together. It will have to be a temporary solution until we find a full set that we like. We probably won't be looking again for a while though.


• Wine rack/pantry - I also would like a wine rack/pantry so that we would have a place to store our wine and put extra food. Currently our cabinets are really full of food and we don't have much room to store everything. It would also be nice if it had a shelf we could put our microwave on so it doesn't have to take up space on the kitchen counter. I haven't had any luck finding something that could satisfy all three requirements though.


• Clock - We want a new clock for the living room. We have a small blue one that I've had forever, but we want a bigger, nicer one. We found a cool one at Kasala that Troy liked a lot. It was a little expensive though and required two D batteries to operate. We haven't found anything else we like as much as that one.


• Entertainment center - We also want a new entertainment center for the TV, DVD collection, and gaming systems. We are still using my old small cabinet that doesn't have much space in it for anything. The bottom drawer is actually a file drawer, so we haven't been able to put much of anything but files in there. We haven't seriously looked into our options yet.


• End table - I would like a new end table to put next to the couch. The one we have is really small and low to the ground. It would be nice to get a matching coffee table and two end tables, but I'm not sure when we'll find something we like.


• Patio furniture - Eventually we'll be getting patio furniture for our deck so we can sit outside in the summer.

Much lower on the list is a new comforter set for our bed, a better couch with more support and foot rests, and even new bedroom furniture. I'm sure a lot of that will have to wait a while.