A year ago this month, we were just moving into our new townhome (which we thought was pretty much the biggest mansion in the world compared to Tim's old apartment and the various Lamoni homes we had both lived in) and we had both just started new jobs- mine was the first 'real' job either of us had gotten and Tim's was just a supplemental job while he finished grad school. But these jobs meant one thing that we had never known in our college years: We had MONEY independent of our parents! It was such an amazing feeling. Independence is so great.

Being the smart, educated people that we are, after the first paycheck we decided we needed to get rid of the conglomeration of gross college furniture and buy a new bedroom set. So we spent well into the thousands of dollars after our first paycheck on a bed, two nightstands, and different decoration accents to go into our new room. We realized pretty quickly that along with this newfound money also came newfound expenses (that our parents wouldn't pay!) We experienced our first big reality check when we saw the credit card bill for the furniture, paid it off in full and then had to pay off all our other bills on top of it. We then realized that we had about $400 in our checking account, so after that shock of our first instance of not really thinking things through (budgets were stupid then), we never really finished our bedroom. It remained pretty bare last year (except of course for the bed and two nightstands).

So yesterday, we decided that now is the Time. Time to finish our room... FINALLY. (It's not that we never wanted to finish it before-after we built up some savings, but it was always hard to justify finishing it in Des Moines since the nearest Crate and Barrel was 400 miles away and as we found out the first time, shipping costs as much as another piece of furniture...) We couldn't believe it this spring when Crate and Barrel brought back the EXACT same line of white furniture that we had bought last year... it was so awesome! (It's the Newport collection-if you were wondering).

Since we have unpacked here, a dresser has been a necessity. When we moved we scraped all of the rest of our junky college stuff except for a desk and a coffee table... so our 'dresser' right now is about four huge piles of clothes in our room. It has made the room look less empty, so if you need space fillers, just throw piles of clothes all over...it really works! And it's so fun every day looking for the tank top you SWEAR you saw yesterday when you were digging the day before for the pair of pants that you SWEAR you saw the day before that... it's been like a treasure hunt every day... and if you want to be late to work EVERY SINGLE DAY, this is the way to do it. I keep expecting a prize every time I find the coveted piece of clothing I have spent 20 minutes looking for. I might actually be a little sad to lose this FUN experience once we actually have an organized bedroom... at least our dresser is backordered so for another three weeks I get be as excited as a kid at a birthday party when I run across an article of clothing I haven't seen in two months because it's been playing hide and seek with me.