A Lucky Find

This past weekend, Seth and I got around to placing some of our outdoor furniture on the front porch.  The porch at our first house was larger and was able to hold our bench/chair/coffee table/side table set from World Market, our homemade plant stand (a project that taught us building things together was not good for our marriage; however, we may try again), and a bistro set that we purchased at Lowe's.  We are fine with paring things down since we never used all those seats anyhow.  When we first moved in, we had the movers place the bistro set on one side of the front porch and the plant stand on the other.  After considering the comfort level of the furniture this weekend, though, we changed things out, and were able to fit our World Market set and the plant stand no problem.

The bistro set will just have to sit in the carport for now.  Poor guy.

We also have an outdoor dining table set (that we purchased with some wedding money a couple years ago) that used to have a perfect spot at the old house but is now sitting randomly under some trees in our new backyard.  The goal is to one day build a patio (like this amazing one that Sherry and John Petersik from Young House Love built)

or a platform deck like this.

Anyway, enough dreaming and back to reality.  The front porch looked something like this after Seth and I arranged it.

(I'll admit that I did not actually get photos from the weekend and the rug was originally on the side with the bench/coffee table.  These photos were taken after I moved it today - for the reason you will read below.)

You probably won't believe it, but it was actually Seth that said it before I did.  "Wouldn't it look better with a rug on both sides?"  Yes! Of course it would.  Now where could we find an inexpensive rug that looked ok paired with our current rug???  We purchased the current rug on sale at Crate&Barrel last year and didn't really want to pay full price for another one.  Lucky us, as we were walking through Lowe's the other day, we spotted this beauty (sorry for the picture afterthought).  

It comes in two sizes: 5'3"x7'3" and an even larger size (would give you dimensions if I could remember them).  It was the twin to our current rug, albeit a fraternal twin and not an identical one, but we didn't care.  It was also larger than our current one (but would still fit on the porch) and $20 cheaper than the full price C&B one.  Score!  

But then...we couldn't find it.  There was one of the larger size, but none of the size we wanted.  Boo.  We asked a salesperson and after looking it up on the computer, he said one should be delivered to the store on Monday.  Yay!  So, I grabbed our 10% off coupon and headed to Lowe's for the rug yesterday.  And........it wasn't there.  The salesperson said it had shipped out and should arrive at the store later that night or Tuesday.  Fine.  So, I grabbed our 10% off coupon and headed to Lowe's again today.  And it was finally there!  Here it is in its new home (with Amos critiquing my work).

And the old rug on the other side.

Don't they look pretty darn similar?

If you get close up, you can definitely tell more of a difference, but that's ok.  

It's close enough for us.  :)  I'm glad we now have our furniture set up and ready for some relaxing on the porch.  Maybe we'll sip on some semi-sweet tea, too (can't handle the syrupy-sweet kind).  If only those pesky mosquitoes would stay away.