Surprise trip out of town

Wow....I have been pretty neglectful lately of my blog, couponing, and deals. I hate to say it but things have literally been insanely busy. Last week I spent some time working on one of my big goals-purging, cleaning, straightening rooms in our condo. I cleaned out so much stuff out of our office and made it a bit of an oasis for DH. We rearranged some furniture in our living room and moved a recliner up to the office so I have a place to read if I want quiet time. My bookshelf was moved upstairs to an area I've always had as dead space(It's awkwardly shaped in the landing at the top of our stairs). Our living room feels so much more spacious now. I needed a small bookshelf for my cookbooks to put under a ledge that is buy the kitchen so they are easy to reference. I looked & looked at all the normal stores I shop, the thrift stores, and even IKEA(which I hate). The height is weird....it's 4 inches shorter than apparently standard bookshelves. The furniture store had the right size and the right color....I looked at the price tag "Sale" price was $400. I was like yea right I'll stack the cookbooks on the floor before I pay that much.

I have a father who wood works as a hobby, we have several pieces he made me during college to fit whatever my current need was (night stand, printer stand/office storage) so that's a perk. He's got an entire 2 car garage as a dedicated wood workshop including rows and rows of neatly stacked "scrap" wood that is very expensive and nice(he works in construction and his company remodels old state buildings, governors mansions, old homes on college campuses. Most of those used very fancy materials when they were builts 100+ yrs ago. Rather than destroy the wood he takes it home so it doesn't fill a junk yard. Well he has a single car garage filled with the "scrap" material. So my weekend plans changed a little because of work-I ended up driving to Indiana for a Friday meeting then had a Monday afternoon and Tuesday lunch meeting in the capitol. So I just stayed home with my family. It was a great mini vacation-gave me time to recharge, relax and enjoy simplicity of my parents house. I was explaining my annoyance to my dad and he said why don't we just build you one I've got plenty of scraps.....not aware of just how much wood he had left(he recently built several builts in for 3 of their bathrooms when remodeling). He had beautiful oak and plenty of it. So he made me a 3 foot long 32 inch high 2 shelf book shelf. I'll take photos when I get my camera cord(I left it in Indiana of course). So we built it together, had some quality time, played with the dog, and enjoyed some dad/daughter time like the good ol' days. Best of all my shelf looks better than the one at the furniture store.....the immature side of me wants to stick my tongue out at them and say "You suck for taking advantage of people" but that's just rude and my mama raised me better than that.

So I literally just got back a few hours ago from my very long surprise business trip and now have hundreds of emails, coupons to go through, monthly budget/bills, meal planning, and several sale ads to go through to figure out what I even need. Giant Eagle's sales end tonight so I need to make it snappy. I'll post my Feb totals tomororw.

Lesson learned-don't settle for what's in the store because now I have a quality piece of furniture I fully intend to keep for years and years to come....and I was teasing my mom it's the perfect height for grandkids to have a bookshelf of their own......hopefully future kids end up to be bookworms like me.