Welcome and Design Conundrum

I couldn't decide on any one thing to write about, so Paw Prints in the Sink will be a compilation of just about anything and everything. You can expect book reviews, poetry, random thoughts, great recipes, adventures in married life, decorating dilemmas, dog-family stories and probably loads more. So to get us started....Decorating!

I'm not sure if it's married life or just being sick of school, but interior decorating has regained a priority in my life. This goes hand in hand with my OCD organized personality. I'm using Spring Cleaning, reorganizing and redecorating our house as a treat when I finish my papers and take the CLEP for Spanish (which I'm praying will give me all the credits I need so I can graduate this semester!). I know, cleaning as a reward means I'm pretty weird. But since we upgraded our old tiny TV to a nice flat screen, we've (or rather, I have) been doing a lot of re-arranging with furniture. Our new TV didn't fit in our old TV stand, so we moved a table from another room. But there's about an inch on either side of the table that the TV hangs over. The simplest answer to this conundrum is get a bigger table, right? Except I'm trying to spend little to nothing on this little project of mine. I want to work with what I have. Which means I can sand and refinish furniture, but I'm trying not to buy too much. Oddly enough, I'm going to Quincy on Friday to look at a love seat for $30.
What the heck- trying not to spend money, right? But we need more seating in the living room and $30 for a love seat sounds like a pretty awesome deal. Especially considering it's blue, so it matches our other living room furniture. This will allow me to move a chair into the bedroom. The chair-in-the-bedroom thing actually started the search that led me to finding the couch. The Nest.com said putting a chair in the bedroom would make it more cozy, and could make it seem more luxurious without spending a lot. Presumably you're supposed to already have this magical chair, but since we're low on seating, I'm having to replace the chair.
Of course, I was neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with our bedroom until I read that article. Now I look at our room a whole new way. What message does our design send? Right now it's still eclectic college furniture, different wood tones and random framed paintings. Our wedding prints aren't even up in frames yet, so it really just looks like a sophisticated version of collegiate furnishings. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm over it. I've lived with it for almost four years, and I'm ready for my house, rental or not, to look like me. So stay tuned for adventures in re-arranging as well as before and after pics.