Happy Fall, y'all!

Did you notice that it's October? Yeah, half-way through, in fact. Tonight is our first real fall-feeling evening - today was rainy, but tonight, the air is cool and crisp, and the leaves crunch under your shoes. (No more flip flops!) Good night for a camp fire.

So, I was driving to Meijer to fetch milk. It was after 9pm, and as I was driving, I noticed the full moon, and these thick clouds moving in front of it. Very cool. Very Halloween-y. Unfortunately, the car is not the best place to be taking photos, especially night/moon photos, and I didn't have my little camera with me anyway. I didn't exactly hurry to get through Meijer (although I should have $$$), and the moon and clouds were still out there when I got home.

(A confession about that "car is not the best place to be taking photos" bit. If you saw my post about a month ago, where I was taking pictures through my rainy windshield, you'll know I have been trying to take pictures from my car. And I did it again the other day - the other morning, the sun was coming up and the bottoms of the clouds were a purpley-red. If you can tell through the blur and dirty windshield. So, aside from the whole "driving hazard" thing, my car pictures don't turn out as well anyway.)

When I got home from Meijer, I got out my little camera and my big tripod. (My other camera is a Canon Powershot S2 15, which is very fun, but the memory card slot is broken. It's on my list to have repaired in October.) My little camera is an Olympus FE-310, which I bought because it's got a small profile, but 8.0 megapixel resolution and a 5x optical zoom. Ooooh, aaaah. The intent was to have a little camera I could keep in my purse for pictures at school and at work and things, and it's really been a good camera.

My little pocket camera has some pre-set photo modes: action, portrait, through glass, sunset, candlelight and fireworks. I got a chance to try the fireworks mode at the 4th of July party this year - the photos turned out really nicely. (Here's the scene at the 4th of July - kids in lawn chairs taking it all in, husband in the field setting off the fireworks, and my Junior Camera Geek Self: on the driveway, little camera in hand, big camera mounted sideways on the tripod shooting video. Hah!) Tonight, I used candlelight mode and fireworks mode, and the pictures turned out pretty cool. Thank goodness for the tripod - the shutter on this one was open FOR-EVER. There'd be no amount of built-in image stabilization that would have covered me on this shot. Yikes!

Anyway, now I feel like I kind of know what I'm doing with these night photos. Not quite as Halloween-esque as the scene when I left for Meijer, but still pretty cool. And I NEED to get my other camera fixed, so I can play some more!

The Sofa Search

Our house is (and always has been) decorated in a theme I called Early Newlywed - a little bit of everything, mostly hand-me downs. Now, I'm not knocking the hand-me downs...most of them came from my parents' house on their move out west (they intended to downsize right about the same time I was getting a Real Job, so the timing worked out well...except for that whole downsizing thing, but that's another story...). But, the things that are really starting to show their age are the upholstered pieces. Oh, and I don't think I can still be considered a newlywed. ;-)

Exhibit A: 30+ Year Old Hide A Bed Sofa. This relic lived in our family room until I was in high school, and was then relegated to the basement (??) until our move to Iowa. In Iowa, this was the furniture I had in my room (I got the smaller room, since I was in college and only home for the summer and occasional long weekend). It made the move to my house, where it served as either living room furniture, or basement/guest quarters. This couch started life as an avocado-green tweed, then was recovered (by my parents!) in a tweedy brown, and is now sporting a third skin - off white flame stitch fabric. With cat hair. The hide-a-bed frame is steel, we've replaced parts of the innards and the mattress at least once each. It's in good condition, but not the best solution for our basement TV/movie watching needs. But, I guess I'm sentimental.

Exhibit B & C: Pair of 20-Something Love Seats. These were handed down from my grandmother, in another case of downsizing. She kept the full-size sofa, and we took the two love seats. Since coming into our possession, these have had a bit of a hard life - cats, kids, 'nuf said. They're covering the Family Room seating roles pretty well, and are awesome for napping on, but I'm ready for something new.

Aaah. "Something New." Yeah, that's a great concept, except when I have to actually try and pick something out. This upholstery purchase thing is something new to me. I can buy tables and bookcases and "hard" stuff all day long, but to pick out a couch, and colors and pillows and squishiness is new to me. And it seems like such a big decision - being that I've got upholstered pieces from my teenage years, I feel like whatever new couch/es I choose will be expected to last for a long time. Other problems - figuring out what the couches really need to do...this is something I think I got from the home makeover shows on TV - "What do you want to use this room for?"

For the basement, some home theatre seating would be ideal, but, by my rough estimates, we can only fit three seats across the seating area, and we have four people in our family. Plus, this is also the space that serves as our guest room, and home theatre seating does not come with hide-a-beds. So, that's the first dilemma.

For the family room, I'd like an l-shaped sectional, maybe with a chaise on one side, so it keeps the room open visually. But, after seeing this type of couch in the store, I'm afraid it's going to be too big for the room. My rough measurements here have not helped...I need someone to hold the other end of the tape measure, and I think the last set of dimensions I got on the sofa actually measured length as "all the way around the back edge of the sofa," to include around the corner. Hmmm.

I've got time; the furniture is serving us well for right now, and I need a chance to figure out design schemes and paint colors and such. But, I'm also diligently entering in the Bassett Furniture Sofa Giveaway . Maybe winning a sofa and being forced into a decision won't be a bad thing. ;-)