A Sanctuary Bought for a Song

I don’t know about you all, but as we bust into these Spring months, I’m craving freshness.  In all things and all areas of my life, but dude, if I could I just create a refuge in one room of my house?? I’d be golden.  So when Alisa told me about the latest score she had peace-ing out her bedroom, I was all over it.  That she did it on the baragin-hunting-friendly makes me love her even more.  That she understands the importance of not foregoing an IKEA bedroom set in the interest of wine confirms that she is a kindred spirit (yes, we still have ours from when we first got married and yes, it is still partially held together with duct tape).

Take away this Friday, Alisa!

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When my husband and I first moved in together we had absolutely no furniture. Not even a bed. After we moved into our apartment, we took our U-Haul over to Ikea and picked up the cheapest bed and couch we possibly could. That night, we came home and assembled Ikea furniture until midnight just so we’d have a place to rest our weary bones after moving all day. Almost eight years, another apartment, two babies and a fixer upper house later, we were still sleeping on our full size Ikea bed. That’s right people. I said FULL SIZE bed. We’ve wanted to upgrade for a while, but that costs money and I can think of a hundred things I’d like to drop a wad of cash on other than a bed. (Do you know how many bottles of wine you can get for that kind of money? I digress…)

As fate would have it, my parents decided to upgrade their bed and offered to give us (and deliver!) their old Tempur-Pedic California King. How could I refuse an offer to have my bed and drink my wine too? In anticipation of our exciting new bed (and by new, I mean 10 year old hand-me-down, but those Tempur-Pedics are good for a lifetime, right?) I started shopping for bedding. Though I might not want to spend a truckload of money on actual bed, I love buying linens. I love a reason to browse the Pottery Barn website even if I’ll never buy anything because their prices make me cry. I could wander through Target looking at home goods for hours because it’s my happy place. I browsed to my little heart’s content until found a duvet from Overstock that made me swoon.

Source

I wanted something that was bright and colorful. (Read, hides stains well.)

I wanted something that incorporated the crazy green dresser we bought off craigslist and painted when we still had time for labors of love that weren’t our children.

And I wanted some new colors, because as much as I love that green dresser, I’m ready for something new and I needed a palette that would match the old me AND inspire the new me.

This set was everything I wanted until I saw the price. $99.00 for a duvet, shams (that will never get used because we hate taking them on and off) and three throw pillows. Don’t get me wrong, I like pretty pillows, but I’m a practical girl. I don’t even make my bed half of the time because I’m just going to get right back in it. Preferably sooner rather than later. The bottom line was that I wasn’t willing to cough up almost $100 for just a duvet, even if it made me swoon.

So I shopped on. I shopped all of my favorite places online and in store, dragging my boys through every linen shop in town. Even my beloved Target didn’t have anything that satisfied both the dreamer and the penny pincher. Becoming desperate, I started looking into sewing my own duvet, but when all was said and done it was still going to cost me around $60. At one point, I seriously considered turning a shower curtain into a duvet because I thought it might be more cost efficient!

And then I stumbled on this at Wal-Mart.

Yep. That is EXACTLY the same duvet set I found on Overstock for almost $40 less. It’s a good thing I took a screenshot of this price, because Wal-Mart has recently increased the price to $109! Since I could barely make a duvet for that price, I ordered it. And then I promptly spent all my savings on some king size pillows.

Did you notice the absurd number of pillows on my bed after I mentioned how unnecessary decorative pillows are? I may have purchased NINE pillows this week. And by may I mean I totally did. Don’t judge. In the end I was pretty satisfied with the overall cost of my makeover, including the pillow binge. Here’s the breakdown:

Duvet Set: $66 (One duvet, two king shams and three throw pillows)

Pillows: $52 (Four king size and two standard)

Sheets: $57 (I picked up two sets of 300 thread count sheets, one from Anna’s Linens ($32) and another from Bed, Bath and Beyond ($25)on super clearance with a 20% off coupon. )

Total cost for my bedding makeover: $175

Could I have gotten a better deal? Probably. Could I be happier? Nope. I read once that your master bedroom should be a sanctuary, an oasis if you will. A place where you can escape your children and pretend like you still have an adult life. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it feels like an oasis in here, I can say that it feels as if grown-ups live here and not just a bunch of monkeys who like to jump on the bed.

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For more of Alisa’s super-ness, head over to Twitter and check her out!

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Meredith

Meredith blogs at The Mom of the Year, where she dedicatedly earns her title one epic parenting fail at a time, offering quick, relatable laughs for fellow parents and all their empathizers. She has been part of several best-selling anthologies, featured on prominent sites such as Huffington Post, In the Powder Room and BlogHer, and loves her role as the Executive VP/Operations Manager of The BlogU Conference. When she's not breaking up fights over Legos and juice boxes, she remains fully committed to sharing a less serious look at the world of parenting.

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