Canapé conundrum

As I mentioned in passing, we went shopping for sofas yesterday. The sad, sagging, small, and stained sofa (alliteration unintentional) that we currently use is in bad need of replacement.

We saw some very lovely sofas, but man, were they expensive. The overall impression I got in all of the stores we traipsed around is that this is one pricey piece of furniture. I suppose it's worth it if I consider the hours spent on the miserable sagging one, but "worth it" is still relative. Worth 4,000 euros? Not so much. Worth 500 euros? Totally.

Our dilemma is this (aside from the fact that we don't really have any extra money floating around, and Christmas is coming): After all of the ultra-fancy, ultra-expensive couches, we eventually found a perfectly normal and functional and unobjectionable sofa for around 500 euros. We also saw a very cool and swoon-worthy velvet Chesterfield for 1,200 euros. We had seen the same sofa months ago, on sale for 900 euros, and had not purchased it up then, so we were disappointed at its price yesterday.

But, this afternoon, while browsing magazines at the bookshop where we stopped to buy the Herald Tribune, I saw the same sofa in an editorial, but for less than 1000 euros. We went to the website referred to in the magazine, and it turns out the version we liked is selling for less than 800 if we buy direct. (Has anyone ever bought something as large as a sofa online? It seems rather...bold, and uncertain. It's not exactly like getting a couple of books delivered to your door.)

So, do we buy this sofa for a little bit more than we would like to spend but still not outrageous when it comes to sofa prices...


...or do we buy the normal unobjectionable sofa for a more reasonable price? Something along these lines:



The complication in all of this is whether we would bring said sofa with us to Barcelona eventually, or not, and if so, where it would fit and if the color would look good, blah blah and so on. But I think we should just leave that out of the picture for now.

Oh, and by the way, did you know that the French word for sofa is canapé? Of course in English, canapés are little fancy appetizer toasts, so my brain does funny things when I see the word in stores, imagining cheese and olives perched on top of the sofas, for example.

Today I am thankful for the cheerful red leaves of poinsettias. We bought a couple on our way home from church, including some adorable mini ones. So with the Christmas tree already set up, and the poinsettias on the mantle, we're ready for the Christmas season to begin.