You can't kill a fake plant

It is a truthiness universally acknowledged that a plant in possession of bad health does not want to come and live with me.

I'd like to say that I try hard to keep plants alive, but I don't. My plant care routine is neglectful at best, a regretful cycle of extreme drought followed by a monsoon-like watering, followed again by days (weeks?) of drought. The results are that I own the heartiest plants in the world, and they have returned from the brink of death on more than one occasion. However, a few plants have fallen over the brink, never to return again.

The easy solution, of course, is to recognize my shortcomings and limit the number of plants that I own. However, I do love the look (if not the maintenance) of plants, and I am not ready to give up my greenery yet. I decided that an acceptable compromise was a realish-looking fake plant.

We picked up a (fake) tree this past weekend at Home Goods, but what looked good in the store didn't quite fit in our living room. I thought I wanted a tallish tree, but it loomed over me when I was sitting next to it, and it stood out too much. How much attention does one want to call to a fake topiary?

We brought the tree back tonight with the intention of exchanging it for a shorter, shrub-like plant, but a tour of the store revealed no acceptable option. However, we did find a beautiful desk instead.

The desk is dark wood, slightly distressed on the top, and more ornate than most of our furniture, but it looks like the kind of desk that Hemingway would have written at. I suspect that I would be a smarter person while I was sitting at that desk (and maybe the extra intelligence would carry over into the rest of my life, too). However, the economics of the plant/desk situation didn't quite work out.

Cost of the fake tree: $60
Cost of the nice desk: $999
Net loss if we exchanged the tree for the desk: -$939

Obviously, there was no way to come out ahead in that situation. We decided to keep shopping.

The beauty of Home Goods is that you never know what you're going to find. I wandered somewhat accidentally into the bathroom section and found a strange glass bowl with a hole in the bottom sitting on a shelf. A bowl with a hole seemed impractical, so I investigated more and discovered that it was actually a sink--a vessel sink. It was quit possibly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, and I brought B over to check it out.

We admired it for a moment and tried to figure out the logistics of replacing the sink in our downstairs half bathroom. Because the sink that is currently in the bathroom is recessed, we'd have to buy a new countertop, but we probably wouldn't have to replace the vanity itself. We would also need new hardware, including a new faucet.

We decided to buy the sink--we reasoned that we could always return it--and head over to Lowe's to figure out the costs that we were looking at to give our bathroom a little makeover.

We got some countertop quotes that ranged from $60 to $800 (is granite really that expensive?) and realized that we'd have to do the installation and cutting of the countertop by ourselves. The project was starting to look daunting but not necessarily impossible.

We headed back home, quotes in hand, and checked out the way that the sink looked in the bathroom. It looked great--but it didn't quite match the walls. Would we need to paint the walls again? And upon closer inspection, we realized that we might need to remove the tile from the wall, too. This new sink project has the ability to get out of hand quickly.

We love the sink, but we're still deciding if we're ready to redecorate our bathroom around it.

The desk, on the other hand...that option is still on the table...