Dining Dilemma

So, right now the only real "empty" room that still needs to be furnished is our formal Dining Room... we've never had one of these rooms before and our kitchen table area is huge, so it hasn't been a big priority to get a dining room set that we might use once or twice a year! We've been on the lookout constantly and occasionally we've really spent hours out hunting for the right set, but have never found anything that we just loved.... you know that feeling when you look at it and think "That's the ONE!" Well, I got the Sam's Club Holiday Catalog in the mail last week and saw a set I really liked... the only problem is that it's counter height, so not really appropriate for a formal dining room... but I REALLY, REALLY liked it! (see above photo) I even saw it in person when I was at Sam's Club doing my monthly visit, which made me like it EVEN MORE! (Speaking of Sam's (or Costco...) my friend calls it the "hundred dollar store"... you can't walk out without spending at least $100... ) So, after scrapbooking with Robin on Friday morning, I decided that I wanted to take Eric to see it, just to see if he even was interested. If he didn't like it, I would just walk away and try hard not to think about it anymore! We went over to Sam's (just down the street) and they didn't have it... it was gone! We asked around and found out they only had one left and the box was open and it was possibly damaged. So we went to the car and called the Sam's in West Chandler... they had 2, so we went over there only to find out they really had just the display. Eric got to see the display and he fell in love with it too.... So, we came home and searched around and found out that a Sam's in North Scottsdale had 8 sets... we were willing to drive up to pick it up, but we had no idea if the boxes would fit in the back of the car without making 2 trips. So we went back to our Sam's (down the street) and found the "damaged" box set so we could measure the boxes. Since we visited last night, they had marked that set down $100 because of the broken box. We found a guy who helped us open it up and we could see no damage, so we decided to skip the drive to Scottsdale and chance it on this set. (They assured us that if we got the boxes open and found damage, we could still return it.) We got it home and it's perfect and gorgeous and we saved an extra $100 too! (The set was a steal at $650 anyway....) So now our formal dining room has furniture... our old battered and dirty kitchen set is going to sit in the dining room (until we can find a suitable replacement)... maybe if I keep a very pretty tablecloth in it, no one will notice how grimy it really is!!!! Ah... who cares.... we NEVER eat in there anyway!!!!