Table Fable

Well, not really a fable. There are no lesson-learning animals or anything, but it rhymed, and I like a rhyme.

So, I showed you my little plasticky, grime-coated orange chairs. When I positioned them in Graham's room, the only place they'd fit--under the window beside his bed--required moving his toy box (which also functions as a bedside table) somewhere else, which meant moving his bedside lamp, unless I could find a little table to squeeze in between the chairs. Whew, run-on sentence! Are you still with me?

Anyway, I needed a tiny table in somewhat of a drum shape, one that would come in a bit in the middle to allow clearance for the chairs. Every centimeter matters in this tiny bedroom. In my head I wanted something kind of like a mini Saarinen tulip table, but oh, my God, seriously? Six HUNDRED dollars for a kids' table?

Um, I didn't spend six DOLLARS on the two chairs to go on either side of it? Oh, but wait! You can get the kids' version of the oval tulip table (you know, for craft time or Legos or scraping boogers out from under--sorry, just keepin' it real) for just $1519! That's one thousand, five hundred nineteen dollars. But they'll throw in free delivery, so it's really quite the bargain. I think it goes without saying that this table won't be coming to my humble home.

I liked the looks of the Sasha Stool from Italia Modern, and when I was pricing it, it seemed reasonable at $39.99 (it's since gone up on Amazon).

It had the right hourglass shape, it's made of durable plastic, and it could double as a stool (I always appreciate double-duty furniture). One of the reviews even mentioned using it as a shower stool, which I thought was clever. But after shipping, the cost topped fifty dollars. I'm not saying fifty dollars is unreasonable at all, but for something my crazy three-year-old is inevitably going to climb upon and hurl himself from, I thought I could do better.

I looked around at eleventy million online shops and blogs, and then I just Google-image searched "drum stool" and "barrel stool," among other shapes that seemed similar to what I wanted. The results, however, included a stool from Crate and Barrel. Well, looky here:

Cute! Strong enough to be a stool, and according to the reviews, a great height for a side table! Also? UNDER SEVENTEEN DOLLARS. FIVE PERCENT of the cost of the first one. I know, I know--one's iconic and sculptural and the other is mass-produced and blah blah blah. But again, let's review:

• kid's room
• hurling and jumping
• boogers (Graham is really quite considerate with his boogers, wiping them in tissue and putting them in the waste basket, but he does sometimes insist on showing them to me first. Ah, boys.)

The Flamingo Stool is on its way to my house as we speak, and I'm really excited to see how it works in the space. And you know what? If it doesn't work in Graham's room? We can use it somewhere else. Even if we only use it for extra seating the 2.1 times per year that someone visits us, that's okay. Because it was $16.95, yo.


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