Cotton On To You

our bedroom when we were switching out the rugs

Our second wedding anniversary is on Monday next week, and I took advantage of the traditional gift of cotton as an opportunity to shop for a new duvet. So romantic, right? But you see, dear readers, we're not just getting a new duvet cover; we're getting a new duvet cover and a new duvet, both king-sized upgrades from the queen set we have now, and they are not everyday purchases! (I needed a strong excuse to convince Jon we should spend the money, and our anniversary fit the bill perfectly.)

Charlie, of course, was the other excuse I used. We have a queen-sized bed and Jon and I both like to have the covers bunched around us, which would be fine if we were the only ones ever on the bed. Obviously, we're not.

We've actually done a really good job of training Charlie not to get on the bed while we're sleeping. He'll cuddle with us up there as we prepare to go to sleep, but as soon as I say, "Okay, I'm turning the light off!" he jumps off and curls up on his own bed. He also knows he's allowed up when I start stirring in the morning - around 6am if I've gone to bed at a decent hour and/or the sun rises early - but he has to be invited. And then, of course, once we've gone out for our first walk of the day, the bed is free game for him. It took a good few months to train him (and ourselves to be strict) on this, but we've done it!

Sharing a queen-sized duvet between two people and a 70lbs dog, while doable, is not ideal, and so we're buying a new set of cover, shams, and duvet.

Here are the aesthetic guidelines each of us proposed:

Jon: solid or striped, no big geometrical patterns or florals if any kind
Betsy: piping or center square ribbon if solid, small geometrical patterns, no stripes
Charlie: no light fabrics without a dark pattern

Jon and I ended up compromising on the stripes thing by moving a rag rug that had been in my childhood bedroom for a decade into our bedroom in the apartment. We looked at a lot of less-obtrusive geometric patterns, but decided they all clashed with the paintings on our walls. Ultimately, then, the only option was a solid dark duvet cover - exactly what Jon and Charlie had been lobbying for all along! I'd say that the boys win again, but I'm very pleased with what we found and the sale price at which we found it.

Speaking of sale prices, I want to applaud Overstock.com for their amazing customer service in helping me buy a duvet. They went above and beyond in answering my questions, understanding my budget, and really making my experience more personal, which is hard to do on a website like that. The duvet was ordered today, so hopefully you'll see the set on the bed soon after our actual anniversary on the 24th!

In the meantime, though, these were some of the finalists that I considered as possible options that Jon wouldn't dismiss out of hand. (He did for most of them. Oops.) Any catch your eye? I'd love them all, but these boys...

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