Recliner choices

So, Montana has already made great strides in learning to use her dog door. She still requires verbal encouragement, but she will push the flap open with no assistance from us, and then walk through. And she has even made more progress since I took this video yesterday afternoon--last night she walked through the door when we got home with almost no encouragement at all.

Still, I personally find her adorable, so check out the video (and, as a bonus, you get to hear my special doggy baby voice):



How cute is that? No? Am I the only one who thinks so? (Well, Torsten and me.) The goal is to have her using the door at her discretion, whether or not we're nearby, by the end of the long weekend.

Speaking of the long weekend, I am ridiculously excited about it. We're not traveling anywhere, but we are going furniture shopping. We've decided to invest in a piece of furniture as a combination anniversary/Christmas gift to each other. We're deciding between a shelf and a recliner, and I think we're going to go for a recliner because it's more practical, even though it's also a bit more expensive. The reason is that at the moment we have only one chair in the family room, rendering the fireplace in there basically useless because we can't sit in there together. If we get a second recliner then we can sit in front of the fire together, reading or whatever, and that will be great.

This is also the reason we're going to get the gift now, even though our anniversary is two months away and Christmas is four months away, because we want to be able to use our family room as soon as the weather gets cold enough for fires.

So, here's the thing. What we would really like is a Stressless recliner (possibly in purple leather), because they combine style, comfort, and quality, but those things run at about $2,000 each, and that is just not happening. Although, behold:


So, we're going to have to compromise somewhere, and I'm pretty sure that "somewhere" is going to be "style." Because comfort and price are more important to us at this point. Which means, I suppose, that the family room is going to be the "comfort over style" room, and I'm working on being OK with that. Because the recliner I think we're going to get... well, first of all it's only available in ugly colors, and second of all it itself is just '80s style heinous. It's something similar to this:


But it's so COMFY. And it's sturdy and it has a warranty and it is AFFORDABLE. And I'm not spending $2,000 on a recliner, no matter how much nicer it looks.

What do you think? Is it worth spending significantly more to have a non-hideous piece of furniture in our family room?