Ikea

I have a serious love hate relationship with Ikea. It takes almost an hour to get to the nearest location (or an hour and a half when traffic is jammed up) and costs $6.20 in highway tolls for the round trip. Oh and the bonus... the only time I can go is on the weekend when it's a swarming madhouse. Sigh. After putting it off for months I finally made the journey a couple of Saturdays ago. And once I was there, defeated by traffic and an already super crowded store, I decided to buy anything and everything that I ever wanted from Ikea because I was never coming back (yeah, right).

Got all the staples I needed from Ikea like new towels, replacement dishes and bowls for ones that we had broken over the past year, and cheap $7 throw blankets for the couch Lottie is slowly destroying. I bought the Henny throw-bedspread that I had become obsessed with and a couple of sets of grey sheets. Also picked up the Alvine Rand rug (Ikea stock photo here)- mine is still rolled up in its plastic wrap until I have time to tackle the spare room which is where this rug is going (I think).



I had no idea what I was going to do with this round mini-cowhide thing they're selling for $9.99...

... and it ended up looking good on the dining room table.


Bought this small white wire table with a white glass top in the scratch and dent section for $14. Have since decided that it's perfect as Mark's bedside and his glass of ice water he needs while he sleeps... won't talk about the tragedy of the Hey-Wake bedside and the faulty coaster incident...still too painful. So $14 table that requires no coaster is a big winner!



Now with that new bedsie table decision I ended up moving all sorts of things around and brought in things from other rooms and then changed my mind on the new paint color 12 times. Wow what a trainwreck! I did settle on one color and I bought the paint. Now I just need to find the time to do the painting.


Mark made this tripod lamp about 4 years ago and it has made an appearance in just about every room of our house. Of course I had to try it out in the bedroom! It was my Grandpa's tripod. He was an amazing photographer and most of the black and white photographs in our house are his taken in the 1940s and 1950s.


The only thing on my Ikea shopping list that I didn't come home with was curtains for our bedroom. No worries, there is always Target!