Adventures in summer living--now, with pictures!

After my swell trip to CA, I went with my daughter to IKEA. The opening of this giant store (truly a megastore) was a big event around here, in that they reported on it in the papers, the governor showed up for the official opening (did I make that up? I'm pretty sure it's true), and my daughter declared that she wouldn't go until September. Things seemed to have slowed down after a few weeks, though, so she proposed that we go together. That seemed fine, despite the stories I'd heard from people who apparently barely made it out of there alive, albeit with affordable yet possibly not too durable furnishings. Whatever. I was game.


The thing about it is, there's a system for shopping there, and I don't mean a system as in "First, I always go check out the sale racks" kind of a system--I mean system as in "you have to follow the footprints on the floor" kind of a system. So we went upstairs, which is where you start with the showrooms. It's kind of impressive, although after about half of the upstairs, I felt worn out from spare Scandinavian style design. Exhausted, really. We ate at the cafe, where Swedish meatballs abounded.

But what I was there for was textiles, which in my case meant bedding. There's been a commercial, and it's been kind of seducing me. Colorful duvets! Pillow shams! Happy families rolling around in the colorful duvets! Etc. And I was not disappointed, although I did have to summon reserves of energy to actually select and locate the textiles I wanted.


I will spare you the details of the downstairs, which is where all the actual flatpacked furnishings are located, the ones you pick up and pay for. And then, there's the picking up and the paying. All in all, the trip to IKEA, which was rather restrained, since we didn't buy or even consider buying much, took us about 2 and a half hours, which is apparently par for the course according to my IKEA-frequenting contacts. The upside is, we have new curtains, a new duvet and cover, and matching pillow sham covers on our bed, and frankly, things have never looked better. You can see the results for yourselves.