IKEA - my new favorite store!

I discovered IKEA on our way back from Delaware about a month ago. I had heard of it before, but never  been in the store. We decided to "stop by" the one at Potomac Mills mall. Well for those of you that have never been there before, there is no "stopping by" IKEA. We didn't have any clue how it is supposed to "work" and ended up going completely backwards. You are supposed to walk through all of the showrooms first to get an idea of layouts of different rooms and items, then proceed to the store part that reminds me of bed, bath and beyond THEN go on to the warehouse to get any bigger items. Well it was cold outside and we ran in the closest door and went completely BACKWARDS! Oops :) We found so many cool ideas and new things we might want but were slightly overwhelmed and weren't ready to make this many decisions about changing things at home so we ended up buying nothing on our first visit but decided to go back when we went to Charlotte in a few weeks.

The day after the bowl game we went to Ikea before we headed home, this time we were prepared with thoughts of things to change/do at home. Our old comforter had been torn and had a lovely iron on patch, plus it is mostly light blue which shows TONS of dirt, dog hair, etc. I had been wanting a new one for a while. We tried a brown down alternative blanket but that showed the mess just about as bad and was dry clean only... no thanks! We decided that a duvet cover was the best option, I can take it off and wash it as often as I want and we got a red color that actually doesn't show the dirt and hair as badly from far away. We also never liked the curtains in our room (they were left when we bought the house) but haven't changed them... until now! We got curtains to match the duvet cover and I got a blanket to fold at the foot of the bed for a variety of color. Ikea is so well priced that it's hard not to go overboard! The curtains are 96" and left for you to hem yourself, so I recently bought some stitch witch and hope to hem them this weekend. I am so excited about our new room design, but we were still able to keep the brown tone, so we don't HAVE to change the walls, although we probably will eventually and we kept the bathroom the same as it was before.

You can see the curtains a litle bit better in this one

We have also been frustrated with the lack of light in our kitchen. We have beautiful stained glass fixtures but they don't let much light through. We found under the cabinet lights and Trey installed them almost immediately! They really help add light. They are LED so that got us thinking, what if we got LED lights to go in the kitchen and brighten some things up... so we did! It is much brighter in there, even with the fixtures on so now we can actually see but also get to keep pretty light fixtures!


One of our new under the counter lights, turn all of them on with one switch!

We also got folding chairs to go with my new folding table, that Trey got me for Christmas! We want to have another table for whenever we have extra guests over for dinner that won't fit at our dining room table. Or if we ever decide to have a poker/game night, like we have talked about doing, and need more room. We got these white, pretty comfortable, folding chairs for $8 each!

Lastly, I have been wanting to create a "gallery wall" on one of the hallway walls upstairs that is currently blank. We don't have many of our wedding pictures displayed and I want something on this wall, it is boring me! I have been trying to find frames and can't decide what to do. When we went to Ikea we looked through their frames. I like variety but I also can't handle things being too different, so we got a lot of white frames, all different sizes and some shadow box type frames, some just plain normal frames and I think it should be a good balance. I haven't even really begun that project though... hopefully I can get started on it this weekend!

So yeah, I'm slightly obsessed with this store.