Our Trip to IKEA

There are few things I love more than home decor. I was so excited about our trip to IKEA in Austin. If you have never been before, it's basically a giant warehouse full of home furnishings. In one section of the warehouse there are full sized rooms set up with the various products they offer. If you want, IKEA can install the exact room in your home. I didn't realize how vast their inventory is--you can even order granite in bulk for counter tops. We really needed items to help "flesh out" our living room and add accents to our walls. In the end, we decided against two much needed bookshelves and TV cabinet as Ricky thought they would clash with our contemporary theme (I disagree, but oh well). We did, however, bring home a very cool large ottoman for the living room, shelves for the cookbooks in our kitchen, a bathroom wall storage unit and picture frames.

IKEA's version of how they would decorate the White House.

I still love IKEA but if you're looking for long lasting, high quality furniture, you won't find it there. Most, if not all of their furniture is made of fiberboard and painted, dyed and glossed to look like hardwood. I really want cherry or mahogany bedroom furniture and they don't offer anything along those lines. IKEA sells a wide variety of home accessories that can be used to decorate any home--modern or traditional. I hope to make other trips to IKEA to continue the makeover of our apartment.

At home, we now have a functional guest room. It took a few hours on Sunday but I was able to get the bed in order and remove more boxes. The next step is to transfer all the books now packed in boxes in that room to new bookshelves that I hope to find this weekend. I also need a cute chair for the desk turned vanity that's in that room. If you want to help, I'm looking for something in a pastel color scheme (pinks, yellow, green, blue). The whole apartment still needs curtains so that's on the list as well.

Back to our weekend, we also saw Paul Mooney's stand up performance in Austin. He was hilarious and we really loved it. If you have never seen or heard him, Paul Mooney used to be the head writer for the Richard Pryor show and he was 'Negrodamus" (the Black Nostradamus) on the Dave Chapelle show. As a result, most of his jokes are race related. One woman who was hastily offended by a comment he made about Cubans (note: She was not Cuban and Cubans in the audience thought the joke was funny!) and was escorted out. I think Paul was even caught off guard by that one. But, if you like to laugh and aren't easily offended, I highly recommend!