A Saturday in IKEA

This Saturday we went to IKEA. I know that some people think of it as the ultimate challenge of willpower (do NOT buy candles/plants/napkins/vases), relationships and ability to not get tempted by the icecream at the exit, but we LOVE it! To us it is a little piece of Scandinavia where it feels awesome to recognize the names on all the doormats (no kidding! Things that are intended to wipe your feet on are named after Danish cities. Thank you IKEA. We love you too🙄), and to buy løsgodis (bulk candy) at the exit. We can even get foods served in the cafeteria that are otherwise no-where to be found.

We went this time because we wanted to settle our living situation. It is no lie that I have a very hard time with apartment living these days. I hate to live in this temporary, cheap-materials, close to the highway apartment complex. But at the same time we are lucky to live in one of the places where anything broken gets fixed rather quickly, where our current upstairs neighbors are super quiet, and where we have established what I would not so humbly state as the coziest patio in the hood. And the pool! I don't even want to imagine trying to get through the summer without it. And we have sort of given up on finding a house to rent. The market here goes fast! And most houses are available in July/August which means we would have to pay double rent for a while, which would easily bring our out of pocket expenses in the vicinity of 5000$ (double rent, new deposit and moving cost), and that's quite frankly a lot of money to pay unnecessarily.On top of this the kids don't want to move again. And I don't blame them.

So in order to get ready for one more year of living here we decided to upgrade the inventory a bit.

So now Luca has a proper bed, we have a new fancy coffee table and a fancy lamp in our living room and a giant pillow the kids couldn't wait to share with Bailey as we watched a movie that night.

We also found these:

And since we are no longer as hesitant to hang things on the walls, it has become a lot nicer to live here.