Ikea 101

Rule #1 of Ikea: Never take Chris. Chris hates the store. According to him anytime a map is required to get out of a store there is way too much stuff and you just don't need to go there.

Rule #2 of Ikea: Ikea actually has some pretty good stuff for fairly decent prices since we don't have a lot of money to spend on furniture. The problem is this often means Chris has to go to Ikea which conflicts with Rule #1.

Rule #3 of Ikea: Never let Carolyn wander around Ikea. Carolyn doesn't entirely mind the maze of stuff and can get really cool ideas from wondering around Ikea, however, it takes FOREVER. For example, we needed a cabinet to put all our blankets in (to be referred to as a blanket cabinet for the rest of this post) and we ended up getting something that will work as a blanket cabinet, but it didn't come in any of the more traditional spots. This rule often conflicts with Rule #1 (Big surprise there!)

Rule #4 of Ikea: On the trip home the Focus will be full. The back seat will need to be put down, and one person may or may not have to ride in the back with the Ikea boxes. Since Carolyn inevitably has a skirt on her riding in the back doesn't work so well. Chris then has to ride in the back of the packed Focus holding onto boxes from Ikea that he is cursing after having been drug through a store he didn't want to go to in the first place.

Rule #5 of Ikea: Chris turns the boxes he sat with into beautiful pieces of furniture. Carolyn can have no part in the furniture construction because she might actually look at the instructions, never a good idea as they are invariably in Swedish.

Today was a "Break Ikea Rule #1" day, and as you might have guessed we had a lot of fun. I actually went by on Friday to scope out the joint and figure out what might work for the myriad of things we were looking for. The cabinet blanket was just one of the things, but it did take Chris several hours to put everything together this afternoon. It looks great and hold all of our blankets. This means we're getting rid of the last few moving boxes we've got! Yay! We've lived here close to two years (has it really been two years already?!) and we're just now getting rid of the last remnants of boxes.

After putting together the blanket cabinet, a DVD tower, and a desk chair, I talked Chris into playing volleyball. We managed to go to church this morning and one of the people in charge for getting people our age together asked us to go play. Since we've been trying to do something with the group since January, and they were playing sand volleyball on a nice warm (low seventies and overcast) day. We've not had many days without rain this summer, so we decided to take our chances. We had a lot of fun, both of us making fools of ourselves being so uncoordinated and all. They want us to come back though, so we must not have been that bad.