Ikea — Page 4

An Escape from the Cottage

March 15, 2014 at 9:16 am by Claudia

pinktulips

Smile.

whitealstromeria

Another smile.

pinkalstromeria

And another big old smile.

You’ve probably gathered that I did indeed make my trip to Trader Joe’s yesterday. Yes, I bought some food but the first thing I did was grab three bouquets of flowers. $3.99/each. You can’t beat their prices and the bouquets aren’t skimpy, like many I see. At this time of year around here, a bouquet like the one above would easily be $15.00 or more. Hello. It’s a no-brainer.

Driving to either of the Trader Joe’s that are closest to our house takes about an hour. This time I was adding in IKEA which is in the same area as TJ’s but a bit further south (both are in New Jersey.) So that means I have to calculate a driving time of 2 hours round-trip, Scout’s mealtimes and, ahem, elimination needs, and I have to move quickly once I’m in those stores. If Don was here, I would have been able to be quite a bit more leisurely about the whole thing. But…I did it. It was so good to get out of the cottage and on the road. And I clocked in at just over 4 hours. Excellent job if I do say so myself.

IKEA kept cropping up in my head because I had seen a lamp that I liked – you guessed it – on several blogs. I thought it would be perfect for my sewing table. I’ve never been thrilled with the one I’ve been using (also from IKEA) and I have plans to transfer that one to the desk in the guest room/studio/office. But I was unsure of the dimensions and, for some reason, IKEA didn’t include that information online. So I just bit the bullet and went there. I always have fun at IKEA, but there were the usually crying toddlers and big groups of people taking up the whole aisle so that I couldn’t get past them. And my eyes started to sting from the lighting.

I digress.

Here’s the lamp.

lampclose2

It’s powder coated in white with neat darkish brassy looking accents and a fabric covered cord. I really love the look of it and it seemed perfect for the sewing table. I figured that if I didn’t like it there, I would use it on my bedside table. (It’s called the Ranarp, if you’re interested.)

I really like it. And, like everything at IKEA, really inexpensive, which suits my budget rather nicely.

lampsewingmachine

I suppose it would be a good idea for me to actually do some sewing after all of this work in the studio.

I also got a couple of cooking pots for the kitchen and two sets of these:

towels

I need them and the color is self-explanatory, don’t you think?

Then I came home, accidentally knocked over Riley’s Dish Garden, which now needs some work, put something in the refrigerator overnight that should have been put in the freezer, and dealt with an insanely hyper Scout for about 4 hours. She pushed every last one of my buttons.

Ah well. If you play, you pay.

Or so they say.

Happy Saturday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Made in…

January 20, 2012 at 9:55 am by Claudia

Good morning on this wintry Friday. We got a little snow last night, about half an inch or so, with a bit more to come tonight. No big storm yesterday – just a quiet, pretty snowfall in the evening.

So far, so good.

We’re a sleepy bunch this morning. Riley has yet to get up to attend to business. I’m in my flannel pajamas, wrapped in a shawl, drinking my morning Peet’s. Scout’s in the ‘tunnel.’

Note pink flannel pajamas on the left.

I wore those pajamas all day yesterday, except for when I returned the rental car. I figured it might not be a good idea to arrive at the rental counter in pink flannel.

The trip to New Haven went well, but oh, was I exhausted! Not enough sleep the night before, lots of driving and a very late arrival back home at the cottage. I arrived in New Haven about an hour and a half before curtain, so I went to IKEA. It’s right next door and I needed some dinner and the food is good, but more importantly, it’s cheap. I called Don to say I arrived safely, played around with my iPhone and, after dinner, took a quick walk through the store.

I bought these:

The cost was about a dollar per glass. The pale colors drew me in and they’re nice and tall. We’ve managed to break every tall glass around here, leaving us with something close to a juice-style glass in size (also from IKEA) and some plastic crap. I figured these were a good investment. Why only 3?

I don’t know. I truly don’t know what I was thinking.

But here’s an interesting discovery:

IKEA of Sweden.

Made in China.

Is everything being made in China now? It sure seems that way.

Call me crazy, but perhaps the lack of jobs in this country and other countries might be greatly improved if we started manufacturing our products at home. It’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense. Why aren’t we taking care of our own?

You can’t walk through Target or the dreaded Walmart or any other store without seeing ‘Made in China’ on most everything.

By the way, this sweet little Nisse from the Danish company, Maileg?

Made in China.

Just think what a difference it would mean to the economic picture of every country if jobs and manufacturing were brought back home. The lines of eager job applicants would stretch for miles. We could get our citizens back to work, help them become independent again. Unemployment payments would greatly decrease.

Why aren’t we doing this? Perhaps the need for cheap labor should be trumped by the needs of our country’s citizens.

I could write a treatise on this, but I won’t. At least for the moment.

I’ll leave you with this shot of the sun rising over our back forty.

Happy Friday!

On the Road and a Blogging Tip

January 5, 2012 at 11:56 am by Claudia

Two posts today, this one and a book review. Just scroll down for the review – a terrific book, Our Man in the Dark.

I didn’t post yesterday because I was working in New Haven, CT for the day. I’m ‘consulting’ on a production of Macbeth that has been adapted to take place in 1969 at the end of the war in Vietnam. Consulting is always a bit problematic because I am invariably called in after the play is well into rehearsal – it’s always a struggle to change things at that point. Nevertheless, I do my best. I’ll be working there for the next two Wednesdays.

The bad: I had to rent a car (we only have one car at the moment) and it ended up being more expensive than we thought it would be. Since I have to pay for everything first (I’ll get reimbursed later) I wasn’t too happy about it. Two hours there and back, plus 6 hours of rehearsal = a long day.

(no pretty pictures today!)

And I spilled coffee all over my books. It’s my own fault. I was trying to carry everything with me as I made my way to the car rental counter. Instead of dumping the coffee immediately, I carried it with me while looking for a trash can. I was so tired that I had no idea it was sloshing over everything. Not happy.

The good: the cast is very nice (including an actress I’ve worked with before) and the theater is right next to an Ikea.

After not visiting an Ikea in over a year, I’ve been there twice lately. I actually ate dinner there last night before hitting the road for the trip home. I bought a new Ektorp slipcover for my blogging chair. The white slipcovers are only $29, so when the current slipcover becomes too stained and washing it no longer does the trick, I buy a new one. It doesn’t fit the chair exactly, but it works.

And I bought hangers to use in my ongoing purge and clean-up of the house.

I’ve also been creating a new website for my coaching business. A simple, and most importantly, free site.

On another note, I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet and redesign my blog a few months back. If you remember, I discovered my designer was no longer in business and feared that I might wake up one day to discover her Photobucket account was gone, along with my designs. By the way, she never bothered to tell any of us that she was out of the business and stopped all communication with her previous clients.

Several bloggers woke up yesterday to discover elements of their blog designs were missing, replaced by the dreaded “Bandwidth Exceeded, Upgrade to Photobucket Pro today” message. I hope the problem is easily remedied, but I fear it might not be.

My advice? Take control of your blog. It’s made an enormous difference to me. I am no longer dependent on another’s work. It’s so easy now to make your own header and background. I found that googling a question like, “how to make your own blog background” or “how to design your own header” brought forth a wealth of information. It involves playing with your html code a bit, but there are tutorials everywhere. The great thing about Blogger is that you can go in and play with your code, hit preview to see what the changes look like and if you don’t like them, nothing is permanent and you can revert back to the original code.

And thank you, thank you for all the tips about the old desk. I sure got some great ideas from everyone! I’ll keep you posted.

An Escape from the Cottage

Made in…

On the Road and a Blogging Tip

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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