Adventures in ikea-ing

We have a tiny kitchen. TINY. And we like to cook, therefore we have a lot of cooking...gear... ware... Our kitchen was crowded. You couldn't open cabinets without things falling out and attacking your face. Dealing with that everyday gets old. So we decided to alleviate some of the space issues by getting something to keep in the living room to store some of our prettier dishes in. Of course, we went to our go-to for furniture, ikea.

Side note, are you guys the same way? Can you not leave ikea without getting a bunch of other crap? We always leave with candles, a picture frame or two, and usually a plant (Brendon loves plants. More on this later, it deserves it's own blog post). Plus other stuff we stumble upon. DAMN YOU IKEA! We are such suckers for you. Also, 50 cent hot dogs? You know we're in.

Anyway, I was hoping to get something like this to house our dishes that didn't necessarily scream ikea:

 

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Unfortunately that was a tad (WAY) out of our price range. So we settled on this:

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YES, one of those giant box things. Could you get any more ikea-y? It matches all of our other black-brown stereotypical blocky ikea furniture. I'm just going to pretend that I'm Lisbeth Salander and living in Sweden in a swanky modern ikea furnished pad. Did any of you who have read the Girl Who Played with Fire find it just a little odd that the pieces of furniture she bought were mentioned by name? I mean I know Sweden is proud of ikea and all, but jeeze.

Putting this sucker together was rough. It's a big mofo and we didn't realize just how big until we had it all spread out over our living room floor. It is also VERY heavy. But we put it together (after about 10,000 "that's what she said" jokes. It's just way too easy when putting together furniture. My favorite was "just one more screw". Inappropriate?) and then bolted it to the wall so if any curious felines decide to wreck havoc on top of it, it wont (hopefully) come crashing down, destroying all of our dishes in the process.

Of course this happened immediately. They're like, "oh you built this for us? Sweet, let me get in it." Fortunately they seem to have lost interest in it quickly.

 

I have to say I am a fan. Our kitchen cabinets are SO much neater and way less cluttered. Plus we have extra storage for other stuff, such as the 9,000 knickknacks we own. And we got a couple of little wooden boxes to keep some of our video game controllers and gadgets in. And see those two frames up top?

I matted and framed our wedding vows! They're a little beat up from being in our pockets our whole wedding day, but I like it. They have character. Also, notice Brendon's ball-in-a-cup? Cute isn't it? (not cute.) Please tell me you guys have seen that Family Guy episode ("Oh no, I missed the cup! That's okay, because there's a string attached to the ball attached to the cup!")? If not, it's still ridiculous that he owns, and plays, ball-in-a-cup. I told him if he can catch the ball 10 times in a row he'll get a special prize. His record so far is 5, he's got a ways to go.

Our little apartment is becoming quite homey! If only we could get rid of the stark white walls we'd be in business. And I am reeeally hoping we don't end up moving once our lease is up because number 1, moving sucks so bad, and number 2, we've got a crap load of stuff attached to our walls. Plus, even though this apartment has all kinds of flaws and it's a little bit on the not so classy side, I'm becoming quite attached! I never ever thought I'd say that. What are you doing to me Austin?!

Fixin' this place up

Hello y'all! How was your weekend? Mine was great! It rained (sprinkled), I got lots of time with Mr. H, and I finally started making our apartment look more like a home and less like a giant dorm room. I think for a while I was kind of in denial about living here long term and refused to decorate. But I am over it! Kind of.

Hung up some pictures all crazy style, no measuring involved. And for me that's a feat, because when it comes to hanging things I'm usually pretty neurotic. We just have this ridiculous long wall in our living room and I needed something to take up a lot of it. So I hung every picture we have with a black frame. Super creative, I know. Brendon had been giving me crap about not hanging pictures (they were all still packed up) so BOOYA. Two birds with one stone. This covers about half of the giant wall, no clue what we'll do with the other half.

Aaaand I made a table runner for our huge coffee table!

Isn't this the prettiest fabric? Plaid is pretty much my favorite color. Jk, it's blue. But seriously I love plaid. Hipsters may have tried to kill it, but I will always be loyal. So anyway, I was at Joann's, which is a dangerous place for me, and I was walking up to the register with this other cheapo plaid fabric in my arms, when I saw this fabric and it said to me, "Marie, put that crap down and come get serious with me. I'm beautiful." And of course I grabbed it. I think it's the kind of fabric you reupholster chairs with. It's fancy. So fancy that it broke the needle on my sewing machine and it scared me so bad I almost peed my pants. Lesson learned, there are different sized needles for different thicknesses of fabric. I justified the splurge on the fact that not only are they fall colors, but also Christmas colors, and I'm thinking we'll just end up using it year round. Brendon did not see my logic. Whatever.

We also got a new bookshelf! Our movies finally filled up our previous one and we lost our other bookshelf in the move (don't buy bookshelves from walmart, they're about as sturdy as copier paper) so we headed on up to ikea to get another to match. What's that? You noticed there are a couple shelves missing? That's because ikea is the antichrist. They are always magically out of what we go there for. That shelf only comes with four shelves (which is moronic) so we needed to buy an extra two which is no biggie because they're only 5 bucks. But of course! They are completely out of those shelves in black/brown. And to order them online would cost $23 for shipping alone. SERIOUSLY? $23 for two $5 shelves? I'm assuming they're coming straight from Sweden and are wrapped gold. We had the same experience with that coffee table up there. It took us three trips to ikea before it was in stock. The second trip we checked online and it definitely said they were in stock so we trek over and NOPE. Not there. This would not be a big deal except ikea is always a good half hour drive both from our old place in Denton and us now. NOT CONVENIENT. Okay, sorry about all that, I really do like ikea. A little. END IKEA RANT.

And for your (my) enjoyment, here is a picture of my sweet man studying for pharmacy school. Obviously he loves having his picture taken. He sent me a text today that said, "I can't wait to have you bug me while I study tonight". Worst wife of the year award goes toooooooo.....