Giddy

How else would you want to spend a Saturday morning than walking through IKEA?! One of my best friends (shout out to Maggie) took me to IKEA to finally purchase the book case I've been ogling for months. Although we had a plan to pick that up and head to the mall for shoes, I couldn't stop picking things up, testing tables, chairs, couches, saying, 'I could use that. But do I really need it? Eh... But I WANT it!' Like that favorite dress, chicken noodle soup or movie, I know that no matter what mood I'm in IKEA will make me smile! After purchasing the bookself, rubber cleaning gloves, bath mat, another utensil holder, a toy for Baby Boy (couldn't pass it up), furniture sliders and a cinnamon bun, I walked out of the store in disbelief of (a) how much bang I got for my buck and (b) how much I actually did spend... my wallet was feeling extremely light, and my heart was beating irregularly.

Anxious to set up the bookshelf, we dragged the two 50 lbs boxes down the hall (laughing hysterically, visualizing my neighbors watching us through their doors while we struggled to get the boxes from point A to point B), then scarfed down the Domino's thin crust pepperoni pizza while opening the boxes and pulling out the directions and materials. One reason I love IKEA's products is that they almost always come with everything you need to put them together, even the tools - I have many tiny wrenches to support that statement. So start putting it together, a few screws followed by 54 wooden dowels to hold each shelf into place. The one thing that IKEA didn't mention was how difficult it was to get the dowels into the holes and then how fragile they were. Inevitably, in our struggle to attach a divider to both the top and three shelves (as directions said to do so) we broke a shelf. Whoops! After many laughs and apologies, we finished the piece, turned it around five times and decided on the final look. We placed the boxes of books that were left in my apartment on the shelf and here is the final product!

As I said, IKEA always brings a smile to my face. And from walking into the store, putting the shelf together and looking at it when I walk in the door, I will always smile and laugh at how difficult and funny it was to hull the boxes down the hall, assemble the shelf, then breaking the shelf and finally having it set up. I love IKEA!