"There's a Chinese family in our bathroom."

For the past week I've been combing my brain trying to come up with something to do for this very blog post. My original plan was to go on a beautiful scenic hike up in Austin but Texas' bipolar weather has decided to put that plan on the back-burner for now…or at least until I can actually step outside and not have my eyelids freeze shut. Thankfully, my blogging professor, Laura briefly mentioned Ikea in class the other day and that's when it hit me- never in my entire life had I been to Ikea.

So Tuesday evening my boyfriend and I set out to Round Rock for my first Ikea adventure. He was such a sport about it, too…of course, on our way there, we had to stop by his favorite music shop in Austin so he could finish paying off his guitar so he could finally take it home. We finally reach the Ikea store and my first impression was -HOLY CRAP. The building was HUGE and a parking garage?! Oh jeeze. Thankfully, it was fairly late (about an hour before closing time) and a Tuesday night so we didn't have to fight with any crowds. We walk in and I notice….you guys, there's a freaking MAP for this place!

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`We first entered through the showroom area. Lots of really well-put together and awesome-looking kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, office spaces…there was SO much to look at that my short attention span couldn't handle it. I was all over the place. It was like being 10 years-old again and visiting DisneyWorld. I wanted to sit in every single chair but there was no time- Joe kept pointing out we had a lot of ground to cover before the store closed. So we continued…after we had fun pushing each other around in some office chairs, of course.

                          

Eventually, we made our way around the store to the kids section which is, obviously, the best section with all the stuffed animals, puppets and pretty bright colors. I fell in love with this really cute circus tent and was tempted to buy it…for blogging purposes, of course.  

                         

Sadly, the kids section was just a tiny portion of this massive place. I could've easily spent my entire night there but we still had a ways to go if I wanted to wander through the entirety of Ikea before closing time. So it was onto the lighting and lamps! Here we have Joe modeling the latest fashion right off the Parisian runways: Lampshade hats. As you can see, it frames his face quite nicely

                        

I hate cutting this blog post short but needless to say, we had ourselves a great Ikea adventure. Even though the marketplace scares me where I have to wander up and down hundreds of isles looking for a specific box number to buy a new chair or something...

Stay tuned for whatever adventure next week brings!