A Festive Trip to IKEA - Life at Cloverhill

With a new apartment comes the need to go to one of my favourite stores to walk around….

IKEA!

We went on a weeknight, which meant that there was barely anybody there. Much more relaxing than the times I’ve been there on a weekend (nightmare!). About the only person who I saw there was actually an old friend from public school who lives a couple of hours away. I love random encounters like that.

What I also love is seeing all the Christmas displays up throughout the store. I kept ohhhing and ahhhin the whole time.

I’ve always loved pillows like this and I even tried to make one with an old sweater, but it was a total flop. If this one had been a bit better quality, I would have bought it, but I could just picture Whiskey getting his little claws in there and stretching the knit.

Someday when I have a larger space to decorate, I think an open concept living room/dining room/kitchen like this would be wonderful. It feels cozy and inviting, and the little festive touches really pull the space together.

One of the pieces that we ended up buying was that little step stool on the right of the table. It will be perfect for those hard-to-reach cupboards and as an extra seat in the kitchen. We wanted it in black-brown, but they only had the beech, so I’m hoping to paint it soon. Maybe a fun colour…who knows!

This kitchen display made me smile because it reminded me of all the lovely Scandinavian treats that my father’s Swedish friend used to give us around the holidays.

How sweet is this for a Christmas morning brunch!

As much as I enjoy elegant trees, a sweet childlike display like this is so cute and nostalgic.

This was a favourite of the Christmas rooms. The rustic farm decor, combined with a super comfy sitting area was really inviting.

A silver and gold tree adorned with children’s drawings.

Garrett seemed to enjoy it too. No, he is not taking a nap at Ikea (although, I bet he wished he was), I just caught him with his eyes closed.

Even a traditional Tannenbaum lover like myself can appreciate this fun, modern take. I’ve seen this look before with hung ornaments, but never with attached ones like this.

Simple black wire twists were used to keep the balls in place.

If only this room had a working fireplace, it would have been so cozy.

We ended up picking up two of these lamps for either side of the bed and I love the idea of having a wreath around them. I’ll have to keep this in mind when I start decorating!

Its hard to see in this photo, but I love the upper shelves and gallery photos that they have here. We’ve been thinking about doing something like this in our front hall.

With limited closet space now, we’re looking for more creative front hall organization, whether its a series of boxes, shelves, hooks and benches (left) or a shallow side table with a mirror.

Another idea that we really loved was this chalkboard and spice storage for the kitchen. We’ve been working on something very similar that we hope to share soon.

One kitchen purchase that we were both unanimous on was this metal dish drying rack. My previous one was a big plastic one that you couldn’t tuck away after you finished the dishes, which means that 90% of the limited counter space we have was always covered. Now we can fold this away and tuck it under the sink for the next job.

If there was one room that I walked into and said “this is home”, it would have to be this one. from the white subway tiles to the beadboard cabinets, I was hooked. There are very few changes I would make here – granite countertops, dark wood floors, rustic table, stainless appliances.

I even loved the short curtain. I never liked these until recently. We have baseboard heaters under most of our windows, which limits the types of curtains we can have. Suddenly shorter curtains are becoming my best friends.

I’m looking at doing something like these curtains (just a little longer) in our living room or dining room.

Now that we have our new headboard, we’re starting to look at how to do the bedroom. I have this exact duvet cover on there now with brown sheets, but its just not doing it for me.

I’m sure Garrett wishes that we went something darker and more masculine, but in a small space like ours, it would really make it feel small.

With our new darker headboard, I’m leaning towards lighter, more neutral colours linens.

I’m in love with this dark grey, light grey and ivory colour scheme. If only we could paint the walls to go with it!

Instead of focusing on the stuff we can’t do right now, I’m looking forward to what we can do right now – decorate for the holidays! I loved seeing all the displays and getting inspired to figure out what we want to do this year.

A sweet little bird decoration, which could be easily duplicated at home.

I even toyed with the idea of grabbing a few of these faux trees – they’re just so cute! But we’re still figuring out how to decorate this year, and the last thing we need is more stuff…we’ve got lots of that.

On our way out we passed this room set up for kids and Garrett said “it would be so much cheaper if we just bought all the shorter stuff”. Yes, yes it would be, but then we’d have bruised knees from short tables and sore backs from hunching over, so its really a toss up.

With all our purchases in the cart and paid for, it was time for an time honoured tradition – a frozen yogurt cone on the way out. A sweet way to end a fun trip!

Share this:

Related

Trackbacks