Short Project Attention Span

Since moving on to our Spring To-Do List I've had major project ADD, and can't stop dreaming about some of the other unfinished spaces we have in our future. The bathroom is the last thing we've budgeted for at least for now, so we'll see after that what we should be saving up for next. Lately, I've been especially drooling over an Ikea living room. 

I'm a bit hesitant about buying an Ikea sectional, because some of them don't look like the best quality and I know that their stuff is cheap for a reason. However, Young House Love has the Karlstad sectional and they've had it for a few years and still like it so that seems promising. I'm going to use this post to create a bit of an inspiration board for our future living room.

I love a sectional that's at least close to equal lengths on both sides, it seems the most useful. 

Here's the Karlstad in John & Sherry's living room.

As far as media storage goes, I love our EQ3 furniture, but I wouldn't mind something on the wall that uses more of the space and makes me feel more free to accessorize, so it's not all about the TV.I'm leaning towards something like this. 

I find rugs so difficult to choose, but this new one from Urban Barn is graphic but still neutral.

This coffee table is crazy cool, from EQ3.

I love curtains! Both of these options from West Elm are fantastic.

So those are some of the things I've been dreaming up while blogging on our living room couch lately. I know we probably won't be able to make some of the more major changes - like a new sofa - anytime soon, but if we can start dreaming up what direction we want our house to take we'll know what we should choose accessory wise or what to save up for. Anyone else planning a project that isn't happening?

A Productive Weekend: Part Three

You've heard about our closet, you've heard about our Christmas tree, that would have been enough for  a weekend, but we weren't done. 

Part Three: The Curtains

When I wrote out all the parts for this, I put curtains in...but thinking back, I'm pretty sure we didn't finish them last weekend. This is why I need to write posts right when things happen (to put things in perspective the weekend I'm referring to was the 7th-9th). We did start them that weekend though, so I guess it's not too much cheating.
On Friday night when Philip was working on the closet, and Philip's mom and I were setting up the Christmas tree, Philip's dad tried to start on the curtains.

We had great teamwork going on. 

Unfortunately, we did not have the right hardware going on. 

We realized that we hadn't bought the right Ikea brackets, so there wasn't anything we could do at that point.

The curtain story continues on Monday, when I picked up Philip (who now works a block in view of the new Ikea) and we made a pit-stop at Ikea for the correct brackets.

Here is the list of products we used (all from Ikea):

Aina Curtains

Lill Sheers

I am in love with these finials - you can rearrange them to make different patterns...and if we get tired of them I could see painting them different colours for a baby room or something. 

That doesn't include the curtain rods and such which are a bit more boring.

We were able to mount the curtains - after a couple of extra stops at Ikea for the new brackets, then a third bracket after realizing two wouldn't be enough, and a second curtain rod so that we could do a double rod system.

Brackets are up - not the most interesting photo, but it was a progress picture at least. 

They look great! One of the best things is the fact that we have two sets of curtains, it looks so much grander and more expensive, but the second set of curtains including rods and brackets and everything only cost us an additional $13. That is money well invested my friends.

Curtains are successfully up!

I love how the curtains match the lamps (even though I'm not a fan of the word "matching"), and the sheers really add something I think. Can't wait to see the room coming together completely.

All that's left to tell you about is putting the bed together, and the magnificent light fixture. Soon there will be a big bedroom reveal!

Anyone else doing bedroom renovations? Made any exciting Ikea purchases? Beat our record of 4 times to Ikea in the last month?

Ikea Sneak Peek!

We were very fortunate to be given some friends & family passes this past weekend to the newest Ikea which is opening in Winnipeg this Wednesday and thought we'd reveal a little bit about our trip!

Ikea is wonderful first of all, Philip goes crazy for it and even though we've already been there and the line ups will be huge, we'll likely go again before Christmas. The biggest perk about going this Saturday was saving 15% which helps when we already knew what we wanted to buy and were very organized! 

We couldn't take as many photos as we'd like because a lot of the displays were really crowded, but we did our best!

Having never experienced Ikea cuisine, we thought we'd start there to have the full experience. Both of us have been to a few Ikea's in our day - I lived in Seattle where we had one, as well as being to Ikea in Minneapolis, Chicago, Calgary, etc. Very familiar with it, but we'd never tasted the meatballs!

The Ikea Restaurant - love the white accessories everywhere!

Philip eating some delicious Swedish meatballs.

 A couple of things to note if you plan to visit this new Ikea on Wednesday:

1. Poor cell reception, make sure you don't lose your companions!
2. If you are going to buy soda, be prepared for a long arm stretch. A man with long arms must have designed that because I'm 5'10" and had to go on my tip-toes to fill our cups with some Pepsi.
3. The cart wheels all turn, all four of them, it was amazing.

Other than that I had nothing bad to say! It was a great experience and a very well designed store.

After eating, we went straight into the showroom and began the hunt. We had a list of what we wanted to buy, and we stuck to it pretty well so that was good!

A photo showing the amazing shopping carts. Philip was in love. 

Can't wait to have a new kitchen in our house...we're thinking white and something like this would definitely be alright with me!

Mint dishes - mint is the new best colour ever.

Kind of digging this tile.

Really cute salt shaker! Parents: add this to your Christmas list of things to buy for me. Also, those hand scratches are from installing trim this weekend. Yay for home improvement scars!

Inglis lives! We've replaced our Inglis Liberator Plus appliances, but apparently Inglis is still a top choice by Ikea!

I was kind of digging these colourful buckets, not sure what I would do with them but I'll think of something!

Can't wait for Spring time when I can buy these beautiful white pots!

Trying to squish Philip into this photo of our completed shopping cart!

We ended up buying:

• Maskros light fixture for our bedroom (so excited to assemble it!)
• Curtains for our bedroom - Aina curtains in grey, as well as some of these sheers to add some texture.
• Curtain rod and finials to go with the above curtains.
• Some magnetic trivets so that we don't have to put our pots on towels anymore.

Plus the 15% off saves us $30 to be used for something else! We may go back for more soon, but this was all we intended to buy so we tried to stick to it and not go impulse shopping. So proud or our will power.

Hope you'll have a chance to go to the new Ikea soon if you're local and we'd love to hear about your finds as well! Stay tuned later in the day to hear about the poll results and launch of the next poll.