Furniture Home Designs: My Love-Hate Relationship with Ikea

Well, we do it every once in a while... go to Ikea. I think everyone sort of feels this way about Ikea: you hate it but you love it. The prices are amazing and they have amazing meatballs, but by the time you get down to the section where you're loading up all your goods, it feels like you've been there forever!! And then sometimes, after a few months, the furniture sags, or bows or breaks... I've had awesome luck with some furniture & terrible luck with others. But I just can't stay away...

We made the trip because we needed a few things (and are young, fabulous & broke, of course!) How adorable is the fabric above??? They're curtains for one of the kids' rooms... I'd really like to put them in Christian's new bedroom but worry they're too girly for him (although like he'd care at 2 years old... it's really more like are they too girly for Daddy?? :) I have been wanting to do something with picture books, so we'll see if I can make it work... I also got the curtains below for our bedroom. They're really more a placeholder until we can afford more linen, but you can't beat Ikea's prices and now at least we have something up!!

We also picked up the HUGE table below in the damaged furniture section for only $150. We were planning on paying the whole $400 for it until my husband thought to check the damaged section. (he's the best!!!) I really don't know where the damage is & honestly, if I know Ikea and my family, we'll damage it pretty quickly ourselves. It's going to be in my office/ the family room as a worktable for projects, laptops, etc. and can also do double-duty as dining space for huge parties. The little rolly chairs were only $25 each and I'm planning on spraying the legs a shiny chrome:

These pics (above & below) are of our family room which is being finished this week!!!!! I'm SO excited!!! We're having wall-to-wall seagrass installed & then we get to bring in all of our furniture & (finally!!) unpack & get organized. It'll basically double the square footage of our house because we haven't been using it all all this whole time... Below is one of the Tullsta chairs we see everywhere. For $129 and with white washable slipcovers, these babies were what got us to Ikea in the first place. We picked up a pair to go by our wood burning stove in the family room..

Anyway, I'll have some "after" pictures of the new family room very soon!! yay!!