Lila's 1st Trip to IKEA (and a list of my favorite things)

While we were in Tampa for New Year's, we had to stop off at IKEA since it's only 10 minutes away from Scott and Melissa's house.  And randomly, while both Melissa and I were getting ready for the day, we came up with idea separately to have lunch there.  Can't resist a good, cheap IKEA lunch!

She looks a bit overwhelmed, doesn't she?  Or this is just how she looks when she falls in love.  Watch out, fellas.

I was hunting for something in particular that I will be posting about later this month, but of course, you can't just buy one thing when you go to IKEA.  It's no secret that Justin and I both adore IKEA.  The trick to decorating from IKEA, though, is to avoid stuff that "looks like it's from IKEA" and then no one ever suspects!  Plus when you mix IKEA in with the rest of your stuff, people don't notice it as much.  We have at least one IKEA piece in every room of our house.  It really is the most affordable furniture for the quality you get.  We've never had an issue with anything we've purchased from them.

We picked up this adorable glass bowl to put Lila's pacifiers in:

It looks great on our dining room table, and now we can easily corral all 8 pacifiers, and use the bowl to Efferdent them as well.  It's a win-win all around.

It was part of this new dinnerware set that I just adored:

And check out these glasses! (Yes, those are dolphins.  So Florida.)  So hard to walk away from, but I already have a patterned/colorful glass addiction.  As in I own almost 48 of them.  Yikes.  When I put it that way, maybe it's time to downsize?

In fact, it seemed like IKEA was going all retro.  Everywhere I turned, there was something in the most beautiful shade of aqua, like this amazing metal folding chair for $24.99:

And this adorable rolling cart.  If I lived in a house with retro bathrooms, this baby would be perfect for holding extra toilet paper, magazines, washcloths and soap.  LOVE.  Who am I kidding?  It will probably be in our bathroom by the end of the year.  I won't be able to leave it behind the next trip I make.  After all, our bathroom sinks are very close to that shade . . .

Lastly, I was excited to see the same print of Lila's rocker on a dining room chair.  So fun!

I think the absolute hardest part of the trip was not buying anything for Lila in the toy section.  IKEA has such great wooden and cloth toys - I'm totally going to stock up her play kitchen with their stuffed food items, realistic looking pots and pans, utensils and bakeware when the time comes. It seriously looks just like our stuff!  And since I plan on Lila being handy like her momma, we totally have to get her the work bench and the stuffed tools and tool belt and play tool box.  One of my favorite toys as a kid was my construction Matchbox truck set!  Check out the entire selection of toys here.

Happy shopping!