Weekend Trip: What We Found At Ikea

On our way up to NYC last weekend we took a little side trip to the Woodbridge Ikea. It's the perfect stopping point for us during the drive up, since it's right off Interstate 95 and allows for getting in and out fairly quickly.

On our way up to NYC last weekend we took a little side trip to the Woodbridge Ikea. It's the perfect stopping point for us during the drive up, since it's right off Interstate 95 and allows for getting in and out fairly quickly.

We'd visited this Ikea in March of last year (trip details and what we brought home here), so knew the lay of the land. Mary was on a mission to find some curtain panels and an area rug — and both of us like looking around at all the smaller home and garden accessories that are new.

It's always fun walking around the showroom and warehouse floors — there's always new things to see and old favorites to think about getting again:

While window shopping, we loved the new section of lanterns, this elongated sink colander and the white lace hanging planters. We didn't leave with any of these finds this go round, but have them in the back of our minds for future trips. I pretty much fell in love with that sink colander, but wasn't sure if it'd be too long for our sink, so we left it this go round so we could go home and measure (not to mention the fact I picked up 2 new colanders in the kitchen section — anyone see a pattern here?). We also still like the hanging planters and think they'd even look nice hung upside-down as converted pendant lights. Maybe a project for another day.

We had fun walking through the appliance section — it's always funny to me how they have fake food and groceries in the fridges to show storage capabilities. It was like an adult-sized play kitchen.

I mentioned Mary was on a mission for curtain panels and area rugs:

She sorted through them all like a champ and in the end neither of us were completely in love with the offerings for our space right now. Either we'd love a pattern or material and it wasn't the right size or we'd find the perfect size and something just wasn't quite right. Such is life.

So, what we did bring home this time?

Behold, the smalls:

For the kitchen, I mentioned my 2 new colanders (here and here), but we also snagged a salad spinner and set of 3 basic cork trivets.

For those unfamiliar with salad spinners, you're in for a treat. It's one of those kitchen gadgets that isn't so multi-functional, but does a really good job at what it's meant to do — spinning and trapping the excess water off salad greens so all you're left with is perfectly airy, crisp and ready-to-eat greens.

Here's a shot of my new stainless colander in action too:

See how these things work together?

We picked up a couple little organizational helpers too — a shelf extension and a few basic wooden magazine files:

 

Mary's hoping to test the shelf in our pantry cabinet and bathroom shelves for fit and we're both hoping the magazine organizers will help us tackle the ongoing paper mountain problem we have going in in our kitchen (tell us we aren't alone with this problem).

We also picked up a few attachments and extensions for the basic wooden train kit we got during our last trip for when our nieces and nephew come over to play:

 1. Track extensions  2. Three piece magnetic train  3. Bridge and train extensions

They had such a blast playing with the basic kit last time they stayed, we thought it would be fun to get the attachments to give them more of a challenge the next time we see them. We also learned that having more train cars for them all to fight over share and play with helps all around.

While we left with a smaller load than what we went for, we got some great new inspiration and ideas for the home and feel like we got our Ikea fix in for the immediate future. In the meantime, the rug and curtain panel hunt continue on...

Have you been to Ikea lately? They always seem to suck us in with something new every time we visit.

P.S. Turns out that elongated sink colander would have been just a hair too long for our kitchen sink — thank goodness I was able to show some restraint.