Ikea is an obsession

I have accepted it, I embrace it and despite my post on trying not to do it all I can’t stop looking at the Ikea catalogue for the 2013 season. It’s official, I’m a Swedish décor-whore. (That’s fun to say!)

Now putting aside the point that in nearly every post I make I mention the word ‘whore’ out of appropriate context, I think it’s time to share why I love Ikea.

Shopping Adventures!

Saturday I went shopping with Casey over at Waffling on the Danforth. The weather was pretty crappy, windy and cold as hell after a nice warm wave earlier in the week. But, we had a great time without nice weather.

How you might ask?
We were shopping fool. And Shopping is fun.


First stop was Moss after meeting at Pape Station. Actually, after the fact I realized we should have met at Chester, but anyways. Moss! It's a nice little store that specializes in outdoor and garden stuffs like furniture, some plants, decorative elements. Everything in this store I would put in my apartment so we went to look at awesome things and so I could share with Casey the greatness that is Moss.


First of which, that both Zach and I adore, is this pretty freaking awesome pillow. Now neither of us are sailors and I can't stand Moby Dick (still haven't finished it after years upon years of trying...) so you might think it's strange but this pillow is awesome. All grey and canvas-y and it's got a big-ass whale on it. It would go great with the new couch too, but something tells me that $34 for a pillow is beyond my spending habits so all I have is this photo of the original plankster.
Yeah.
I went there.

We be Couchin'!

I've moved into an apartment (in like January...) and I got my brothers old hand-me-down couch.

Embrace the plaid loveliness!!

When I was given the thumbs up to take this couch I was sooooo happy, knowing I had no couch and this would be better then no couch as my bum has become accustomed to soft couches in my 26 years. But this couch is tooo soft. It sinks like a sinky hole of sinky sand and it's lovely to sink into but a nightmare to get out of.

Every time the other half and I try to get up from comfort we're grumbling and grunting like an old married couple. So sinky couch is a lovely free bane (one of the many I've inherited since the move).

Solution?

MY BIRTHDAY!!

Apparently my bitching pays off as this year my mother took me out couch shoppin'. There's a lovely strip along Kennedy north of Eglinton Avenue that is like the weird ass 'design district'. I call it weird ass because the entire time I felt like we were looking for the shaddiest used car dealership but in realty it was furniture stores.

Not too dissimilar now that I've been shopping for butt cushions.
Whenever we walked in (my mother hobbling from a heel muscle injury, and me hungover from getting tanked the night before) someone would immediately offer help. Oh thank you, that's nice but we're just looking. Sooo that's now code for 'I will show you all the expensive things I want you to but now. Come this way.' One guy even tried to get me to design my own couch and he would deliver it once it was made. The girl in me was like 'YAY PERSONALIZED COUCH OF ORANGE!' while my mother shook her head politly indicating 'I'd like to sit on the couch before I buy it, but thanks.' What a trooper.

Store to store to store. We started the process of wondering if I had too expensive taste, if I knew what I wanted, did I really need a couch, what if the other half doesn't like it. Finally we agree to just find my style and move on from there and at the last store (we're now running late to meet and pick up the BF at the train) we find THE couch.

Its grey.

It's boxy.

It's comfortabel and hard.

It looks like it's from the 50's.

It's heaven.

Price tag 1250$. We both scoff, make fun of the gilded throne pieces nearby and move on.
After a second pass my mom 'pssts' me over like she's found a rip that will discount it 900%.
Mom: 'It's 1250$'.
Me: 'Yeah I know. I have great facy ass taste.'
Mom: 'FOR 3 PIECES'
Me: '3 PIECES?! WE JUST WANT 1!!'

All of course in strategic hushed tones. We then sit on it. Sit on it a different way. Sit on it again and then I run to find a sales associate.

It was still more than my mom wanted to spend so we split it fairly (she paid more) and set up delivery.
We had been successfully couchin'.

And it arrived!!!

GREY

SQUARE

50's

PERFECT!

The cats will ruin it but not until I sit my ass down and enjoy the fruits of my couchin' labour. Goddamn does it feel good to have such awesome taste.

But what ever shall happen to the terrible sinking couch of doooom?

CRAIGS LIST!

KIJIJI!

If you want it it's yours.  Condition: take fabulous pictures of you or your loved ones swallowed alive. It would make my day.

Button Art is cooler than you

Long story short, I’m obsessive compulsive. When I’m bored I like to keep my hands busy by normally organizing, or when I was a kid I made those ‘rad’ fabric bracelets and wore ten of them at one time on my arm even when I was in the shower… ahem. Yes.

So needless to say after a month of living in the new apartment I started to get a little squirrely on the weekends when video games no longer sated the need to ‘do something’. The boyfriend will contest that it is a state most dire, when I flop of the couch, sigh repeatedly and say ‘I’m borrredd’.

He hates and loves that shit.

Well, I found myself bored with a lot of buttons.

‘Why do I have a shit-ton of buttons?’ you may ask?

None of your goddamn beeswax good sir. I had them for a very long time as I don’t throw out anything that could be useful. How I’m not a recurring star on hoarders still baffles me.

But I had all these buttons.

And a paint gun, some beat up cardboard and crap loads of time.

Button Art was born.

This is the final creation after one of the most frustrating outings to Walmart I’ve ever had. That is a whole other story about how no one in this world has buttons and apparently asking for them at the dollar store, Walmart, crafts stores and home hardware deserves ridiculous glares and confused looks like I've asked for Soylent green 

It took some time, but the design was simple. Curvy stuff plus cute bursts of colour surrounded by black (because my walls are all white) equals ‘art’.

How-To (thank me later)

1. Design: This is where you decide what you want to do with what you have. I did white swirls with small colour burst. You might be feeling a glob of rounded poop on a silver platter. Whatever floats your boat. 

2. Paint that on your cardboard: I didn't do this and now regret it. So make sure you paint your cardboard first. It also gives you a blue print to follow when putting back your buttons. I would have appreciated this earlier in the design. 

3. Heat up your glue gun: Pretty obvious what to do here and why. Cold glue is solid people. 

4. Begin with your least moveable object: Glue the back of your buttons with a small amount of glue and put them on your design. Make sure you start with your main focus or fixed center. It's better to start in the middle and build out. 

5. Continuing buttoning until your fingers hurt: That's just the hot glue, don't worry so much. Just remember to be safe and not to put the glue gun on anything important, like a cat. 

6. Dry

7.(actually#2) Hang: if you were smart enough you'll go back to number one and before you start gluing you'll add your hanging hardware after you design. I didn't so a hole was poked and it's sitting on a nail. Button's aren't heavy so it didn't need much to keep it on the wall. 

8. Take a picture and send it to me. This is the most important step!!! I must compare your button Art to mine and determine who's is cooler than yours. Which would be mine. (just kidding, I mostly want to see who else is compulsive enough to do the same damn thing) 

9. Enjoy!

10. 9 steps isn't enough. It took way too long. Or you could use this time to bandaid the blisters you most likely received gluing the tiniest buttons you've ever seen. 

Would I do it again?

I plan to but finding the buttons for my next ambitious project has been pretty trying on my tiny amount of patience. And I’m suffering from acute and super lame insomnia this week – so another time!!!

Do you like? Maybe not the blisters soo much but the art is lovely.

But remember folks, I feel no pain when ‘arting’. Nor should you.