Of Swedes and diamonds

Today I was at a certain Scandinavian country's most popular export (aside from the pop group, of course) -- the store with practical, well-designed, reasonably priced furnishings and home accessories. This store is always great fun to browse through, as they display their wares in tantalizing tableaux, inviting you to imagine "you too, could have a home as design-forward (do you like that phrase? I copped it from Canada's leading home decor magazine), and continentally chic as this fake home pretends to be!" That may sound snarky, but I mean it -- I too, imagine my livingroom, or bedroom, or bathroom could look as cute and coordinated as that, and long for a kitchen as well kitted out. I love to pretend I have my own Food Network show as I stand by the sink with no drain, and my favourite thing to do is open and close the cupboards and drawers. They're so smooth!

Anyway. Today's mission was to find closet storage solutions. We had browsed the offerings of various other stores, discovering that they are rather expensive - even the line offered by The Storage Bin People...and definitely the products designed by the lady with her own show who is really good at faux paint effects were beyond our budget. It's not as if my socks demand much of their surroundings. Happily we found just the thing we needed, for a grand total of $25.00! Start the car! Start the car, indeed! We had enough money left over that we could splurge on the $2 hot dog and drink deal for lunch. Yummy!

I must share with you an incident which gave me much, much delight...and oh how I wished for a camera! Waiting for Four and his mom to finish with a child's toy station, I spied over the dressers a floppy Audrey Hepburn type hat - black with a broad, elegantly swooped brim. It seemed to have feather embelleshments, but as it approached, I realized the hat was more of a visor, and it was the wearer's silvery-grey hair poking jauntily out of the crown. As the hat came around the dressers, I gasped at the rest of the package: an ankle length, slim-fit, slit-to-the-knees, long sleeved black velveteen dress, accessorized by a diamond cuff around the wrist, large black sunglasses over the eyes and sparkly somethings in the ears. What a vision she made, clutching her cheap ivory tapers and white paper napkins as she drifted through bedrooms and storage. I lost sight of her, but I will forever remember The Diamond Ikea Lady. I like to imagine her leaving the store, agog at the low prices, and lifting her hand to her driver (who had been illegally parked in the Hybrid parking space) calling out "Start the car! Start the car!"