Trip to Minneapolis

Kara showed you some of the many treasures we brought back from Ikea this past weekend, and I must say, it was a very successful trip. While we did score lots of loot for the nursery and our homes, the best part was spending time just us girls. Here's a little recap for you.


Friday night we met up with Kara's good friend Kristine for dinner at Chino Latino, a Minneapolis hot spot in Uptown.

And much to our surprise, we sat down to read our menus and Kristine had a little surprise for us printed at the bottom! She said the restaurant prints new menus each day. We definitely took all four of our menus home with us. Thank you Kristine - so thoughtful!

After downing a pitcher of Sangria (without my help, of course) and too much yummy food, we headed back to our hotel downtown to get a good night's sleep before the big shopping day!

Saturday morning we slept in, found the nearest Starbucks to fuel up for the day's festivities and hightailed it to the gem we discovered on our drive to dinner the night before, Jonathan Adler!

Now let me preface this by saying, this store is very far out of mine and Kara's budgets, but we could have sat and drooled at everything for several hours. Luckily, we were all able to find one item that wouldn't leave us with post-purchase guilt, and we all left with shopping bags in hand. What a great start to our morning!

After a quick stop in CB2, it was time to do what we came all these miles to do, and we headed to Ikea. This was our mom's first time to the big box store. Kara and I had each been once, separately and with our husbands (we all know what that means - flying through the aisles, no dawdling and def. no big purchases). Once we arrived, we grabbed our yellow bags and got to work.

And like all seasoned shoppers, we knew when it was time to take a break, refuel and go back at it again. We stopped at the cafe and tried out Ikea's famous swedish meatballs. Yum!

Now, it was time for the heavy shopping.  I was able to check every nursery and home item off my list, and  Kara and Mom didn't do too bad either. It was Kara, who had no purchases she "had to have" who was the clear winner at the register - oops!

We loved these jute rugs. $99!

I couldn't carry any of the big purchases, but I could push the cart!

And of course, we did no measuring beforehand, nor did we even stop to think how much we were getting and whether or not we could get it all in the car (it was at this point we realized how grateful we were to do this trip sans husbands because we could all imagine the cursing that would ensue while we loaded everything in), and low and behold, just like Cinderella and her glass slipper, it was a perfect fit.