A List for the Ikea Junkie

I love Ikea.
Every chance I get, I make the hour-long drive up to PDX (that's Portland... Oregon) to go there and drool over their rooms and misc must-haves...
...then I hate to leave and return to my home which does not look anything like their rooms filled with misc must-haves.

And I plan my visit around lunch so I can have meatballs in their cafeteria.
Of course.

My friend Marcy put it best when we went together to the Portland Oregon Ikea soon after it opened:

"It's like the Mothership has landed."

Even her 13 (or 14?) year old son and my daughter had fun poking around the rooms and snickering at the funky textiles.

Are you an Ikea junkie, too?
Check out these links:

• Ikea Hacker
• Ikea Quiz (I scored 4 out of 10. Pretty average.)
• Positive Fanatics an unofficial Ikea web journal
• Mark Lives in Ikea
• Urban Camoflauge Hilarious. I want to try it but I'm too chicken.
• The Ikea Blog written by a serious Ikea junkie and not affiliated with the store
• The Blogadilla Swedish Furniture Name Generator
• Ikea Food photos of Ikea food
• Ikea Fabrics photos of things made out of Ikea fabric
• Ikea in my home photos of Ikea items in people's homes - nice place to look for visual inspiration
• IKEA Fans the mother of all Ikea sites (thank you, kind commenter!)

Have you even been to an Ikea? If you have, you know they give all their merchandise weird names. Johanna, my Swedish friend who is actually from Sweden, said the names don't actually mean anything; they're just random names.

Nonetheless, I did once read that Norwegians once got miffed when they realized that the higher-end merchandise was named after Swedish places and the budget, lower-end items were named after Norwegian places.

No surprise there. For me, anyway. Literally about a hundred years ago my grandfather's parents, who were Swedish immigrants, would check up on my Norwegian grandmother to make sure she was keeping the house clean enough for their son.

Because she was a lowly Norwegian.

Ah, times have changed. A little...
And sorry, Gram, I still love Ikea.