Sweden’s Best

Today I made my first visit to IKEA. I’ve been meaning to go for a few months, and since my husband is on an Alaskan cruise this week, the timing seemed just right. It’s a bit of a trek: 2 hours away in Canton, MI, near Detroit.

I went with my friend Cate, who is well acquainted with all things IKEA. I highly recommend going with someone who has been there a few times, because it is a very large store, and shopping there is a little different than most home furnishing stores. Allow me to explain:

- All large items (furniture, mostly) are in boxes in a warehouse on one end of the ground floor, waiting to be taken home and assembled.

- Small items are in bins and on shelves on the rest of the ground floor, which is, for the most part, set up like Bed Bath & Beyond or the like.

- The main level (above the ground floor) is basically a collection of showrooms. Many are set up just like rooms in your house, and you can walk through them and visualize how everything looks when it is assembled. There are even entire “apartments” set up, so you can walk through and see what it would be like to live in, let’s say, 450, 335, or 240 total square feet (I’ve tried it; not that great). The idea is that IKEA furnishings are extremely well suited for both large and small living spaces. There’s something for everyone.

- So, you walk through the main level, pick out the large items you want to buy, go downstairs, put all the small items (housewares, textiles, decor) in your cart, and head over to the warehouse to pick up your large items.

I had a tight budget, but I purchased an end table (white), living room rug, a couch pillow, two pillow covers (red), a table lamp, two glass lamps, and a placemat (green) for under $95. I’m extremely impressed with the quality of my purchases, and the prices can’t be beat. I plan to return in the near future.

The Symphony

On Friday night, Tim and I went to see the Grand Rapids Symphony. It was my first time to an orchestra of any kind. Classical music isn’t my favorite, but I enjoyed it. We sat about 6 rows from the front, orchestra level. We basically had a really good view of the violins, violas, cellos, and timpani, but couldn’t really see any of the other instruments.

The “main attraction” was the timpani. Timpani are large “kettle drums,” which, unlike most drums, have a definite pitch. The timpanist tunes the drums with a pedal, often during the performance. The neat part about this concerto was that it was written specifically for the timpani, and the composer was actually at the performance in person. He stepped out on stage for a few minutes, to explain the piece, “Raise the Roof,” and had the timpanist give examples of different timpani techniques, and show what sounds could be produced by each type of mallet. There are normally 5 or 6 timpani in a set, so the timpanist has to sit in a swivel chair and spin around in order to reach each drum. It was pretty cool to watch.

As cool as the timpani was, I enjoyed watching the violins the most. I really wanted a violin when I was little, because it is such a graceful instrument, and it sounds so beautiful. I would still love to learn to play someday.

Some old classics

For my birthday, my sister gave me some gifts for, in her words, “reliving my childhood.”

One of them is an old Shirley Temple movie, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” I am very excited to watch it, since I haven’t seen it since I was really young.

Another of the gifts is a book of Great Illustrated Fairy Tales, which contains Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Thumbelina, and some other lesser known stories, such as The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Golden Mermaid, The Goose Girl, and Dorani. One reason I really love this book is that the stories are so very different from the way that Disney would portray them.

For example, in The Twelve Dancing Princesses, the hero of the story (a star gazer) finds a way to make himself invisible, sneaks into the twelve princesses’ room, and hides under the bed (even though he is invisible), in order to try and discover why the princesses’ dancing slippers are worn out every morning, even though they are locked into their room all night with “triple bolts.” Of course, he finds out that they sneak out a trap door from their bedroom and sail away to a hidden kingdom, where they dance all night long with Princes whom the Princesses’ captured and had their hearts frozen so that the only thing they desire is dancing. My favorite part is near the end of the story, when our hero finally marries one of the princesses, and she asks him to show her his secret for becoming invisible. “So he showed her the two laurels which had helped him, and she, like a prudent girl, thinking they gave him too much advantage over his wife, cut them off at the root and threw them in the fire.” How sweet.

The last gift, which is probably my favorite, is “150 Cartoon Classics.” It is a compilation of “early animated shorts,” including Betty Boop, Casper, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, The Three Stooges, Mighty Mouse, and a lot of cartoons I had never heard of before. Most of these are black and white, I think from the early 30s and 40s. I haven’t seen any of these cartoons in ages, so I was very surprised to realize the amount of “adult content” in them. It is also fun to see how far cartoons have come since their original debut. Many of the characters in these early classics are wildly different from the way I remember them from the 90s TV shows. I’m really happy to have this collection, especially since most of these cartoons aren’t shown on TV anymore today, which makes me really sad.

Prince Caspian

We went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on Friday night at 11:35pm. I just want to note that this movie is incredible. The Christian parallels were even stronger to me than in the more popular The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I think the reason it struck me the way it did is because it is so relevant for Christians today. If you’re a Christian you might understand what I mean when you see this movie (if you’re really looking for it). But I didn’t even realize there could be any allegory in the Prince Caspian story until my husband Tim pointed it out to me early on in the movie. I always thought The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was really the only book with Christian parallels. I guess I hadn’t thought about it much since I read the books when I was younger, but it all makes pretty good sense now.

Anyway. Amazing movie, please go see it, if only for the cool CGI and action scenes.