The Land Of Ikea

Last weekend I ventured over to Stoughton to the land of swedish home furnishings, otherwise known as Ikea. I had been curious, but not entirely motivated to make the 45 minute drive because the catalogue they put out makes their products look like something you would have made in shop back in junior high. But in my quest to have an actual grown up looking bedroom I decided to take the trip.



Upon arriving to Ikea it resembles a small logan airport, not just in sheer size, but the thing has it's own highway signs, rotary and alphabatized parking garage. You arrive in the parking garage and head to the entrance and find the coolest thing I've ever seen .... an escaltor for your carriage. I'm sure they're in exisatance in other stores, but I've never seen a flat escalator before so I was easily amused.





I can't remember exactly but I believe there's 3 floors of shopping expieience awaiting you once you're done (and by you I mean ME) standing in awe of the flat escalator. They have a pamphlet with a map of the whole store, which also reminds me of logan airport for some reason, maybe it's because the different sections of the store resemeble loading gates on the map. I dunno. Anyways I was pleasantly surprised at all the Ikea furnishings, much better than what the catologue has to offer. Ikea is so much more than dorm style furniture, they have adorable kids bedroom sets, toys, art, and even swedish food. There's a cafe on the (I think) 2nd floor with the kids bedroom sets (I even saw a sign that said 99 cents for kids meal!) and on the way out theres another swedish food cafe and a mini swedish grocery section. Possibly the coolest thing I've seen to date. This place is huge, I found myself secretly wanting a tram :) Well if you've got a day with nothing to do I would check it out, even if you don't need swedish furniture, that place is boss.

Snagged From Stuff White People Like

Because I get through the midnight shift in 1/2 hour incriments, and found this to be incredibily hillarious:

"Regardless of how much a white person cooks or how long they have lived in their current home, they all have a tube of sea salt in their pantry. In fact, it’s one of the few foodstuffs that white people will actually bring with them when they move. This is because sea salt is expensive and while white people have money, they didn’t get that way by throwing away $7 packages of salt.

When white people think about regular salt, all they can think about sodium and poor health. When they think about Sea Salt they think about France. So it’s no surprise that it has become so popular.

But Sea Salt is like Trader Joes, Banksy, or The Shins-entry level to their respective field. Therefore, it is important that you learn about other more expensive salts so that you can complain about not having them. To a white person, this shows that you know and love expensive things but feel sad that you can’t yet afford them.

From here you can fill up an entire evening by making the same complaints about art, real estate or Europe."

Better Late Then Never .... Snow Storm Pictures

Some Pictures from the big storm this past weekend ....
From the Lobby around 3:30 PM and then the after math

Baking, Baking & More Baking

After it dawned on me that it was less than a week till christmas, I spent the better part of 6 hours baking up holiday goodies on sunday. I made homemade old fashioned chocolate fudge, snickers cookies with homemade chocolate glaze, and chocolate chip cookies. The fudge was ridiculously easy, no double boiler needed. I found it on line, apparently the recipe that use to be on the back of the fluff jar before they replaced it with it's mediocre predocessor. The snickers cookies were not difficult, just a tad mroe time consuming. It's pretty much like making peanut butter cookies, then you flatten out the dough and stick a mini snickers bar in the center. Then you roll the dough around the snickers bars, but its so greasy that it tends to slip off the bar, but I figured it out. Once you bake the cookies, you let them cool and drizzle (or smother) the cookies in the home made chocolate glaze, which basically consisted of unsweetened chocolate powder, confectioners sugar and milk. So I'll be back to baking this evening for the family get together on christmas eve.

Tis' The Season

My Trip To The ER

Yesterday I left work to go to the ER because I had discovered upon my bathroom break that I was bleeding brown blood, it actually reminded me exactly of when I use to get my period with the flow & color. Being that I am 11 1/2 weeks this is not a good thing. So I spent the better part of 6 hours in the ER, I got an ultrasound which showed a healthy normal fetus that actually appeared quite annoyed at the prospect of an ultrasound bc it kept rolling over to show us its back, and a Rho-gam shot because I am A - Blood type. My ultrasound showed that I was not dilated and did not have any extra fluid. I was discharged with a "threatened miscarriage".

My OB said it sounded like I had broken a blood vessel in my cervix and it was now just draining, hence the brown or "old" blood. But I don't recall anything that would have done that, you would think bursting a blood vessel in your cervix would hurt and I would notice if some thing like that happened? In any event there was no blood in my pad this morning which is good, the whole thing just scared the crap out of me.

Nothing like this had ever happened in my 1st pregnancy, and I had always assumed any bleeding in pregnancy only meant 1 of 2 things, a miscarriage or problem with the placenta. So I am home today resting, a little crampy, but other than that things are looking much better.

Side Note: Started bleeding agin, still old blood, but I talked to the Dr and as long as it isn't red blood everything should be fine and eventually stop.

The Kotex Twins Take On NYC

Yesterday was my first trip to NYC, and I have to say I was impressed. Not just at the scenery, but I fully expected the New Yorkers to be rude, you know your stereo typical "New Yorker". But I was pleasently surprised, apparently us Bostonians are the rude ones :) But Yankees fans still suck :) Any ways, we arrived in New York around 10:45 am after a 4 hour bus ride from New Bedford, and we were dropped off infront of Saint Patricks Cathedral. The weather forcast was not too promising for the day, but it hadn't rained .... yet.

Our first stop was the NBA store which was really cool. As with the theme of most major department stores in NYC it was 3 floors of every piece of merchandise that you can imagine, and even some things you didn't even know they made. I stood next to the wall where they have 3 Basketball stars lined up, and apparently I would never make it in the NBA.

We moved on to the lindt chocolate store which was small yet still amazing, atleast the fetus thought so. Then the rain started to make it's appearance for the day. And by appearance I mean grand entrance. We had passed quite a few street vendors "selling" umbrellas but I was far too lazy to carry an umbrella in and out of stores.

We made our way into the FAO Schwarz store, which was cool, but super packed, I'm geussing partly due to the rain. I'm partial to the one in Boston that is no longer around, but this store was still awesome. Theres a new muppet factory tupe thing where you can make your own Jim Hensen muppet. These muppets are the one's that you'd see in the back ground of his movies, the "extras" if you will. The price is a little over $100 and up.

After FAO we visited "The Donald", well not really the Donald himself, but the trump towers. I was in love with the waterfall that was inside next to the restaurant. I was expecting it to be more like the Prudential in Boston where there are more retail store,etc, but the only "retail" I saw there was a starbucks, his restaurant and a closed down "Nike Town". By the time we left the Trump Towers it really started to pour and it was lunch time, so we made our way to a deli down the street from The Radio City Music Hall. We had some really great sandwichs, which were still cheaper than eating at the Mashpee Commons, and watched the rest of the fools struggle with their umbrellas & heels in the down pour.

We moved onto Rockafeller Center and I got to see the skating rink that I've only seen in movies. I also managed to find a hole in the wall store owned by the FDNY which was awesome so I got to pick up a few christmas gifts there. We made our rounds to the usual spots, the NBC store, then down to the Time Square/Broadway area. By the time we made it down to Broadway however the rain got the best of us and my cotton blend scarf was no longer shielding the rain , and I was about to have my "face" washed off, and that just can't happen when you're in NYC :-) So we stopped in one of the many "I Love New York" hole in the wall places, and picked up ponchos. And I automatically grabbed the pink one because it's my faveroite color, and my sister in law grabbed a matching one. Well little did we realize that the combination of the material and the color of the poncho made us look like two giant Kotex Maxi Pads. Super, atleast we weren't gonna get soaked anymore, or have my make up get washed away.

One of our last stops was the Toys R US on Broadway. That place was a trip, packed, but awesome. Theres a ferris wheel inside and the cars are themed like different kids toys, like there was a "My Little Ponies" (my personal fav), Scooby Doo, and a pedal car. I totally would've gone on if the line wasn't so long. Our last stop was St.Patricks Cathedral, which was beautiful beyond words. I'm not of the "Catholic Persuasian", but I was in awe of everything. I even lit a candle and said a prayer to St.jude, even if I am a protestant heathan that prayer sure came in handy on the way home.....

Our bus ride was a whole different store. I probably would have been better off taking that $5 bus that goes from china town to china town and your "seat" is a milk crate next to a goat. I'm pretty sure our bus driver took the tip we gave him and had a "liquid lunch", because he kept racing the other bus driver and he was what I call "driving by braille" or using the grooved pavement as his guide. I'm also fairly certain that I need to make an appointment with a chiropractor because of the ride, there were noises coming from the bus that I was not familiar nor comfortable with. Good news though, it 's supposedly going into the shop today, probably to install the shocks that it didn't have ..... But over all, regardless of the incliment weather, or riding on the flying dutchman, I had a great first trip to NYC, but it's true what they say, "theres no place like home".