Weekend recap 2

Saturday at Ikea, my main focus was checking out their kitchen displays. I didn't realize it before, but our Ikea doesn't have a whole area dedicated to bathrooms in their showroom. In the mini-apartment display, there's a mini-bathroom, but that's about it.

We've already replaced our dishwasher, stove/range and refrigerator with sleek stainless appliances (fridge is french door LG, range is double oven Frigidaire and dishwasher is Frigidaire with the hidden buttons), and of course the floors are the beautiful wood that's in the rest of the house, so basically the big items left are cabinets, countertop, backsplash, microwave with vent and maybe a sink (I really like mine but we may have to switch to stainless to match).
Ikea's home furnishings are VERY reasonably priced, geared towards the do-it-yourselvers like us AND they have cool planning tools like Kitchen designer 3D which allows me to input our kitchen dimensions and appliances and choose different cabinets and layouts. In their store, they offer free consulting which we'll have to check out next time we're there and have our dimensions together.
I think I'm set on Adel Medium Brown cabinets with some type of stainless handle. These are real photos from others who have installed them in their kitchen. I'd love to have 2 cabinets with the clear glass for display and to add light with in cabinet and under cabinet lighting. And I love the simple stone-look backsplash and the black granite countertops and the beige walls - I love it all!

One of the other things I love is the flexibility of Ikea products. There are so many pieces to mix and match to make the most of your space. I'm set on these pull out pantry pieces and the slide out cabinet shelves. We already have slide out cabinet drawers which are great, but I think I like the horizontal base cabinet drawers better. There's still time. So many options.

After all of my drooling at Ikea, DH and I drove home and I was off to baking for a Christmas party later that night. My friend Michelle, aka Susie Homemaker, had organized a Christmas cookie and ornament exchange. I signed up to make white chocolate and cranberry cookies, which I'd only made 1x before and that was several years ago. I made 2 dozen with dried cranberries (which tasted better warm) and 2 dozen with fresh cranberries (cooked to soften, these cookies tasted better cold to me). The party was great. I think there were nearly 20 people there! I got a cute little skiing snowman ornament which went right on the tree when I got home. And then we all exchanged cookies. There were soo many different cookies! Michelle made some really cute ones with her nifty cookie press (yeah, I was impressed!), and there were yummy oatmeal raisin with icing, peanut butter with kisses, pecan date, m&m, sugar, magic cookie bars, and probably a million more. My mom made Italian pizzelle cookies, which just remind me of Christmas time.

Sunday we didn't do too much. We cleaned the inside of my car, which was long overdue. Now, it's almost as good as new! My cell phone stopped working again Friday night while we were at Disney, so being without a cell all weekend felt like a vacation! My dad got it to work again, so I'm back to normalcy, or something like that.