With visions of Ikea dancing in my head

I've never been to an Ikea.

Considering the closest Ikea to Kansas City is 7 hours away, it's just never happened.

When I told Brent that people here make Ikea-weekend runs, which consist of driving to Minneapolis, staying the night, going to Ikea in the morning, and then driving back – he looked at me like I was insane. Well, until one of his friends made the Ikea voyage. Then Brent thought the concept of the "Ikea weekend" was perfectly normal, and we've been trying to plan our own weekend getaway.

So when I found out two of my friends are getting married in Dallas, I decided this would be the perfect time to multitask. Their wedding is now two weeks away, and my Ikea journey is almost here.

While I know I'll be doing some impulse shopping, I have 3 must haves on my list:

The white Expedit shelf:
2 black Expedit drawer inserts (for the shelf in my kitchen):2 Henriksdal dining chairs:

October's books

Books read in October: 6
Books listened to in October: 1

Books:
59. "The Naughty List" by Suzanne Young (The Naughty List #1)
60. "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson & The Olympians #1)
61. "The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson & The Olympians #2)
62. "Burned" by PC Cast (House of Night #7)
63. "Torment" by Lauren Kate (Fallen #2)
64. "The Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson & The Olympians #3)

Audiobooks:
33. "An Echo in the Bone" by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander #7)


Favorite book: I was obsessed with the second Fallen book – "Torment." Usually, I'm not a huge fan of the second book in series, but I couldn't put this book down. It addresses so many questions I had about Luce's many past lives.

Halloween

I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween. I'm not a huge fan of the holiday myself, but I do enjoy handing out candy. It was a rather busy night with 121 trick-or-treaters.

I am all about dressing up my dogs though.

Chip the banana:
Macintosh the hot dog (in a hallway):

Dear Z Gallerie...

Why can't you make this is gray?

This would be perfect for my bedroom. Sigh.

Bag Count 2010

Each year, without fail, Brent and I have one disagreement – how many bags of leaves we rake up throughout the fall. I feel Brent's numbers are too high; he thinks my estimate is too low. So this year, why not count it out and make it official?

We did our first raking this weekend, and we definitely have many more raking dates in our future.

2010 bag count: 10

One thing that has sped up our raking immensely is the Gardex Leaf Scoop. My in-laws got us 2 sets of these several years ago and they are incredible! I can pick up 4 times the amount of leaves with it. The best part – it's only $5.99.

The back door

Story Preface
The deadbolt on our backdoor broke yesterday morning, so I worked from home to "guard" the house.

The Hehe
Brent called me while walking back from lunch and asked "how the back door was." Apparently, some people gave him some weird looks, so he felt the need to clarify for them. That just makes me giggle.


But yeah, so now we have a new lock on our backdoor. I like it so much better, it's nothing special – but it's so much easier to use than our form PITA lock.

Ornament overload

Don't worry – they aren't all for me...

One of my favorite holiday activities, is going to Hallmark with my mom and doing some ornament/gift wrap shopping. Since my mom is a Hallmark employee, I've grown accustom to her 50% discount and my ornament wish list seems to grow each year (as well as the lists from my friends).

Since Hallmark didn't have the rest of their holiday stash out, I'll have to go again next month (darn). :)