Ikea and luxury - a contradiction?

This weekend I did something new to me: An Ikea-roadtrip! It's bizarre, considering that Sweden is the hometurf of Ikea, but the closest warehouse to Umeå is the one in Sundsvall, 350 kilometres away. Personally, I'm not a huge Ikea-fan, I prefer shopping second hand or investing in solid, quality stuff. However, some things are actually in pretty high quality even at Ikea, one just has to know where to look. For organizer-mojo's they're great! I've been wanting to make my sewing room a bit more organized, to put that final touch to it, and this trip was perfect for that. I also bought about 25 metres of toille-fabric =)

25 metres... that's a lot of toilles!

Thing was, someone very dear to me (someone who might be what's been occupying my thoughts and time these past couple of months...) needed to get a whole lot of basic things, so we figured we'd make a mini-vacation out a trip to Ikea by staying over at a nice hotel in central Sundsvall.

I'll be honest, I voted that we'd stay at Knaust simply 'cause I wanted to take photo's on these stairs =) Unfortunatley, Ikea took so long (five hours!) that when I got to the hotel I was way too tired to fix my hair or press my new-sewn red dress before dinner, so you get to see the post-Ikea me instead of the fancy vintage version I had planned.

Just look at the ceiling! And the staircase...

Here you can see all the way up

Resting on a landing

Ever heard stories about how the hotel was overbooked and someone's room got upgraded? It always happens to someone else, right? This weekend my fairy-godmother must have been in a good mood... An albeit nice double room was tranformed into a loft suite!!!

We had dinner and then there was just no point in leaving the hotelroom. Had a glass of wine, some chocolate, and just chilled in our top-suite with a view over the rooftops in central Sundsvall...

Picture taken from the bed loft

Best of all: we could have a continental breakfast at the suite, served at a time of our choice (we did pay like 40$ extra for the change of rooms and the roomservice, but it was so worth it!). This will undoubtledly go down as the most luxurious vacation I've ever had. Not too bad for an Ikea-roadtrip, right? ; )

Bye, bye, Knaust! 

I had the best weekend, driving through this beautiful landscape, shopping things that will hopefully make organizing my sewing supplies a lot easier, staying at a wonderful hotel with roomservice, and spending the weekend with someone I care about. Pretty darn perfect =) Now my fingers are itching to build furnitures and to re-organize my sewing space!

Love, Erika