Ikea: Selling Furniture for College Kids and Divorced Men

Yesterday was a really fun day. I had the best gnocchi for lunch and the restaurant we ate at was nice because they had an outside patio area overlooking the Paramatta River. It was so gross there at times, though, because apparently you are still allowed to smoke in outside dining areas in Australia. So I enjoyed my gnocchi and some nasty second hand smoke for lunch. Yuck!

Boyfriend's Mom seemed to enjoy her surprise birthday trip down to Ikea and she, Boyfriend and Boyfriend's Dad walked through every display set up in the store playing with stuff. She ended up buying some baking dishes and Boyfriend and I came home with two new pillows for the couch ($10 for the pillow and case a piece), a teeny tiny vase for my bedside table that I can pick freesia to put in for $1.50, a pack of tea light candles Boyfriend liked that smelled like apples and cinnamon and some cute, plain tea light holders (4/$2.50). Man, I love a bargain! We also had to stop in the food shop on the way out and we bought these yummy oat chocolate cookies and split the box with Boyfriend's parents, two bottles of the blueberry syrup, lingonberry jam and white sauce to go with our meatballs we bought last time (Bun told me you have to do them this way as this is the traditional and best way to have them), and blueberry soup (which kind of looks like runny blueberry yogurt). Oh, and blueberry jam. If it had the word blueberry on it, Boyfriend bought it; he went kind of nuts in the food store area!

kea ended up taking all day and we didn't get home til about 6 and we wanted something to do for the night so I messaged LC and Croc to see if there were any plans on and LC called me back and we made plans for dinner. We went to the Soccer Club the next street over from our house and had Chinese for dinner. (Sidenote: I've never seen so many "clubs" before in my life since I've lived here and they are not clubs like "let's go out to the club and dance" type places but think like mini casinos in a sense and they have them for football teams, the local soccer team, there are workers clubs, bowling clubs, golf clubs, returned servicemen clubs, etc, etc...And each seems to be successful and bring in tons of money...I live in a fairly small area and within a 5 mile radius I probably have about 5 of these different types of clubs near me!) It was crowded and smokey at the Soccer Club and LC didn't want to keep baby Lo out in it for too long so we decided after Boyfriend and I stopped at home to pick him up some beer to head over to there house to hang out for awhile. We all just talked and watched tv and it was a fun and mellow night. Boyfriend and Bob Marley planned their debaucherous bachelor party weekend coming up in two weeks time and LC and I gave them dirty looks and told them "Fine, we'll get drunk and spend your money on dresses for the wedding that day then!" I got to drive us home and you'd think I was a kid with a learner's permit because driving doesn't feel like a chore when you don't do it all the time and I was excited to drive the 10 minutes home!

Today I'm home alone as Boyfriend is at church and then going to lunch at a church person's house. It's also Father's Day here (our Mother's Days are on the same days, but for some reason Father's Days are at different times) so we are having dinner at Nan and Pop's with everyone later tonight. We got Boyfriend's Dad tons of organic seeds for his garden because he planted a big, amazing veggie garden last year and we're hoping he'll do it again this year and we even got him some artichoke seeds in the hopes that he would grow us some because artichokes are fairly hard to come by and fairly small and really expensive to buy when they are available here! I'm off to bake a bunch of cupcakes for dinner tonight and do laundry that has been piling up for the last week and a half. Happy Aussie Father's Day to my Dad, I love you! (I'm not sure my Dad even knows I have a blog and if he does, he's probably never checked it out, but minor details, just in case someday he stops by, I'm thinking about you Big Guy!) Hope you guys are having a great weekend where ever you are and if you are in the States that you are enjoying your nice long weekend.