Monsterous shopping!

I received many wonderful gifts for Christmas this year but there were 5 times when I opened small brown, familiar boxes that got me quite excited.

These little guys all represent a gift card to Anthropologie, one of my most favorite places. I happened to wander into the wonderful store over the weekend and found a few goodies that had to come home with me right away.

This awesome carafe was on sale, I got the largest size.

This book is fantastic, I am addicted to craft and design books so I had to pick this one up.

I also got a sweater. I decided to save some of my gift cards to do a little shopping before spring quilt market so I can have some new fun items for the trip to Minneapolis this year.

My favorite places...

Another one of my favorite places would have to be Ikea. I could literally spend days at this store. Honestly, if Anthropologie and Ikea had a baby I think I would pee my pants from excitement. I used to work in Burbank, CA and my office was only 2 minutes from Ikea and I would go there on my lunch break all the time just to walk around. I now live in Columbus, OH so I am an hour and a half from the closest store, but that is better than some folks so I can't complain too much. It is probably safer that I am not too close, they would have to kick me out for being an stalker or something. I don't need something like that on my record so I will settle for one or two visits a year.

Since we just bought our new house we have been to Ikea once to get some basics and I will happily be making the journey again this weekend. We don't need much furniture so my focus will be in the market place. The reason that Ikea and I make such a good pair is that I am SUPER cheap (my husband like to call me a tightwad, he finds it humorous). But, Ikea is also SUPER cheap - in a good way. So we are a match made in flat-packed, build it yourself heaven. I can't wait to see that big blue and yellow building come into view this weekend, I have started the countdown!

One more great Ikea fact - the 2010 catalog is out now, get your order in for one because in a few months they will be pretty hard to come by. I will be back next week with pictures of my wonderful journey!

My favorite places...

I think I am going to try to start a new reoccurring post here at Mallory Hill of a few of my favorite places. Maybe you can share a few of your favorites with me along the way. So here is the first, hopefully of many, posts on this topic.

My favorite retail store would probably have to be Anthropologie. If you have never heard of this store or been to one of their locations then stop what you are doing, don't even read the rest of this post and get to a store - stat! If there is not store near you (you may want to consider relocating) then you should spend some time on their website because it is awesome. They have unique clothes, items for the home and lots of other fun stuff that you don't find anywhere else. Unfortunately, I usually can't afford most of the stuff in the store but that doesn't stop me from going into the store every time I am at the mall so I can ooh and aah over their awesome displays and look at the clothes and read the books.

You just don't find displays like this at the department store:

And their catalog is awesome, if you don't have a store near you order the catalog so you can get a little bit of inspiration. I love their photography, it's amazing: