Dumpster Diving in Cincinnati and Roof Racks

We took a spur of the moment trip this weekend to Cincinnati. It's only an hour and a half away and ALL the good shopping is there like the Pottery Barn Outlet, Crate & Barrell, Anthropologie, Ikea, and various other clothing outlets.

I'll give you a hint to where we went shopping:

It's a sickness. We're totally addicted to Ikea. We spent 2 days in there, and thank god we stayed the night or we wouldn't have been done in time. We did some large furniture buying and it took FOREVER to narrow down our choices. That, and we scored in the As-Is section this morning-- it had been all picked over on Saturday afternoon.

We stayed in a dinky Extended Stay because it was cheapish.

Notice the lame 'art'. It's photos of a red wall and a red wall with a door/window in it. If it was a photo of an artsy run down place with peely paint then okay, but no they're plainly freshly painted buildings. Weird.

We've stayed in much worse places, and it was clean so I can't really complain, but I forgot my pillow so I had to do this in order to get to sleep:

I get easily creeped out in hotel rooms. I'm like Kate Gosslin, I never take my flipflops off or touch the coverlet on the bed.... or put my face on their pillows. eugh.

While we were leaving this morning, I spotted these by the dumpster at the questionable Super 8 next door:

Free large mirrors! We only snagged one, and now I wish we'd got like 4. :( But the Indian people who ran the hotel were giving us the stink eye so we got it and scrammed! We're going to add molding to it and put it in the kitchen or some place similar. I'm thinking about painting the back with chalkboard paint and making it reversible too :)

Anyhow. Our purchases at Ikea (more on that in a later post), required us to use a roof rack since both Rob and I drive hatchbacks which aren't very long... or wide. So Rob dragged me all over the city at various Auto stores (and a GIGANTIC Bass Pro Shop) until we finally found one he liked at... Walmart. 

This is him assembling the rack by superior brain power... the instructions kept referring to pictures that didn't exist.

Me with the roof rack in action! Good thing we only live 100 miles from Ikea...

This one is just two bars that have rubber feet. They have little pins that slip in between the doors of your car but the weight of the stuff is what really keeps in place. Rob tried to explain how you can only use roof racks when you have heavy stuff on the car but I kinda zoned in and out. Either way, this one is just $25 at Walmart if you ever need to add a rack to your car. You'll need ratchets too (those red straps). Neither of us knew how to use ratchets so this creepy ikea worker showed us how. He kept touching the small of Rob's back. I was very uncomfortable. 

We had to stop several times because we were paranoid-- it never slipped, we strapped it on well but it made horrible shrieking noises going down the interstate. 

One place we stopped at was this creepy hole in the wall town in Kentucky.

Allow me to zoom in on the building in the background...

I might have started to hear banjos dueling while looking at this place. 

I forget that Kentucky is quite redneck in parts... at least we weren't asked to squeal like a pig (Deliverance jokes if you don't recognize the banjos and pig references ;)).