Backyard, Bed, and Batman

We went to Ikea in Paramus on Thursday, and found a few great items, including Sam's new "big boy" bed frame and mattress. It's a full size twin mattress that sits on flexible slats, resting in a modern bed frame.

A few weeks back I found retro-print Batman & Robin sheets at Pottery Barn Kids. Of course I wanted to barf about buying my 3 year old's sheets at Pottery Barn, but, here's the thing: character sheets anywhere else (like Walmart) are rough, tacky, and fade quickly (cheap crap) at least in my experience. These are soft, good quality, and they're just so awesome...I mean, 60's Batman! How cool is that?? I thought they were fitting for his transition, and well worth the few extra bucks ($60 for twin set - I know you were wondering).

As evidenced by these photos, Sam LOVES his new bed:



The playset is finally done...there's some extra gravel to be cleaned up (did I ever tell you that in our house, every project gets 92-98.7% done, but never finished?). The most important thing is that Sam has a great time on it (during the 3 minutes a week when it's not raining, of course).

We picked up a smallish (but cool) acacia wood table at Ikea as well, and added inexpensive mesh chairs from Lowe's. The whole thing is "light" but, after all the projects around here, heavy duty patio furniture is neither a priority, or in the budget. This will do for at least a few summers:

Finally, and update on the grill (pictured to the right of the table). Weber sent us a bunch of replacement parts at no charge, without hassle. We just had to send them some photos and a description of what happened. It's great of them, but it's also a little worrisome, as if they kind of expect these kinds of things to happen. Ah well, at least we'll have a working grill again!