When I painted our bathroom orange last summer we purchased a new shower curtain at IKEA for $8, pictured below center. I wanted something brighter than the brown one we’d been using from Tom’s old apartment (you can see this partially below) to match the crazy brightness of the walls I’d created. Perhaps too crazy…? I could go on about whether the choice to paint the bathroom orange was good or bad, but that would take a while. As Tom has said, at least it doesn’t look like a prison cell any longer:

I was reasonably happy with the orange and brown IKEA shower curtain… it seemed to tie the bathroom together, and I even learned that the plastic content is on the green side (via Apartment Therapy’s post). It seems IKEA is committed to using 100% PVC free plastics. So everything was great. That is, until the proximity of the plastic shower curtain to the radiator caused it to burn and melt mid-way through the winter. In the photo on the right below you can see just how much the shower curtain and the radiator rubbed elbows.

The burn in the shower curtain above happened about two months ago. It almost drove me to deciding that this was a sign to get rid of the orange paint (again, I go back and forth between hating/liking this), but instead I used the opportunity as an excuse to buy a new shower curtain. This one is by Dwell Studio, a company I’ve been a fan of for a long time. Dwell is best known for their colorful, contemporary bed linens, and their prints for home, kids, and baby are well worth a look. As you may have guessed by now, I am pretty smitten with this new shower curtain. I think Tom might actually like it, too. At the very least, it’s nice to return to a lightweight, cotton curtain that moves freely and won’t MELT on me. It doesn’t hurt that the colors are perfect. It’s even possible I might stop hating the orange…

Living in a city with an IKEA (as opposed to the nearest one being 2 [2006-08] or 6 hours away [2005]) can be dangerous. I may or may not have been there twice in the last 14 days. I didn’t see any of these items when I was there last week… so they must be just coming in to stores. It’s about time they got some new napkin patterns!

Solig paper napkins, $0.99—$1.99

Dyning hammock in assorted colors, $29.99

I’m interested to see what the Dyning hammock is like in person. For its price, it would be lovely if it were light and squished up small so as to be camping-friendly.

And the trays! There are several new trays also part of the Solig line; the price is right too. We have one tray at home with a great black and white striped pattern, a gift from Sarah, that makes for fun food presentation. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have a couple more?

Solig trays: Left, $7.99; Right, $4.99 each

Lastly, I almost forgot, there are new bags. I still like my ’05 beach bag best… mostly because it was purchased at IKEA Florence and because it’s just generally awesome, but these are pretty great patterns too. Below are the Solig gardening bags in three colors at $2.49 each and the new Solig beach bags at $1.49 each. This is why IKEA=Love.

All images: http://www.ikea.com/us/en

**Update: If you’d like to see the catalog pages check out AT’s “sneak peek” of the summer line.