Got Junk?

I don't!

Today we got rid of a mountain of crap from our garage.

Strangely, when the garbage collection dudes arrived, I had a hard time witnessing a lot of those items being tossed into the crunching garbage truck. Not the junk from the cottage, I have no attachment to that stuff. But the purple dresser is still good - just massive, and the desks no longer serve any purpose. Even the computer monitor worked perfectly - it was just dated. The coffee table was still in good nick too. I'd had all of this stuff since my first apartment in university. We had tried to sell/give away a lot of it at garage sales, but there was no interest. *sigh* Sad to see it go. It hurt a little.

Goodbye, my desk *sniff*! I confess I did have a brief moment of panic when they were loading the truck, "I should've stripped all the drawer handles from the dresser!" but the rational half of me talked to the crazy half of me and said "No, you shouldn't have." And the rational part was right.

I think I expected them to cart the things off whole, and donate 'em somehow. I didn't imagine a scary furniture crushing behemoth to pull up at the curb. It was all a little shocking. Caro sposo thought it was cool.

You'll notice the fridges aren't in the heap. They'll be collected next week. I can't wait to reclaim the garage!

Pleased as punch

I've been labelling the glass jars that Nicole picked up for me at IKEA, and I'm so happy with the results I just had to share:

 

Voyons, are these not the cutest!? I'm in love!  ♥ ♥ ♥

I love it when my crafty world and my cottage world collide. I cut the letters out using my Silhouette craft cutting machine and used brown adhesive-backed vinyl that (in this case) is sold by Cricut, but other companies sell it too, and in many colours.

The only problem I'm having now is figuring out what I'll be putting into all of the jars so I know which labels to make! The letters peel off the jars fairly easily, so if I waffle (moi? waffle?!) about it, I can change my mind - and my label - later.

It's getting warmer here. It was +5 C this morning, going up to +9 C. The kids wore running shoes and spring coats to school for the first time. Everyone seems to be wearing an ear-to-ear grin. I think it's because they all know we'll soon be able to get to the cottage. That has to be the reason. ☺

It's my blog and I'll do what I want with it...

Like post photos of my lumpy, deaf, lop-eared, geriatric cat with a sticker on his nose.

Because I love him.

Damn you, IKEA! *shakes her fist*

We went to IKEA today to buy the bunk bed for the kids' room at the cottage.

We left IKEA $500 lighter.

I told you.... I TOLD YOU I can't leave that place without dropping $500! Did anyone try to stop me? NOoooooo.

In actuality it came to $492.31, and we didn't even get a $0.50 hotdog. Dangit.

In addition to the lurvly bunk beds which I can now paint, I also picked up:
-striped fabric for the kids' curtain
-coupla toss cushions
-cutlery ($4.99 for a set 20 pc.? ding ding!)
-plastic plates and cups a'plenty
-linens for the beds

-cute coat rack for inside the front door

And some stuff for around the house (about $65 worth).

It looked a bit like this (boy, it sure doesn't look like much when you present it this way):

It's all arranged on the quilts I picked up last weekend. The striped fabric will be for the roman shade in the kids' room, and the plaid will be some extra cushion covers. I've already picked up the paint for the walls and the bed. Walls will be the tan, bed will be the lighter red.

In this photo you can see the toss cushions with the embroidery on them.
♥ Love! ♥

I wanted the big *cough* $30 pillows, but Captain cheapiepants was there, so I compromised on the cheaper, smaller pillows.

And following are some photos of the individual bits and pieces.

So about those bunkbeds

I have grand plans of building my own bunk beds. I've found the dream plans for it: straight cuts, basic timber, how hard could it be?

I went to Lowes on the weekend to price out the lumber. Gah. My lovely, money-saving bunk beds are going to run me $320+!! It's all because the design uses 1x? timber. The schmancy wood costs easily four times as much as the construction-grade stuff. This does not save me money.
 
Excuse me while I sit here and pout for a few minutes.

[pout]

[pout]



Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I have a few possible bed schemes to share with you.

Scheme number one [rubs hands together scheme-ily]:

IKEA.

Bor-ing. I know. But it's a very affordable scheme. $150+tax will get me a pine bunk bed with slats. Not glam, but very functional (and paintable). Comes with a hot dog for $0.50 more. Hot dogs can make or break the decision for Captain Cheapiepants, who is nearly as ravenous as he is cheap.


Scheme number two [more scheme-y hand rubbing]:
Build my own bed out of 2x3, 2x4, and 2x6 construction-grade boards, essentially the same design as the IKEA bed, and buy the bed slats from IKEA for $21. Will run me about $90 before taxes, including the slats. Does not have an optional hot dog.

Of course a trip to IKEA for a $150 bunk bed, or even just for $21 slats will end up costing me at least $500 because I can not leave that place without dropping a boatload of cash. "Swedish for Common Sense" my ass.

So here's the question I'm asking myself:

"Is $60 worth the time it's going to take me to measure, cut, and drill the wood, because either way I'm going to be painting and assembling the bed m'self."

I'm leaning towards "yes!", because I really like to make sawdust.

What would you do?

And this is why we'll wait until spring...

Lake... before going back out to the cottage:

This photo is the picture of the day today on the Rice Lake Today website. Note the Jeep sunk into the lake.

I was reading on the board last week that other people on our island were at the cottage by boat last year on April 3!

We need to get moving on that boat purchase.

If your nose runs and your feet smell...

... you're put together upside down (or so sayeth my dad, who knows a lot about this sort of thing).

I think I might be put together upside down, but not because my feet smell.

[pause]

*sniff*

Nope. We're all good here.

No, the problem is that I've been going about things backwards:
- Go to buy a cottage; don't have any money lined up to pay for it.
- Buy an island cottage; don't have a boat.
- Buy linens for bunk beds; don't have bunk beds.

I need to back up for just a second. You need to know that I was contemplating making easy nine-patch quilts for the kids' bunkbed at the cottage. I figured I could do it for less than it would cost to buy 2 quilts. Everything I was seeing online was costing $100 or more per quilt to buy something prefabricated. Then I did some price checking on quilting cotton. It was probably going to run me about $50 to make it. But still... that's $50 in my pocket!

Then I did a bit more digging and found something online for about the same price. AND I didn't have to lose days of my life assembling it. Win-win.

I went shopping yesterday for twin-bed quilts. I fully intended to buy this:

 

Because, well, it was cheap ($50/twin).  And the colours were nice. I found it at Bed Bath and Beyond.  Captain Beaver-pincher said "I bet there's an online coupon for that store." And sure enough, after some digging he finds a coupon for 20% off. So, off we go to the store with two coupons printed out (one for him and one for me) to buy the pretty quilts.

Only, when we get there, they don't have them. (dangit!) Eric asks a clerk if they have any in stock, and they don't (dangit!) but she asks if we saw the red Nautica quilts that are on sale at the front of the store. So we toodle over and we see these:

Well, not exactly. What we saw was a quilt in a bag, but unfolded, this is what it would look like.  Not bad! It has that patchy, cottage-y, rustic quilt quality that I was after, and I love the colours (I'm a sucker for reds). Best yet: they were on sale for $39.99 (reg $109)! Factor in captain cheapiepants' coupons, and they came to $32 ea. plus tax.

WOO!

Here's another look:

Dangit I love a bargoon.
Now that I have the quilts, I have the colour scheme for the back bedroom. The walls will be tan and I'll paint the bunks red. Oh, the bunks. [shakes head] that's a story for another post.