Back in May 2013 I proudly shouted about our brand new, R8,000 Defy 831 Multi-function Thermofan oven that I had bought from Tafelberg for Chantelle’s baking business. We were very excited about the new baking capacity, but sadly that excited feeling soon turned into frustration.

In little more than a year, the oven broke down four times, meaning four times Chantelle was let down and had to make a baking plan, and four times Defy needed to send out a technician to exact a repair.

Needless to say, Chantelle was less than impressed, and so like a pitbull bereft of its bone, she contacted both Defy and Tafelberg, complained and complained, and eventually got both Defy and Tafelberg to agree to give us our money back in the form of store credit – because there was no way in hell Chantelle wanted another one of these damn Defy ovens!

Although all of this drama unfolded in the third quarter of last year already, Chantelle and I kind of dragged our feet in going out and spending the R8,000, and in fact, it was only after a couple of phone calls from Tafelberg (following up on our credit note) that we did actually go.

Now given the fact that we had in the meantime taken possession of Cheryl Montgomery’s old oven after they renovated their kitchen (our Defy had long since been picked up by Tafelberg), we needed to blow the money on things that technically we didn’t need but would probably be nice to have – in other words, it was like going shopping when you’re not actually the one picking up the bill! :)

First on our shopping list was a new vacuum cleaner to finally replace our broken, second hand machine that has long served us up to now, and in the end we found a pretty awesome 2100w  Electrolux vacuum cleaner that we both kind of liked.

So into the shopping cart it went:

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Next up we spotted a beautiful white wooden shelving unit that would be perfect for Jessica’s room for all the toys. Expensive in my opinion, but the perfect man for the job, so onto the checkout list it went!

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(It was awesome to see how excited Jessica was when it finally arrived just by the way. She was shrieking in delight and best friend Cara and her pretty much immediately sprang to the task of ecstatically relocating all of her toys into it!)

In addition to the shelving unit, Chantelle and I also spotted a gorgeous wooden, slatted outdoor table, one that has a clever folding out mechanism that essentially allows you to extend the table lengthwise if you have more guests or need more table space than usual.

Although we’ll have to get the chairs (R715 each) paycheck by paycheck, we both quickly agreed that the table was a must buy:

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(Sorry, that’s a terrible photo of it. I haven’t removed the wrapping off of it yet because I’m still to cut the ankle high grass where it is intended to stand! Oops.)

Finally, fitting perfectly within our R8,000 spending limit (with a little jiggling from the super helpful Tafelberg saleslady), I picked up some items for my office corner in the braai room – a perfectly sized, proper desk for me to work from (finally, no more dining room table for me!), and an Ellies slim profile television wall mount to allow me to shift my 40″ Telefunken LCD television off from my current work space (because well, my new desk can’t exactly accommodate it – but that was the plan from the beginning anyway).

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So a very, very successful Tafelberg shop then I have to say. Yes, it hurt to just spend R8,000 for the sake of spending, but heck, it was kind of fun to shop with such a degree of abandon for a change! :)


P.S. It took a couple of days for delivery from Tafelberg, meaning that while my current office space stood decommissioned (I’m good at jumping the gun like that), I was forced to take my laptop and work off of our kitchen counter – not the perfect scenario, but beer did make it a bit better. Not that I had to stare at the dirty dishes for the whole of that period mind you – a lunch time meeting with Distell at the gorgeous Asara Wine Estate did give me an afternoon vista that looked like this:

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It’s a hard life, I know! ;)