Jessica was 3 when she got to sleep in her own big bed for the first time. Emily beats that by about six or so months because as of right now, the two girls are roommates and sleep on their very own, brand new double bunk bed!
With the walls now freshly painted by Creative Designs All Sorts, the sagging cupboard repaired with a screw into the wall, Jessica’s old single bed sold via Facebook, and the carpets nice and clean thanks to the work of AJ’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning, Chantelle was ready to put her Girls’ Room Transformation plan into action.
First things first, we needed to buy a double bunk bed, and after a little time spent bed window shopping one Saturday (a while back), Chantelle and I both agreed on a beautiful, kid friendly (i.e. low) double bunk bed sourced from Bed Zone at the Somerset Decor Centre. (The same place that we bought our queen sized bed a couple of years ago, albeit now with a new name). All in all, the purchase set us back R4,300, which is broken down into R2,800 for the actual bunk bed, R1,400 for the two foam mattresses, and a paltry R100 for delivery and setup.
Chantelle donated the cot (and a lot of baby toys, plushies and loads of kids clothing as well!), meaning that Emily’s old room (aka my old office) is now the dedicated toy/play room.
A trip to Mr Price Home ensured that we now had new matching bedding and a couple of cute decor finishes, with the end result making for two VERY excited little girls – both of whom are convinced that being on top is by far the most fun!
The girls are loving the new setup and so far have taken to the new sleeping arrangement like ducks to water.
Which is good, because we love the new look girls room too!
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Jessica’s First Bed (and a Chest Freezer) My Life 05 JAN 2013
So I made two last big purchases here at the death of my Christmas vacation period, the first being a humongous KIC 438 litre chest freezer for Chantelle’s booming Cookies & Cakes business (though I could probably fit a whole springbok in there with relative ease), for R3,600 from Tafelberg Furnishers here in Somerset West, following up on a lead that Monty picked up for us the previous day. We were in the shop 9:00 yesterday morning, and by 13:00 our brand new chest freezer was standing proudly in what was formerly my braai room, now Chantelle’s baking supplies pantry.
However, as exciting as this chest freezer and the possibilities it brings with it is, it didn’t beat the pure joy my other big purchase brought to the house (which was also delivered yesterday afternoon as luck would have it) – Jessica’s very first bed, a beautiful white single bed from Pine City (R1,200) and a decent mattress from the always helpful Bed City (R800). Of course we made sure to properly kit it out, the result being a beautiful little girl’s bed that had Jessica diving on top of it out of pure happiness (and naturally with a lot of chants of “myne, myne, myne”).
And as you can see from the pictures below, it would seem to get the thumbs up from Mommy too!
Of course, all these new purchases meant a huge reshuffle of the house, which basically had me on my feet working from morning to night, shifting things around as sorting out various DIY and tidying up tasks.
Needless to say, I was rather overjoyed when at 21:30 Chantelle served up our supper of Southern Fried Chicken Strips, vegging out for the next while on the couch with some Big Bang Theory for company.
(It’s useful to also note that the previous evening I helped Chantelle out on her apron-themed kitchen tea cake order for Claire, creating and cutting out numerous little fondant shapes, things like kitchen utensils, lingerie, and of course plenty of dickerdoodles. Didn’t turn out too badly but I am now pretty sure that I don’t particularly want to be doing cakes for a living!).
Right. Now to try and do something relaxing (and less expensive) for the last two days of my holiday! :)
Joke Factory: Super Pussy Jokes & other Funny Stuff 13 AUG 2011
An elderly grandfather was sitting on the edge of his bed, busy removing his socks.
All of a sudden, his wife of fifty years came running naked down the passage, burst into the room, and leapt into the air and onto the bed, arms outstretched and screaming “Super Pussy!!!!” as she came down.
The old man turned his head and calmly said:
“I’ll have the soup please.”
The Problem of being the Size of a Jellybean Jessica 10 AUG 2011
The problem with being a size of a jellybean (back then) and been laid out on a queen-size bed, is that it is often quite easy to get lost on the bed and never make your way back to the edge where civilization lies.
Luckily if you do happen to tire yourself out while trying to find the end, well, at least you have a decent spot to nap! ;)
Come Dine with Me… Or Not My Life 24 AUG 2010
So this really hasn’t been a great last couple of days for the 45 Nagua Bay household. Both cats are as sick as dogs and both humans are as sick as dogs – makes you wonder just how poor dogs must suffer then following that logic!
As for the humans, it all started on Friday at work where out of the blue I started coughing. Nothing to horrendous, but bad enough to make my brain ache with every cough. I arrived home, and instead of just jumping into bed like a good little sick boy, I instead insisted that we stick to our original plans and so headed out to the mall to enjoy a quick supper at Tallhasse Spur, followed by a viewing of the simply brilliant Inception at Ster Kinekor.
However, despite the evening’s good entertainment it didn’t do much to make me feel better and come Saturday I was literally knocked out for the count, pretty much sleeping away the rest of the weekend and watching Jackie Chan movies when I couldn’t sleep any more. And Saturday wasn’t exactly the day I wanted to be sick either!
For months already now, the girls, they being Chantelle, Andri and Michelle, have concocted this idea of holding their own version of that BBC show Come Dine With Me, and the first leg kicked off on Saturday with supper at Michelle’s – who I knew for a fact was serving up lambshank as mains. Yet armed even with this knowledge I couldn’t drag myself out of bed and so instead cancelled, letting Retha take my place at the table while I stayed at home in Gordon’s Bay, sniffling in my sorrow (compounded of course by the poor showing by both the Springbucks and Western Province on the rugby field).
But I wasn’t to remain the only sick human in Nagua Bay. No, as expected Chantelle picked it up pretty quickly and she now joins me on the sick list, though unlike myself who can still stay at home and do some work from there, with her bosses away on holiday my poor, sick as a dog, pregnant wife has to drag her self each and every day to work and back again!
Sniff, so life isn’t all sunshine and roses in the Lotter household at the moment, that’s for sure.
And I seriously doubt tonight’s Mamma Mia show at the Artscape is going to help things get any better either…
My Feet are Warm, but Damn it, there goes the Bed! My Life 07 JUL 2010
The last couple of weekends really haven’t been about unwinding and taking some time off from work, rather it has been an exercise in maintaining one’s composure when confronted with the pig sty that your home has turned into as well as the physical fatigue associated with moving around just about every piece of furniture in the house between nearly all the rooms!
This is pretty much how we have been living in the lounge over the past while...
Thankfully though, that has at last come to an end when on Friday the carpet people came in and laid down the carpet in the second room (at last our concrete floor had seen it fit to dry itself out properly), meaning that I could finally shift everything back in there (a great temporary storage facility before we go baby shopping mad), leaving only some books which still need to find their way back into the bookshelf, that we’ve now changed our mind on and opted to keep, lying about. (Sorry Mom!)
The nice and sparkly new carpet in the second bedroom
Charles has in the meantime come and picked up Andy’s old bed now that our newly purchased one has arrived and as an added bonus, I managed to help out Uncle Louis and Aunt Thelma up in Sedgefield by giving up my old LG television to replace their old clunker which had finally given up the ghost. (Thanks Pops for organising this!)
So in other words, it means that the house is almost back into shape, apart from the already mentioned couple of books lying around and the contents of two drawer sets which still need to be swapped around in order to buff up our bedroom’s new upgraded luxury look.
And at least my feet are now warm and fuzzy when I hang up the washing on our Venus portable clotheslines in the spare room! :)
However, not so warm and fuzzy is the fact that our newly purchased, week old, R8,000 bed decided to pop a slat or two in the base, judging by the “badump” sound that was followed by an almost immediate sag in the middle of the bed! Needless to say, apart from being horribly disappointed and wondering if we have maybe made a mistake in picking the bed that we did, I can only hope that the nice people over at Bed City sort us out ASAP! (I have already set the unforgiving Chantelle loose on them)
On top of that, we still haven’t heard about the suede headboard that Boardman’s is looking into sourcing for us, seeing as the first one they offered came pre-marked with blue ballpoint pen and scratches!
And then of course there is that small matter of us actually being in the process of making that all important decision regarding entering the housing market proper – which kicks off on Saturday in case you’re wondering…
Replacing Parts My Life 10 JUN 2010
Sigh, it must be that time of year again because all of a sudden it is the time of spending big money.
As we have just discovered at the start of this week, our fairly new geyser of less than three years old has gone and sprung a leak, happily spraying out a fine mist (could be from a valve) that has pooled up, seeped into the concrete and come up under the carpet in the study/future baby room – which has of course already begun to miff.
As luck would have it, the weekend saw me move out all the electronic equipment to the new “Man Spot 2.0” in the dining area, so there isn’t a worry there, but it is a pretty annoying problem to have to deal with now. Of course this shouldn’t set us back financially as we are renting, but at the end of the day it is us that sits with all the hassle of organizing the fixing! :(
Then next up is the hunt for a new bed. Andy needs her bed that we’ve been using in the flat for the last couple of years back (for her upcoming baby’s room in case you are wondering), which of course means we need to buy a replacement one. To be honest, this isn’t such a bad thing because Andy’s bed is pretty much slept through at this stage, but it is quite an expensive venture considering the fact that we’re looking for a queen-sized bed that can hold at least 130kg per side – basically enough to deal with the little elephant that is currently typing up this post! :P
We went bed hunting on Saturday past, visiting three bed stores in Somerset West, and after three great pitches, each pushing a different sleep technology, we now have a decent idea of which bed we’re going to shoot for – though it is going to put us a good R7,500 out of pocket! :(
Next is Chantelle’s car which desparately needs a major service – and it’s the big one unfortunately. Got it booked in by Hyundai for Monday, so that’s going to cost us a bit as well I assume. :(
Finally, this one isn’t going to cost me anything (well shouldn’t), but it will knock me in effort – with all our cavorting around on weekend aways over the past while, I kind of didn’t get around to driving old Jetta Jameson around like I was trying to do on a regular basis, meaning that when I tried to fire her up on Saturday morning, I was met with the rather expected… nothing. Nada. Zip.
That will teach me to not uncouple the battery next time! Sigh, so now I need to find someone to charge it up for me…
Effort.
It seems like I’ll have to expend some of it over the next while…
...
Friday Funny: One Man’s Earring is Another Woman’s Lie Jokes & other Funny Stuff 09 APR 2010
Dave and Joe are work colleagues, working together in one of those open plan offices that seem to be all the rage a short while back.
One day Dave notices that the usually rather conservative Joe is sporting a single earring in one of his ears. Bemused by this, Dave eventually decides to get to the bottom of things and so sidles up to Joe and asks him, “Joe, since when have you started sporting an earring?”.
“Well it’s quite simple really”, replies Joe.
“Basically since my wife found one lying in our bed!”
All I Want to do is Crawl into Bed! My Life 07 APR 2010
Thanks to some superb, night time wildlife photography, I at last have some concrete evidence as to why getting into bed is just so darn difficult on those late nights when I choose to stay up a little later fiddling with blog posts or twitching my thumbs over a game controller.
As you can see from these masterful shots below, that apart from Chantelle’s sprawling legs blocking most of the bottom half of the bed, I then have to contend with two other sleeping carcasses, neatly arranged in all the remaining open space, meaning that should I be able to get my top half in bed, I’ll then have to sleep with my legs straight up in the air.
Which doesn’t sound particularly comfortable.
So now you know. It’s dangerous choosing to only go to bed after everyone is already fast asleep! :)
Look at all these lifeless obstacles in my way!
Achilles, nimbly blocking any access from the foot of the bed
Olympus, solid as a rock in blocking my bed entry attempts
(Apologies for the poor photo quality by the way. The Samsung Star isn’t particularly adept at taking great photos. Heck, the designers haven’t even heard of a thing called a flash by the look of things! :P)