Living the Good Life : bargains

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Some good, some bad, then some good again and a very expensive sweater.

Every once in a while something happens that pushes us to our limits. This weeks limits were pushed by a small dog called Max, who since Thursday evening has been known by a different name entirely, one that cannot be repeated here. But first let me take you back a few days to the beginning of the story.
Last weekend was a long weekend, Queens birthday. Joe had been working on a private job and got it finished on the Monday morning. He arranged to meet the client on the other side of Cambridge where he could hand the job back over. Once that was done we drove back into Hamilton and made our way to The Base shopping centre as Joe wanted to buy a new sweater. We went into Farmers, a department store. While he was looking at sweaters I went upstairs to wander around the home section. I found a rather nice armchair, perfect for the family room downstairs. There was also a matching sofa, both good prices, half price. I dragged Joe upstairs for a look, he thought they were nice but wasn't overly convinced with the quality or comfort of them. Long story short we went to Hunter furniture where they sell a bug range of Lazyboy furniture.
We chose this sofa, also on sale as it was the last one, they were discontinuing the colour.

It is slightly darker than it appears in the photo, I love it and it picks out one of the colours in our wallpaper.

It arrived Thursday afternoon, after I got back from craft (I'll come back to craft later)
Also, Joe finally treated himself to a Lazyboy recliner, he's wanted one for ages.
It's this style but in a suede type finish in a slate grey colour, he opted for a swivel base

We were both happy people walking out of the store,we only went out for a sweater lol ;-D Joe less so as he has to wait until December for his chair, custom orders take time, he did get 2 new sweaters though. ;-D My sofa was delivered on Thursday, it was put into position and I enjoyed it for about 30 minutes before we headed out to meet Michael & Tash at the pub for dinner, to celebrate Michael's 25th birthday.

Our pleasant evening was to be short lived, when we arrived home we found Max had been a total shit and had been 'digging' on the brand new sofa!!!!!
He'd damaged all three seat cushions.

I was raging mad, I yelled, I cried and it was all I could do not to throttle the dog. I couldn't bear to look at him until last night. He was due to have an operation on his lip Friday, I cancelled because I was so mad I couldn't trust myself not to make it a one way trip.

Joe phoned the insurance company, they said they would either pay for repair or replace. He also went back to the store who said that there are no more of that colour sofa available, it's discontinued and why it was such a good price. Bugger, so we may have to go for either a mustard or grey colour, either would work. Maybe the bright sunny colour will lighten my mood.

The colours are not true in the photo but it gives you an idea of what we're working with

On Friday the car was booked in for a service and a warrant of fitness, I dropped it off and went for some retail therapy with Sue, I wasn't going to, but the thought of sitting at home with a damaged sofa and a very unpopular dog wasn't doing it for me.
Sue said we were going to see the big cow in Morrinsville, I thought she was being a daft cow, she wasn't kidding about the big cow however

A few more of the cows that line the high street

We had already looked around a very cool 'junk' shop.....

...where I saw these (below), I'm after an old wooden ladder to hang quilts on, I thought the barrow would look good in the garden, although I'm not too taken with the wheel on the front. Not sure if either of them are an option now we have a $300 excess to pay out on the sofa.

Next we headed to Morrinsville to check out the op shops, I found.....

I realised that the bottom pic of the pattern is not complete, the pics above it are two of the blocks that I found separately, there are more I didn't buy. I may have to go back and get them, or just do my own stitchery panels.

When I was looking in the craft section I saw the shoe box but didn't ignored it at first, it was on the bottom of a pile

On the second look my curiosity got the better of me and I pulled it out, good decision, inside was a whole host of goodies. At some point it was a block of the month quilt, and most of it is there, some of the blocks are complete, some not, also there are two blocks missing. Another reason to go back and see if they have been put with other patterns. If not then I'm sure the very clever quilters at craft will help me work the missing patterns out. Blocks 7 & 10 are missing.

Here's the quilt as it is, laid out, the other unmade block sheets I've laid in position

Here's what it should look like finished

Here's a whole pile of gorgeous fabrics that were also in the box

Oh how I love to find treasure like this. And how much for all that in the box??
$5!!!!!

Other finds as follows

After Morrinsville we went to Cambridge and met Chris (Diet Coke Rocks) and her gorgeous granddaughter for lunch. Nice to catch up, then it was back to Hamilton and Spotlight.

I had seen some fabric, $4, in the bargain bin with which I am going to made a Roman blind for the downstairs bathroom. The other stuff required were not as cheap.

Then would you believe it!! Some more of those stash buster fabrics hid in my bag!

I don't know how it keeps happening!!!

I think that will do for today, I'll do a separate craft post another day

Off to the pub later to watch the Lions get humiliated no doubt.

I'm thinking of switching allegiance!

Until next time, enjoy your weekend

Friday, February 17, 2017

Hello....is there anybody out there.............?

Well hello ya'all! It's me innit! It may have seemed that I had given up blogging, I haven't, although I haven't had the time, or the inkling to get on here if I'm honest. Hoping to get back into it again as I have heaps to fill you in on.
Since my last post, there was some progress on the downstairs renovations, we had an engagement announcement and visitors from the UK! So as you can imagine it's been pretty full on. Our friends are now back in the UK. They left the UK on the 16th December last year, so they're in for a shock, I think, going back to work. It was lovely to have them here. I've been doing thing with plums, nothing illegal, just preserving like a mad woman. I'll come back, I promise, and share all that soon.
In the meantime, however, I will share with you what me and the City Sue got up to today, yep, we had a Suesday! Rare as hens teeth, like blog posts lately!
So, I was woken up by Joe with a cup of tea, (boy do I seem to have problems waking up lately, too many late nights I reckon) at silly o'clock. As tempting as it was to just roll over and go back to sleep, I sat up and drank my tea with the dogs keeping me company. I knew that if I backed out of today that Sue would probably have me guts for garters, so by 9am I was on my way.