Best longest day ever …

A spur of the moment decision to go to Ikea yesterday turned into the bestest and longest day ever!

Renos have been going well and things are starting to look good around TZ but we have been in dire need of some desks. Since we’ve decided to tear down the walls and have an open concept shop – we need a place for the boys to be able to draw and most importantly store their stuff.

We don’t have an Ikea on Vancouver Island and it’s kind of a hassle (and expensive) to go over to the mainland for such short day trip … so I looked all over town for the perfect solution only to realize that I just needed to bite the bullet and go to Ikea and get what we need. I called my trusty friend Hayely at 8pm Saturday night to see if she wanted to take me over in her mini-van (I can fit A LOT of stuff in my smartcar – but not 5 desks) and she was keen to go.

So at 9:45am she showed up at my doorstep with a smile on her face and a full tank of gas so we could catch the 11am ferry!!

Got to Ikea around 1pm (Yes. The ferry and the car ride from and to takes that long…) and then took our time looking around. It’s not often that I have the time to shop at a leisurely pace and Hayley and I have very similar taste so it’s fun to poke around Ikea like archeologists looking at every nook and cranny of the display units.

The hardest part was having to remind myself that I was shopping for TZ and not myself, although I did buy myself these cake doilys and a couple of cartons of Ryebread mix.

You should have seen the receipt…. it was a mile long. Yikes.

Before we headed back to the ferry we had another stop to make. Our friend Sarah M has been telling us about this place in Richmond called Daiso. From the way she described it – it sounded like a little Japanese dollar-store so when Hayley and I walked into the store we were both dumbfounded by the SIZE of the store.

Daiso is 2 floors (Yes I said 2 floors) of crazy awesome!

You can buy a Hannibal Lecter facial mask.

Signs to remind your neighbours to pick up poo!

The store is filled with a disproportional amount of Engrish.



Super cute Engrish …

Also an entire wall of ashtrays …

I almost bought my Dad this ashtray but then I remembered he quit smoking (Yay Dad).

I also found Fergus the cutest little Koi-fish dog-shirt… it looks like pajamas or a hospital gown. *laugh*

We also found these novelty germ masks …

And proceeded to wear them on the ferry ride home!

Here I am in the Seawest Lounge on the ferry eating my complimentary roasted almonds. Care for a nut with a nut?

I think Hayley looks a little like Sonny Bono. Gerry thinks the look is more Saddam Hussein.

We got a little lost on the way back to the ferry and thought we were going to miss the 7pm and have to wait until the 9pm but the Daiso/Ikea gods were on our side and we made it on to the ferry at 7:01pm. WE WERE THE LAST CAR onto the ferry. Holy crap. So lucky. There is no way I could have handled having to wait 2 hours for the ferry.

Arrived back into town at 9:15, unloaded the truck and said our weary good-byes. Hayley e-mailed me this morning to tell me how tired she was … and I was in the same boat. Yesterday was exhausting. Fun but exhausting.

I’ll spare you the details of the FIVE Ikea desks I built today. It’s a long boring story with complicated instructions, a few tears and a promise to Gerry that I would never make another Ikea trip like that again. For now …