I’ve been a little behind on my ArcticDeco posts these last couple months, but with good reason. It’s the most busiest time of the year for home renovation planning and shopping and sea-lifting and hoarding. I feel like a squirrel in October trying to get all of my nuts together before the winter.
To start, there was sealift shopping in May. That’s when we Northerners flock south for a few days to buy up our year’s supply of goods. Here’s what our Costco order looked like, and that was only a tiny portion of all we had to pick up this year.
There was also the new washer-dryer for our upcoming laundry room overhaul, new fridge, sofa for the greenhouse, lumber, more food shopping, more toilet paper, more Pellegrino, and oh ya, the 2,400 sq/ft of flooring we decided to buy at the last minute. Yeesh.
For most people, sealift shopping agony can be avoided when you’re just in need of the basics (and don’t have half a house to renovate). The lovely ladies over at the FindingTrueNorth blog have summarized how to sealift in Nunavut as well as how to AVOID sealift altogether for those of you who are new to the game.
Then came the 2 month wait for it to be shipped up north, and the long awaited sighting of this…
SANTA!!!!!!!
When you see one of these ships after the sea-ice has finally cleared, it is extremely exciting. I don’t think I can quite put into word how exciting it is. I pretty much turn into a 5 year old on Christmas day who just got a puppy, Easy-Bake Oven, and Cabbage Patch doll at the same time! It’s pretty crazy. I might even have hyperventilated a little just thinking about it. Oh yes! It’s sealift season!
Sealift barge bringing all the presents to the good little girls and boys of Iqaluit.
Again, much like Christmas, when the boxes are dropped off on your front step, all gift wrapped in blue tarp, there’s a high potential that I may blackout from all the excitement (or throw up on your shoes)! They even come with little pink gift tags with my name on all of them! It’s almost too much.
So there you have it! My fun-filled July. Of course, now that we have all of our supplies it means we’ve been able to start some projects around the home. So stay tuned for some of our recent reno updates.
I’ve never heard of Sealifting before but I just read all about it. It sounds SUPER stressful. How do you even know how much toilet paper you use in a year? Amazing. Happy Christmas in July!
Lol. Hi Colleen! It took me a few weeks to figure out what our weekly toilet paper consumption was, and then just multiplied it by 52, but yes, it is quite stressful and overwhelming. It’s especially frustrating when you forget that one thing that you can’t get up any other way but by sealift (like paints or solvents or very large furniture pieces and have to wait an entire year to get one). I’ve been dying to get a Soda Stream so that I don’t have to ship up Perrier, but didn’t get myself organized to find all the CO2 cartridges (which you can’t send by regular post or air mail as it turns out) so those will have to wait another year. *Sigh*.
I so envy southerners sometimes. But the view up here is stunning – and certainly makes up the difference. 🙂
LOL at “Santa!” Great post, Colleen, and thanks for linking to the blog!