My new store and renovations!

So I decided to add to my busy schedule and have started a little store on the side! I am now selling sewing and craft supplies out of my porch. There is very little in the stores here in town for supplies and it is all very expensive. So we came up with a small budget to start my little store and got all of the supplies shipped up on the barge. I painted the porch and made my poor husband take all of his tools and other man crap out to the shed. So far the store has been doing good! There is a lot of interest in town, so I think it will be a success! Here are some pictures of my new store- Kara's Sewing Supplies!

Here is the door into our porch from the house. That shelf has my cheaper fabric, fabric ends, and lots of leather. I have moose hide and then cow hide in a whole bunch of colours.

This side of my little store has beads, cross stitch fabric, felt, lace, rabbit/beaver pelts, yarn, earring/broach backs, thread and a bit of other random stuff.

Here is the back of the store. I use my deep freezer as my fabric cutting table. I have a whole bunch of fleece material on the right that seems to be popular.

Here is my wall of fabric! I have a little bit of everything!

Here are the first of the pantries installed! These ones are in the kitchen and we have 9 more feet to install in the laundry area. We also have to do the whole kitchen. The new kitchen cupboards are going to look the same as these pantries. Our place is going to look great when it is all put together!

Barge Fun

Well the barge arrived and I was giddy until they dropped the sea can in our yard and I realized how much crap we have! We are renovating this year, so everything for that arrived. We are going to be putting in new flooring in the whole house, new kitchen cupboards, 13 feet of pantries that are 8 feet high and 2 feet deep, new washer/dryer (thanks mom and dad!), new dishwasher, and a new fan for above the stove. Plus there was the 600lbs of shitty kitty cat litter, oodles of kitty food, and food for us as well! We did the usual routine for unloading- we called up some friends and bribed them with a bbq and beer. That always does the trick. We had 6000lbs of stuff unloaded in about 3 hours! The other 1000lbs arrived a couple of days later. So since then we have been busy putting together our pantries in order to make room for everything.

We really lucked out this year, my amazing mom down in BC did all of our shopping for us in Grande Prairie and arranged all of the shipping. She really loves to spend our money! Everything though looks really good. And even better, my mom is coming up the third week of September to help us install the whole kitchen! She is right handy! My dad is working and will be unable to make it up on this trip, but hopefully next time.

Our house is going to look really good with all of these renovations. I am so glad that we bought a house last year as the prices have really taken a jump here this summer. And owning a home really makes this community feel like home. I noticed when we were out on vacation I couldn't wait to get "home" which was back up here! We have now lived three years in the north- 2 in the NT and one here- and it is now hard to imagine living anywhere else.



Here comes the front end loader with our sea can!














Here is the very talented driver from NTCL dropping off our sea can in our driveway.
















Here I am with my bounty of supplies for another year! Everything in there other than the pallet of dog food right in front of me was for us! My washing machine is the box on the tilt in there and it arrived with a big dent in the top. But since the dryer stacks on top of it, the top of the washer had to be removed anyways! So that worked out well!

















Here is our crazy friend Amanda showing off our crap! She was great slave labour!

THE BARGE IS HERE!

This time of the year is honestly better than Christmas! Everyone in town is talking and trying to guess the day the barge is going to arrive. And then it comes on the horizon and your phone rings off the hook as everyone tries to claim to be the first to see it coming! This is our second barge season and it is no less exciting! Last year we had a lot of our furniture and food come up on it as well as our new quads. This year we have all of our house renovations, food and stuff for my little crafting/sewing store I am starting up. We have lucked out and all of our stuff is actually on this first barge and we should be able to get it delivered tomorrow or the next day. I have no clue where will put the 7000lbs of stuff! Did you know our two kitties go through 600lbs of shitty kitty (cat litter) in one year? Crazy the stuff you have to plan for up here. After one year I think we got a lot of the kinks worked out! Enjoy the pictures folks!




Oh baby! There it is on the horizon! It is a tug pulling three platforms of goodies all the way from Hay River- our old home! In this picture the barge is on the other side of a big sand bar.

Alright, if you squint really hard you can see the barge waaaay out there!

Here it is a little closer to town. There is so much on those platforms! Last year we had our spotting scope out and we tried to spot our quads on the deck before it arrived. Surprize, we didn't see them!

So the ship pushes all of the barge platforms together to make one big deck for unloading. All materials are on top and the bottom is filled with fuel that is pumped into large tanks here. The barge brings up enough fuel for the entire year. The barge even travels with a couple of its own front end loaders to unload everything. People sit along the shore or come down on their hondas to check everything out.

We have 11 pallets and 3 cartons! We talked to the guy in charge and it looks like most of our stuff is in one seacan. So hopefully we can get the whole can dropped off in our driveway and we can unload it from there.



And this has nothing to do with the barge- but Tweak is just so damn cute! It has been over 20C everyday for over a week and the kitties are cooking! Here is Tweak in Matts chair. They fight over it, mainly because I sprinkle it with tuna flavoured cat nip when Matt isn't looking!

August in Kugluktuk

Ack! Can you believe it is August already! People are arriving back in town for another year. Lucky me- I still have 2 weeks of my vacation left. The weather here has been amazing. We have seen a week of +20C to +25C. The sun is now setting for just over 4 hours a night, but it still isn't really that dark. I got my new Canon camera out of its box and I have been taking pictures like mad!


The coast guard arrived to do a crew change. The boat stayed in town for a few days.






I found some nice little tracks in the sand. We are so lucky- we have miles upon miles of sandy beaches!

The flower season has pretty much come to an end, but I did find this nice lousewort (I think, let me know if I am wrong!)

A boat down on the shore of the Coronation Gulf.

A valley near Four Mile Bay. Kugluktuk has such great scenery!

Out at some friends cabin there is a tub out on the tundra. It looks so out of place!

A wasp on another one of our beautiful beaches.