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Today’s Shopping List: Milk, Bananas, and an Oversized Steamer Trunk to Evoke the Feeling of Adventure.

So do you remember that time I took a design style quiz and it called me an alcoholic?

I mean, I was kind of able to get over it because a) it was kind of right and b) it basically said I should live with Johnny Depp and we could be winos together forever and I’m pretty sure he’d be okay with Justin living with us too because he’s bohemian like that.

Johnny’s bohemian.  Not Justin.

Johnny’s right arm says “Wino Forever.”  It used to read “Winona Forever,” but I’m willing to overlook that. (Source)

So even though the quiz redeemed itself, I pretty much avoided ever taking them again until a few days ago.

I discovered THIS HomeGoods Stylescope quiz over on HookedOnHouses.net, my favorite voyeurism I mean house peeping I mean home interior blog.  When I learned that all you have to do is pick 5 pictures that appeal to you and the quiz would instantly reveal your design style, I decided to go for it.  I mean, I’ve already been called a drunk by one of these things, so what’s the worst that could happen?

Apparently, my friends, the worst that could happen is that it could be absolutely and totally accurate.

I am “The Traveler.”

And also, apparently, a touch of “New Country.”

But I’m choosing to ignore that part and focus on the main one.  The Traveler.  The painfully accurate and seemingly unattainable design style that I can only achieve by — you know — traveling the world.

So I better get on that already.

The quiz even gives tips about how I can achieve the look:

Which is nice, but it basically all comes down the fact that I need to buy a plane ticket.  Also, I need to start actually buying stuff when I travel.

It’s kind of hilarious because HomeGoods tries to make suggestions of things I could buy from their store, which kind of seems counterintuitive when it comes to decorating for this particular design style.

I mean, do I want to look at the elephant figurine on my console table and think, “Oh, remember the time I bought that from the balsa wood carver in India whose hands were craggy and worn with his craft,” or, “Oh, remember the time I found that on the clearance shelf at Home Goods?”

Not that I would probably buy an elephant figurine anyway, since I’m not really into the whole let’s-use-tiny-animals-to-decorate-our-house phenomenon.  Unless, of course, I had some cool travel story like that Canadian girl who had her ear ripped off by an elephant and bought the figurine as a reminder.  Because I would totally need a figurine to remind me of that.

So.  This really is a terrible quiz result because I feel like it’s kind of mocking me.  Go!  It says.  Travel!

Only I feel like I can’t.

Because I kind of quit my job again.

Oh, would you look at the time!  I’m late for this job that I won’t be having for much longer.

I guess this is a story for another time.

In the meantime, go take the quiz.  Report back.  I’m curious to see whether the other results are as equally accurate and unattainable without spending thousands of dollars on plane tickets.

 

I’m Pretty Sure I Was a Covert CIA Operative in Another Life

My first job with an actual paycheck was quite literally flipping burgers at an A&W Root Beer restaurant attached to a gas station when I was 15 years old.  I came home from my first 8-hour Saturday shift, forearm speckled pink and red from hot grill grease, the clanking sound the frozen burger patties made when I threw them down on the sizzling surface still ringing in my ears, my belly full of fries and my head full of pride because I’d gotten so good at something I’d known nothing about just 8 hours earlier.

It didn’t take me long, however, to learn that once the pride wears off, boredom sets in, and it’s time to move on to something new.  I’d mastered burger assembly, fryer operation, and simultaneously taking orders through the drive through headset while making a root beer float with one hand and counting change with the other.

I’d learned all I cared to know about the fast food industry, and the white-collared jobs of teenage corporate America beckoned with their shiny, manufactured name tags and morning staff meetings and profit charts.

Aside from the employee discount, my favorite part of working at Best Buy were the secret shopping trips I was assigned to take with some fellow employees to report on prices at a competing local company.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that, but hey – this was 12 years ago – there  has to be a statute of limitations or something.  But if no one hears from me for a couple of days after I post this, you might want to contact the authorities.  Unless, of course, they’re in on it.

Anyway.

We’d forgo the pressed blue polos and khaki pants and don our “street clothes,” packing our tiny pens and notebooks and product “shopping” lists so we could record the numbers all stealth-like because I’m sure I looked like your average 16-year-old surround-sound shopper comparing prices and writing down SKU numbers.  We totally blended in.  Except for when we didn’t, and then store management promptly kicked us out.

Then we’d play some video games and eat at Burger King and head back to our store to regale our envious coworkers with our harrowing tale.

I was reminded of this blast from my teenage past yesterday when Don, an employee at the Fresh Market in Southern Pines, caught me taking photos inside the store with my camera phone.

The difference is that this much more technologically savvy time around, my intentions were pure.  I mean, if you were used to only shopping at… say… the Dollar Store and suddenly someone introduced you to the world of Wal-Mart, you’d want to commemorate the occasion, wouldn’t you? And since I recently told you about my frustrations with my nearby Food Lion grocery store, I knew I had to share the Fresh Market experience.

Hence the blurry camera phone pictures.

I mean… I couldn’t very well whip out my DSLR and tell the deli employees to smile.

I had to be sneaky, people.  Corporate espionage is serious business.

Plus, it was just more fun to do it this way.

Justin was off work yesterday, so we decided to head to the upscale Southern Pines area to hit up their Lowe’s (since ours was destroyed by a tornado) and grab a nice lunch.  We also thought we’d stop by this place called Fresh Market, about which our neighbor raves.

All I can say is, how have I lived a mere 45 minutes away from this gem for 4 years and never gone??

We were greeted by a diverse group of freakishly friendly employees.  Seriously.  If I’m not mistaken’, I’d say that they all actually liked their jobs.

The produce was amazing.  It all really did look fresh.  The variety was incredible.  I mean, I don’t actually have a need for baby summer squash, but I might have to find one now.

Because they have it.

Need a potato?  How about a yam?  What color would you like?  Because here they’re not just potatoes, people.  You have options.

Want to grind your own fresh coffee beans?  Be their guest.

And the meat?  Oh, god – the meat.  Remember when I went to Food Lion with the intention of buying brisket and all they had was this lousy tongue? I mean, it was value priced because it was about to expire. And no one likes expired tongue.

Well, the fresh meat selection at Fresh Market did not disappoint.  Gorgeously marbled steaks like the veins in Calacatta tiles, chicken with lovely, yellow fat, and a seafood selection that made me think we’d traveled east – not west – to get to the store.

And, while I didn’t see any tongues on display, I’m fairly certain that, had I asked, the friendly folk behind the counter would’ve gone to the back and produced a nice, gleaming, not-about-to-expire beef tongue just for me.

Unfortunately, Don caught me before I could snap blurry photos of the freshly baked bread, bulk candy and nuts, and superb deli area.  You see, he’d found my Achilles heel.  The wine.  And the quality of my covert ops quickly deteriorated as I was faced with an actual selection.

Don knew my weakness.  And instead of kicking me out of the store, he exploited it to his fullest extent, taking me on a tour through the bottles and valleys and vineyards, explaining the intricacies of the various types and tastes and prices, and imparting on me some actual knowledge that I’ve somehow managed to avoid during my past several years of avid wine consumption.

I’m not going to lie – a little part of me wanted to have Don’s babies.

I’m now fairly convinced that this is the only place around here where I’ll be buying wine from now on.

Except, of course, for emergency situations.

And any other time I want to drink wine without driving all the way to Southern Pines.

And while the prices for some things were definitely higher at Fresh Market, I’m willing to pay a bit more for quality, service, and – you guessed it – the ambiance of a place that smells like freshly brewed coffee and all natural peanut butter over baby vomit and stale cheese.

I’m basically a marketing director’s wet dream.

And tonight, while I sip a new kind of Don-recommended Cabernet from the Columbia Valley in Washington to go with my incredibly tender grilled fillet (a splurge, yes, but sometimes we need these things in our lives), I will somehow find a way to be okay with that.

IKEA: Quite Possibly a Domestiphobe’s Worst Nightmare

A couple of weeks ago I informed you that my friend Alaina and I were planning a day trip to Charlotte to hit up that wonder of all superstores, IKEA, for the latest in ready-to-assemble Swedish decor for her nursery and my office.

We were going to go later this week, but since her husband was planning to come over to my house to play with my husband last Saturday (wait – that doesn’t sound right, does it?), we decided to go then.

That way I wouldn’t be here to witness them do this to my walls:

Now.  If you’ve never been to an IKEA before, there are a few things you should know:

1.  Preparation – especially if you don’t live close enough to run back to the store when you realize you forgot something – is key.  That means searching online ahead of time for things you might want, writing them down, taking measurements in your home, writing those down, and then checking the availability of those items at the store you plan on visiting.  I might have forgotten that last part.

2.  IKEA is BIG.  They have it set up so that you follow these arrows that direct you through the upper level of the store, meandering through a giant maze of show rooms and displays, oohing and ahhing at the cheap prices and simplistic designs and jotting down crazy names of things like “Ekby” and “Kivik” and “Klubbo” so that, when you get downstairs to where they actually have all the stuff for you to put in your cart, you’ve already seen what it looks like set up in a room.  The problem?  If you walk past something you wanted without realizing it, you might have to trek about 1.8 miles each way to go get it.  Wear sneakers, is all I’m sayin’.

3.  They have a kiddie play area where you basically sign your kids off to play while you shop and I’m pretty sure it’s genius and designed more for childless people like me than actual parents, but who cares because the kids are corralled in one place away from the rest of us real people and stop pretending to judge me because you know I have a point.

4.  Things aren’t always as cheap as you think.  Sure, that pretty print might look chic and affordable hanging in the showroom in its shiny silver frame, but looks can be deceiving.  You might not notice that there are two tags hanging from the picture – one for the print itself, and another for the frame.  And you like those library bookshelves with the glass doors whose price seems too good to be true?  That’s because you’re looking at the tag for just the top part of the shelf.  The bottom half and cabinet doors cost extra, just so you know.  In all fairness, you can usually find the price of an entire unit listed, but if you’re a newbie shopper there, just be careful to read the tag so you know what you’re pricing and what you’re buying.  You’d hate to get something home, put it together, and then realize you didn’t actually buy everything you wanted.

5.  With the exception of their kitchens, the majority of IKEA items tend to look a lot better online than they do in person, in my humble little opinion.  But hey – it’s ready-to-assemble furniture, people.  That means everything you buy – whether it’s a sectional sofa or a wall of bookshelves – comes in flat (albeit heavy) boxes just perfect for a brawny girl like me to drag into the back of the Tracker by herself because her friend is pregnant and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anything happen to the little kumquat.

And you don’t want to mess with these.

Side note:  Back in the day, Alaina and her husband (then boyfriend) Dirk bought all of his bedroom furniture from IKEA and enticed their friends over to help put it together under the guise of a party.  Approximately 6 hours and countless beers later, I was the last man standing.

And the furniture was assembled.

And it hasn’t fallen apart.

Yet.

In all seriousness though, a truly gifted shopper like Alaina can emerge from IKEA happy, alive, and with the makings of a simply beautiful room.  Even the dresser she bought for the nursery had far superior glides to much of IKEA’s other bedroom furniture, and Alaina had the uncanny ability to breeze through the labyrinth, stocking her cart with a piece of fabric here, a lamp there, and knowing her, everything will fit together perfectly in the end.

Just don’t expect it to be as inexpensive as you thought.

Truly ungifted shoppers like me, on the other hand, tend to have problems in a place like this.  For one, there’s too much pressure.  There were too many choices and I couldn’t make up my mind and half the time I’d end up running back across the entire store just to get a sieve I missed back in housewares and where did you get that plant, Alaina because I want one, and crap I have to run back to home organization again because I forgot the hook thingies for my hanging thingies and WHAT?!  They are out of my shelf brackets?  You have got to be f*cking kidding me and will someone please just take me out to the parking lot, dose me up with tranquilizers, and shoot me now?

In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t really like shopping.

These are the things I wanted to get at IKEA:

  • File cabinet
  • Shelf brackets
  • Storage boxes
  • Desk chair
  • Hanging organizers

These are the things I did get at IKEA:

  • Storage boxes
  • Hanging organizers
  • Fake plant
  • Kitchen sieve and funnels
  • Candle

These are the things I wish I’d bought at IKEA but I’d already purchased them somewhere else:

  • Blinds (IKEA has nice, inexpensive faux wood blinds, but I’d already bought wood-looking aluminum blinds at Target that the dogs have already messed up.)
  • Wooden hangars (I just bought what I thought were pretty inexpensive wooden hangars at Bed, Bath and Beyond for the closet makeover, but IKEA’s looked better and were even cheaper.)

In person, the file cabinet I thought I wanted just looked flimsy and unsubstantial, and they were out of my shelf brackets.  OUT.

I have to say, the best part of the day by far was the plate of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry sauce served cafeteria style for like $4.  To a pregnant chick and a girl who still had to drive another 2 1/2 hours on pitch black, tree-lined, winding roads in the rain just to get us home, it was pure heaven.

I would’ve taken a picture, but they were literally gone in about 4.8 seconds.  My phone doesn’t work that fast.

At the end of the day, this meager pile is my total haul (before the storage boxes have been assembled):

My indecisiveness, lack of design skills, and just plain ol’ crappy luck were no match for IKEA’s wiley ways.

So.  After 2 1/2 hours driving to get there, and approximately 3 hours and 11.72 miles of walking through the store, and a stressful, stormy, 2 1/2 hour drive home, I felt deflated.  Alaina, who spent about 10 times more than me because she has a job and a design plan and the ability to make actual decisions, felt elated.

It was totally worth the trip.

But I have to say, before you make the trek to your not-so-local IKEA, you might want to figure out which one of us is you.