A Bit of Shopping, Gardening & Creating!

This past weekend was a busy one for me. I shopped, I gardened, and I created.





I started by shopping at a Bassett Store in Dallas. After having dinner with my mom and sister, where they were celebrating the fact my mom was able lower her home taxes. They protested the tax accessor's value of my Mom's home and won! They were able to get the home lowered by thousands so her property tax next year will be very low. She is now 65 so they immediately locked her in at this new low rate so her property taxes will never go up again in her life.





After dinner Mom and I drove to the Bassett Furniture store. I wanted to show her a couch I fell in love with and of course we walked the entire store. I also showed her a coffee table I love. It takes me a while to find furniture I love. In fact I have been looking for coffee tables for almost 3 years now that I love. This is the line I found. I can't afford to buy them now, but they are on my list to buy in the next year, unless of course the new line has something I love more. So yes, I have heard and confirmed that Bassett Furniture has a new line coming out August 1rst, 2008. I have no idea what it looks like, but have heard they will have a big kick off sale when they introduce it. I also learned their prices will be going up 8% very soon but they will have a huge July 4th 25% off sale this weekend. Of course the couch I love is over $4K! Yes I want a $4,000.00 couch! It is a large curved couch. It will look amazing in my great room. I can design everything about the couch and pick out the fabric myself as well.





As we completed our round of the store I spotted a this lamp, but my Mom spotted an even better one and it was marked 50% off, so I bought it. It is beautiful. It is a heavy metal wire urn shaped lamp in an antique finish. It is perfect so I found the rep I spoke to earlier, Brian and bought it. As we were talking he asked me if I had a rug for my great room. Funny thing he asked me that because I spotted one at the back of the store, but wasn't able to get to it to find the price. We walked back to the store where we started flipping all the rugs since the one I spotted was at the bottom of the pile. We had to flip them all several time to get to the price tag $599. A great price but still to steep for me right now, but wait, it was on sale for 75% off that! SAY WHAT!?! The 10' x 10' rug was only $145.00!! Now that is a great price so of course I bought it! This is my rug and I LOVE it!



This rug retails for over $1000K and I found it online from $749 to $899 so my $145 rug was a true bargain. This picture does not do it justice. The colors all blend so it looks worn and weathered in places. It has the rich colors especially the plum that I wanted in my room. My wall colors seems a bit off for the rug now and I am thinking of adding a glaze to it, but only after I get the Bassett Designer out to my house to see what he thinks. My wall color is a bit golder than in the picture above. Oh but now my recovered couch does not work at all in my living room! The couch and chaise totally clash with my new rug, so now I want that $4000 couch as soon as possible. LOL. But I will wait.

Saturday Bassett came out to look at the dining room chairs I bought that were delivered the Saturday before. He said the finish was bad and he took them all back to have re-finished. Totally different experience than what I had with Ashley Furniture last year.

Saturday afternoon I drove to Frisco to visit the Ethan Allen store. OMG! What a disaster. I had never been in one of their stores and wanted to see what their designer center was all about and if they had a custom upholstery couch like the one at Bassett. The store had a few shoppers but probably more sales people that shoppers. We arrived right behind a young couple. We were in the store about 5 minutes when a rep approached the couple in front of us and introduced herself. So I waited expecting someone to approach me in a bit. We waited and waited. Mom and I even walked into the designer center a bit to look at the drapes and still no one came up to us. A few reps were in the design center talking. I even spoke up and stated in a loud voice how nice it would be to learn about the store and the design center. We get back to the front of the store where I told the lady at the front desk that I was unhappy. That I didn't appreciate being ignored, it was my first visit to the store and I came to check out the design center. I thought it was rude that the people in front of me and after my had a rep check up on them but not my mom and I. She said "I am so sorry, I can assign a rep to you." I was livid. I told her it was too late. She didn't know who I was or how much money I had to spend and how dare they ignore us. I was done with their store. I drove out of my way to that store only to walk away not knowing anything more about the store than before I walked in was very maddening! I still may write a letter to the store manager.


Then to top off my weekend, mom and I were out in my garden on Saturday in my backyard looking at my flower beds where I spotted a weird shaped leaf or twig. It blended in so well with the plants and leaves, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at so I picked up a stick and sure enough it was a grass snake. My first snake in my yard. It was about 2ft long. I walked out to get a neighbor to help me and my next door neighbor and his friend saved the day by cutting the snake in half with hedge clippers. He took one half with him home and I found the other half in the bed dead on Sunday. The great part is, it is dead the bad part is where there is one snake there are bound to be others.

So that was my weekend. A bit of shopping, a bit of gardening, and the bit a creating I will talk about tomorrow.