Monday, April 21, 2008

They really should have a T-shirt for it

This weekend was the huge Toms-Price Warehouse sale. For those of you that don't live in Chicagoland, Toms-Price is our local purveyor of all things Stickley. In fact, I believe they sell more Stickley furniture than any store in the country.

We've never been to the sale and it was pretty remarkable. We'll have to come again the next time they do it. The furniture, which is usually well beyond our means, was still priced beyond our means but at almost reasonable prices. We have been looking to add chairs to our dining room set and I am always trying to convince my wife that we need this:

Needless to say, the only dining chairs they had were not in our finish or leather color but they were on sale at the bargain-basement price of $250 a chair (usually, they cast about two and a half times that). They also the dream chair (with the ottoman) but unfortunately we did not get the $2500 tax rebate we'd need to afford it.


Our visit to the sale was not in vain but it made me think that they should have t-shirts. You know, like those ones you see in just about every tourist shop. "My mom went to _ _ _ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". This one could say something like, "I went to the Toms-Price warehouse sale and all I got was this lousy _ _ _". Instead of the dream chair, we came home with this:

It is a "big girl bed" for my daughter. Very Arts & Craftsy, huh? Anyway, I'll have to set it up next weekend when we get the mattresses. It is not even in the same league as the dream chair but it made my daughter ecstatic. I guess this makes me feel just as good as I would if I were lounging in the dream chair. Well, maybe not.


The rest of the weekend was beautiful and I spent a good part of Sunday in the garden. I couldn't help myself, I had to start moving plants around. I moved the lilac to the back corner of the yard and moved another out front. I also shifted around a few other plants to make room for an herb garden. I planted a bunch of marigold seeds I harvested from last years marigolds as well. I also have a landscape plan. I'll try and write about it in the next few days.

The garden is looking pretty good. Though the garlic seems to be going crazy, I am going to try and hold off planting anything else for a few weeks. I also made some more headway on my picture frame. I didn't do shit with it all week but hopefully I can get it sanded and start finishing it this week. Note that since I cleaned the basement and made an actual shop that the woodworking is no longer happening on the carpeted and finished part of the basement.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you love Stickley, you should go to the Manlius, NY manufacturing site. I think the big sale is in August. Our Syracuse friend has gotten a number of Stickley pieces at more reasonable prices.

Chris said...

Carol,

Did you ever check out my post from last August? If not, you should. I grew up in Syracuse and yes, we're always trying to figure out an inexpensive way to transport furniture back to Chicago.

Jennifer said...

Those ladybugs can be dangerous....