Last year at this time, Homescapes was asked to do a “library”-esque stage setting as a backdrop for the inaugural Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival at our local cultural center, Sunset Center.

Being the community-minded fellas that we are, Beau and I pulled a bunch of furniture and accessories from the store, loaded up the truck and did our best to help set the stage (bu-dump-bump) for the feel the organizers wanted to evoke.

This year we did it a little differently.  We still wanted to be community-minded and we still wanted to provide the feeling of a home library on the stage…after all, Sandra Day O’Conner, Khaled Hosseini and Michael Pollen were going to be standing in front of our stuff and we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves or Carmel through inattention to detail.  BUT the difference this time around was that we didn’t want to pull everything out of the store to do it.  We gotta make a livin’ here, folks, and we’d rather have stuff for sale in the store than sitting pretty on a stage down the street through a weekend.

So this year I pulled just about everything I used for the set from my house.  Sure, it’s stuff that feels like Homescapes ’cause I BUY for Homescapes.  So THAT’S on purpose.  But it’s not stuff you’ll find in the store (at least anymore ’cause I don’t want to feel like I like live in available merchandise ** ) and if you don’t like it when you see it on the stage of Sunset Center, you probably won’t like it when you’re over at my house for dinner.

Just warnin’ ya.

** Sidebar:  I learned my lesson the hard way about having “available” product in my home.  I was in China and found a grain basket that would make the perfect, perfect coffee table for my house.  There were only two available and I thought, “heck, if I like it, someone else will too” so I bought them both.  Then the one in the store sold and while it was still on the floor waiting to be picked up by its new owner another couple came in and begged me to see if they could contact the buyer to buy from them this ONE THING of all the stuff in the store.  No lie.  And foot-in-mouth-me said, “I know, I KNOW, I love it too so I can see why you want it.  I’d never seen anything like this before in all my trips to China and there were only two.  I loved it so much I bought the other one for myself.”

Beat, beat.  Dead silence.  Long look.

Long story short, they shamed me into selling MY coffee table to them.  And I’ve mourned it ever since.