May was mad crazy as y’all know, but it wasn’t all due to the new store. I had a slew of personal and business trips that I needed to take and I decided to tag them all together and do a round-the-country jaunt to get them all done and save money.
Note to you fellow cheapskates: the Multi-City link on Orbitz is a valuable option for making the most of your time and budget travel-wise. And no they didn’t pay me to say that.
Six days after the opening of Homescapes Home & Garden I flew to the East Coast to attend the wedding of my best friend from college, Alan. Alan was having the nuptials at the house of HIS best friend from college, Bob, up in New Canaan Connecticut and the whole thing turned into one of those movie-like type of weekends with beautiful surroundings, wonderful food, and glam New Yorkers who appear to have no body-fat. It was the perfect place for a wedding. Bob and his partner Andrew have one of those fantastic mid-century modern houses that are all glass and straight lines and beautiful.
Dammit. I call those kind of homes “kick the couch houses” (meaning after being exposed to their fantastic-ness I go home, kick my couch and call my house a dump).
Leg One Shoutout: Andrew has a book coming out soon from Frommer’s titled “500 Places Where You Can Make a Difference.”
It’s a resource listing for travel that involves helping and volunteering in communities around the world, whether you have a week, a month or only a couple of hours to spare. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com
After New Canaan I went to Providence Rhode Island to visit my sister Keri and her lucky-find, Justin. Both of them are incredible artists as well as the creators of fantastical websites, so visiting with them was both for fun AND work. (As in I almost worked them to death to get the HHG site up and running while I could be there in the room to play Dictator.)
Leg Two Shoutout: I met Keri and Justin’s friends David and Kim Gracer while I was in Providence. You might recall the post I wrote regarding David’s passion for what he calls “land shrimp.” The rest of us call them crickets, and I found out at dinner that night if you shut your eyes when you eat them, they’re surprisingly malty.
From Providence I flew down to Naples, Florida for the annual ART conference. This is my third time going and third time on the house. First conference in Pasadena was at their invitation after Homescapes won its second ARTS Award. At that conference all it took was me bustin’ a couple of stripper moves while dressed as Jon Voight/The Midnight Cowboy to win a contest and get comped for Charleston 2008. In Charleston I broke out the childhood “Winter Dance” training my grandmother insisted all gentlemen needed doin’ the Charleston to win that year’s contest and got comped for Naples. This year they changed the rules and said it was all my fault (no seriously…they did. AND announced why during the opening remarks.) Ahhh, notoriety.
Leg Three Shoutout: One of the tasks we have to do at the conference involves a team-building exercise in which teams go to actual stores and run amok, redoing either a window or a room, whatever our brief requires. Stacie Collins, owner/operator of Peach Tree Designs allowed us to come in and do our task, despite her store already being a beautiful, award-winning establishment. And we had tons o’ fun in there. (Bragging moment: My team, the Yellows, won the in-store design task. HA! Take that Green and Blue teams!)
After the conference was concluded, I hopped a plane to Las Vegas. There was an ACRE show going on and I’d been told by Fritz Renner, an accessories rep who lives near me, that now that I have a garden shop the show is a must. ACRE stands for American Craft Retailers Expo, but I have found that whenever the word “craft” is used, most people’s minds immediately go to macrame and stay there. “Crafts” in my industry is actually the subcategory I’m always looking for, though at the big shows it usually goes by the far-sexier name “Handmade.”
Leg Four Shoutout: Thanks to the organizers of the ACRE show for the $100 coupon they gave me to apply to any order I chose. That was WAY better than I did at the slot machines later that night.
And then, finally, thank gawd, I ended the madness by flying to San Francisco to go to the annual Palecek Warehouse Sale. Beau met me with a truck and we were there at the factory when the gates opened. We got great stuff for both stores and even had the good fortune and honor to be taken on a personal tour of the factory by the owner, Alan Palecek. I love that behind the scenes stuff.
Leg Five Shoutout: My Palecek rep (and friend) Mindy McEntire was a total champ when it came to setting up the new store and to top it off, on May 15th she flew from a Las Vegas industry show, rented a car in San Jose and DROVE down to Carmel just so she could be here in time for the ribbon cutting. Now THAT was above and beyond the call of duty.
And now friends, I will end this mega-post and do something that I haven’t done in awhile. Work.
