West Elm Sale

Special alert: West Elm is running in-store sale from Feb 13 to 20, a 10% off for orders of $250 or more . For those of you living in SF bay area, West Elm just opened a store in Emeryville, right next to EQ3, and close to Ikea.

West Elm is great for people like me who like Ikea's clean and practical designs but yearns to move up. I want something to show that I'm still hip and modern but can afford so much more. (Maybe not that much more. Ikea, I still love you.) It has a more asian and earthly touch than Ikea and CB2. David Bromstad frequently shops at West Elm in his Color Spash show.

In the picture are some of my favorite things in West Elm now: ceramic elephant and moroccan drum table.

Note: West Elm belongs to the same company as Pottery Barn and your Pottery Barn gift card is good there which is a great news for me. My Pottery Barn gift card has been sitting around for over 1 year and I didn't know what to do with it.

Can you find a great deal at liquidation sale?

The chance is low if you are looking for one at Home Depot Expo. Expo has run their liquidation for a month and they have been stuck to their guns at the advertised 15-30% off sale. When they started in January, most items are at 15% off and now more items are been cut to 25-30% off. What can you find there?

Decorative accessories - 20% off
Closet organizers (Easy Track) - 20% off.
Lighting - 25% off
Cabinet hardware - 30% off
Draperies - 30% off

They have miscellaneous carpets, tiles, sinks on sales but the inventory is very limited.

Domino falls

Why do magazines keep dying on me? Domino magazine just released their very last issue after 4 years.

http://www.dominomag.com/

It's very a sad day for all mid-range contemporary to modern style with glam and flair home decorators because that was the only magazine left to target that market. Perhaps that market is too small to sustain any special interest magazine. What will happen to those decorators? What will happen to those decorators wannabes, aka, me? What will happen to the rest of my subscription?

Woes to be with me because it hit me once already in October of last year when my all-time favorite magazine - Home magazine flopped. Home was published by the same company as Metropolitan Home which I also hold a subscription. I blamed the failure on their universally generic name. And you know what they did with the rest of my subscription? They shipped me Woman's Day instead. I don't mean any offense to all readers of Woman's Day but Woman's Day is opposite of everything that I stand for. I believe that women are independent, capable and informed and don't need a magazine that just gives sage advice to tell them what to do. I feel ashamed to take it out of my mailbox every month. I would rather be seen with a morally questionable magazine like, Stuff, for example. Perhaps it's not fair to compare Stuff to Woman's Day because Stuff offers so much more. It inspires our young male generation with educating and informative expose such as life as a double agent and gives the young female population a solid reference should they ever want to dress like the object of men's desire. Take that, Woman's Day.

$21 shipping on $130 order?!

After much delibration, I finally decided to go modern in my powder room. I picked a 2-light bath sconce from Restoration Hardware. And guess what the name of the light fixture is called - "Modern". It's clean and simple and you can find it in some of the designs on HGTV. I got a 10% off coupon. Decent. So I went through entering all the address and then saw the shipping was $21 for UPS ground?! Nowadays, you can get free shipping from anywhere. Why would I want to pay $21 for them to ship me such a small package. Restoration Hardware still operates like they were in 2000.

I went to the store with the plan to buy there to save on shipping. The sales at the store said that that item was web order / catalog only and so I had to pay the same shipping fee even if I ordered and picked up at the store. I asked her "What's the difference between me ordering online and ordering at the store?". She responded without the slightest shame, "You have my fine service here."