Design*Sponge at Home Book on Display

Grace and Amy

The crowd with all of the twinkle lights

I had a lovely ladies night out on Friday at Terrain at Styers. It was the book signing party for the new Design*Sponge at Home book by Grace Bonney. The party was pretty short, but I did manage to get my book signed and a picture.

Grace and me

Terrain at Styers (owned by the parent company of Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie) is always full of LOTS of eye candy in the form of plants, pots and old wood. The party was in one of the old barns on site. The classic twinkle lights hung on the ceiling made the space feel really initiate (although a little dark for shooting photos). They served a delicious punch (I should have asked for the recipe) in jelly jars w/ little ribbon stirrers. They also had a raffle for a beautiful table spread (items were picked out by Grace and Amy from Terrain). I didn’t win, but it was still pretty to look at. All in all a good time, especially considering I heard Grace speak in the same space over a year ago when she was finishing up putting the book together. Grace is lovely and gracious, just as one would expect!

Lantern and Plant Display

Beautiful Plant Display mixed with rough wood

Table display that was auctioned off. I really love the apple pot, not that I would ever actually use it.

Toddler Hat & Mittens

Toddler Shoes

Papergoods

Today was the day for the Missoni Collection at Target to premiere. I love good design, so even though I am not the biggest Missoni fan, I still needed to check out what was available. Missoni, known for their colorful zigzag pattern, is one of those brands that most of us cannot afford normally, so when it shows up at Target it is a pretty good deal, even if it is expensive by Target standards. Two years ago they featured Orla Kiely housewares (which was SUPER awesome). I wanted to buy EVERYTHING (and bought quite a bit for our kitchen and for Maisie’s room)! Last year they featured Liberty of London which was also pretty cool, although I didn’t buy very much.

So this morning I tried to go to the Target website, but it was down. Was it down because of the Missoni collection? Are there really that many Missoni fans? Are there a lot of speculators trying to buy it up to resell on ebay (I just checked and there are already 6233 items on ebay for sale)? I did finally see that yes in fact it was all the Missoni fans crashing their site, and in fact the website is still extremely glitchy this afternoon and it keeps crashing on me. I also saw this article about a mobbed Target in LA.  So this afternoon with my novacaned up mouth, jaw and tongue (thanks to having a cavity filled this morning),  I meandered over to Target to see what they had. We have 2 targets within 3 miles of our house (totally crazy I know). There were a bunch of empty shelves with Missoni labels on them.  Although I did find a few things that I decided to pick up, figuring if I change my mind there is always ebay or I could just return it. I picked up 2 small boxes (I have these same boxes in an Orla Kiely pattern from 2 years ago), a pad of paper and a cup. Then I picked up a couple of things for Maisie, a really cute dress and matching shoes. I also picked up mittens and a hat in the same pattern. The dress and shoes will be for next year, but the mittens and hat will be for this winter, now I just need to find a winter coat to match! If they had everything in stock I would have probably picked up a couple more boxes, a cute zigzag hand towel and a cardigan for myself.

I thought I would add a comment about the quality. On the little girls clothes, I thought the quality was quite nice on the dress (for $29.99 I feel like it should be). The shoes (@$19.99) look like okay quality. The shoes are fabric with plastic bottoms, so I doubt the lifespan will be very long on them, but we will be using them for special occasions. The more expensive housewares (i.e. vases) that are porcelain looked like a nice quality. The melamine plates looked okay, although I’m not a big fan because I find that the melamine scratches pretty easily (although I do have a number of melamine plates on display). I can’t comment on the women’s clothes (since it was so picked over) or the towels which were non-existent at the store.

The only funny story from my adventure is that the only reason that I ended up with the 2 boxes was that someone had left them on top of the drink fridge at the checkout and the saleslady told me that they had been there for a long time so I was free to purchase them (which I quickly did).

Are there any designers that make you go out of your way?