Consumption

Crate & Barrel MOST FEARSOME DISH TOWELS EVER

Woe betide ye dealing with Crate & Barrel's returns department.  I despaired of repacking my accidentally-Eurotrash limonade glasses in the unnecessarily complicated mechanism they arrived in, so THE DAY AFTER that post, I ran them to my nearest C&B store to rid myself of their tackiness.  I can't even begin to relate what I went through with their cashier despite having several receipts and having purchased these monstrosities less than a week earlier.  In short: 

"Sure, you can return these, no problem!"
[stares at register for forty seconds, unmoving]
"No, I'm sorry, you'll need to mail these."

"But it says right here on my receipt--"

"You'll need to mail these, ma'am."

[Repeat above exchange X4]

[Our Heroine leaves line in a huff, walks to next register, and switches on her thousand-wattest smile]

"Hiiiii, these are for a wedding gift and I'm so afraid they'll break in the mail!  Could you wrap them for me?"

So I leave the store, with a freshly wrapped box, MAIL THESE EFFING GLASSES BACK MY DAMN SELF, and only just today received my exchange prize....which was so worth the wait.  Which, as, you can see, is Saying Something.

I don't even like seafood, but aren't these TERRIFYING?  I almost tagged this post "wearable awesome", such is my love.

Crate & Barrel BAD IDEA GLASSES

Crate & Barrel sells something called "Dizzy Cocktail glasses".  Somehow, these are not them:

I bought these because they were $4 each, I had broken all six of my last rocks glasses in an unfortunate fire escape incident, and I thought they'd be good for a laugh.  As you can see, the bottoms are rounded, and when placed on a flat surface, they roll around.  This is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IDEA.  Perhaps this is why they've been discontinued from C&B's website.  I'm hanging onto them, though, out of a kind of horrified fascination.

Opposite of success story #2:  I also picked up a few of these, thinking from the eensy picture that they kind of had a Mason jar aesthetic to them.  I missed the part where they cleverly have citrus-related words inscribed on them in Italian, so it's really more of a Euro-jackhole vibe.  These were promptly returned. 

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

I'm a pretty big fan of the environment but these days I'm generally wary of any product that claims to be green. I think people so desperately want to feel good about themselves without actually doing any work that we've come to the point where there is bottled water that claims to be greener than other brands. It's WATER in a DISPOSABLE BOTTLE, ain't nothing green about it folks. So while Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day products are purported to be green, I don't know the science, and I don't care to. To me the fact that they may or may not be better for the environment snoozes in the back seat of a Hummer driven by Works Great that is zooming down the Smells Amazing highway. I discovered this stuff while housesitting for a particularly neat freaky friend. I must have scrubbed his sink every day during the two weeks I was there just because I wanted to use the surface scrub that much. It's like Comet without the Listerine and vomit references. I love love love the Lemon Verbena, but the other scents are awesome too. I'm currently doing laundry with the Lavender and it induces the happy just as effectively.

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

Slice of Life Tableware

I have more dishes in my cabinets than any unmarried 26-year-old can possibly have use for.  And I'm scared to bust out most of them.  There's my grandmother's china in storage, pink and gold and cream and not much use for anything but decorating a tea shop.  There's the hand-blown cobalt glass service for four that I smuggled back from the Mediterranean wrapped in my boyfriend's t-shirts. 

And then there's my Slice of Life set.

Manufactured by PTS America, it's a (sadly) limited line--I've only ever been able to find dinner plates, salad plates, and mugs--of off-white dishes decorated in what looks like pen and ink renderings of the mundane, the iconic, and the truly bizarre.  Ever fantasized about the Roswell landing on a dinner plate?  These suckers are for you. 

Serve your barbecue on the barbecue plate of ASTRONAUTS.

This one I bought two of--one to hang, and one to use.

This one's my favorite, and tragically discontinued.

I got my entire set in a department store china shop, but you can purchase many of these through PTS America, Amazon, or Replacements, Ltd.