Today I'm totally uncoordinated. Brown pants with black shoes. A blue sweater with non-matching successories. Forgot to put cream in my coffee. All pretty decent indicators of how my day has been thus far.
In slightly more cheery news, I scored a FREE lid for my sugar bowl this weekend. We have the Lenox Bellina set (
which Joey picked out and I loooooove...and yes, we actually really use it) and in one of my fits of reorganization of the basement (
before I got my china cabinet) I must have accidentally tossed out the lid to the sugar bowl. Blonde moment, much?
I contacted Lenox to order a new one, but even with their "50% off replacement guarantee," I was still looking at a charge of $50+. For some horrible reason, you can't order just the lid - you have to buy the whole thing.
Seriously, Lenox. Fix that. As a Plan B, I signed up for the
Replacements, Ltd. newsletter, which from my hours of research is the only retailer that sells just the lids. However, it's not something that comes into stock often. I've been on the mailing list for about 8 months and have yet to see a sugar bowl lid pop up in inventory. Teapot lid? Billions of them. Nada on the sugar bowl.
I remained patient...even visited the Lenox outlet in Birch Run from time to time to see if they had a lone lid or even a super great clearance deal on one I could snag...but no luck. My options were still a $50+ replacement piece - even @ second quality.
So imagine my surprise when I took a little stroll through the store this weekend to again, hunt for my precious lid. I took a look through the entire store, and all the sugar bowl lids really started to look the same.
Wait for it. Wait for it. I managed to find a second quality sugar bowl in another pattern (
but still platinum trimmed) at 85% off and walked it over to the Bellina set to do a little one-on-one comparison.
LIGHT GOES OFF! All the stinkin' lids are the same! I scurried to the cash register to purchase my little gem for a grand total of $22.
"But Kristi," you say. "You said in the beginning that you scored a free lid."
Why yes, I did. And the story continues...
The store manager went to ring me up and my total came to $60 something and some change, which I obviously refuted. Turns out the sugar bowl was on the wrong shelf and was actually a first quality piece and was only 35% off. Rats.
I told him I needed any platinum rimmed sugar bowl lid as a replacement to mine - didn't matter which pattern - but I wanted the 85% off deal to make it worth my purchase. Much to my delight, he marched in the back room and came back with a selection of lids for me to choose from! Apparently they keep lids of sets that are broken as replacements
which I asked for the previous million times I'd been in the store. I guess you just have to ask the right person. I said something to the effect of, "I'm so excited I can just buy the lid." To which he responded, "You don't have to buy anything." Um. Say what?
Long story short, he wrapped it up and sent me on my merry way - for free! My china cabinet is finally back in order and my OCD is at peace.
Thank you, Barry from the Lenox store. I heart you.