A Bloggers’ Evening At HomeSense

Ok, so I know I’m meant to be telling you all about another scheme for our house, following Wednesday’s little journey through my plans for the study, but I just wanted to catch you up on a lovely little shopping trip I had this week. I was kindly invited by Anna over at Don’t Cramp My Style, in her new role as ambassador to HomeSense at the Trafford Centre, to a bloggers event held at the store last night. I’ve never been asked to anything like this before, so I was a little trepidatious as to what to expect, but with the promise of not only drinks and nibbles, but a gift card to spend in one of my favourite stores, I just couldn’t resist! And I’m pleased to tell you that despite my nerves (yes, I know it’s silly, but I’m extremely shy around people I don’t know), I can report that nobody ate me, hit me or even hounded me out of the store. Instead I had a lovely couple of hours drinking elderflower juice (I need a chauffeur), meeting some lovely fellow bloggers (I’ll introduce you at the end of the article) and doing what I love the best, and that’s shopping for beautiful stuff for the home.

The concept of the evening was around the romance of Valentines Day, and with prosecco elderflower juice in hand, we were encouraged to explore the store and discover our ‘Valentine’s #LoveFromFirstFind’. I decided that if this was meant to mean I had to find a Valentine’s pressie for my husband, I didn’t stand a chance; for that I’d need to put my elderflower down, exit the store, climb the stairs to the second floor of the Trafford Centre and make a beeline for the Apple store. But I decided that the concept was more about just finding things in the shop that you had an immediate affinity with, and like the hashtag said, things that you love from first find. And there were plenty of those. And all of them were for me, not my husband!

For anyone not familiar with HomeSense, and I wasn’t until last summer so I won’t tell you off or anything, it’s the TK Maxx for interiors. Owned by the same people, they do exactly the same for home products as they do for clothing, and that is, they buy in gorgeous, designer style products and sell them at super affordable bargain prices. It’s one of those shops that you will ALWAYS come out of having bought something. And the sheer delight you feel when you pay for your gorgeous goods at the counter can only be matched by a visit to Aldi. You stand there all open mouthed and a bit gormless, wondering if they’ve actually put the right ticket on your goods. But you say nothing and scurry out of the store quickly in case they realise they’ve made a mistake, thinking you’ve just scored the bargain of the century.

Since discovering it last summer, I’ve made a couple of jaunts to my nearest store and have come home with some gorgeous things. This is my lovely horn handled magnifying glass that’s going to go in my Victorian-gentleman’s-study so my Victorian husband can look at bugs and other curiosities (see my last post for this to make sense and for you not to think I’ve suddenly gone delirious):

And this is my gorgeous, gorgeous, large festive snow globe that I purchased in December. The photo (my photo – see how I try and distance myself from my crappy photography skills) doesn’t do it justice, it’s fabulous…but it’s packaged away in the Christmas Box in a dark, faraway cupboard, so I couldn’t get my hands on it to photograph it properly:

And then here are all the lovely things that I spotted last night, that I would happily snaffle home with me if I had endless space and endless cash.

A fabulous decoupage faux taxidermy head, I just love how colourful he is, and the expression on his face (he does have one; I can see it):

A beautiful turquoise, aqua and green vase:

I thought this table was very elegant and completely on-trend with it’s gold base and marble top. I can’t remember the exact price of it, I should’ve written it down, but I know it was hardly anything for what it is, if you know what I mean. Absolute bargain:

This cushion nearly came home with me. I really liked it and thought it might eventually go well in my living room. But I decided it was too premature for me to be buying cushions for a room I haven’t even finalised the scheme for, let alone started decorating:

This little wooden chair caught my eye, I loved the carving and ethnic feel, and could definitely see me placing this in one of my interior design schemes. But I would have to change the cover, sorry HomeSense. That fabric’s not for me. However, you’d have a beautiful bargain chair, and it would hardly cost you anything to recover that tiny seat:

I’m a big fan of a foo dog, so I liked this little fella. He was nicer in the flesh, my photography skills let the poor thing down:

This storage box was so pretty, and the flowers were raised which was a fab detail. Forgive the labels and sticky residue on the box, I looked for a pristine one to photograph, but they all had labels on:

Finally, you might be wondering what I spent my very generous gift card on. Well….you’re probably not actually, seeing as I did post a picture of them at the very beginning of this article! But I’ll tell you anyway. Anyone who knows me well, or anyone who reads my tweets, will know that I just absolutely ADORE the colour turquoise. I’m obsessed by it. Without it, my existence would be a little bit empty and little bit meaningless. Turquoise is up there with dogs. And white wine. It’s the bees knees. So anything that’s turquoise always catches my eye. And these bowls were not only turquoise, but really pretty as well, and you can never have too many serving bowls in my mind either. So they got popped under my arm and marched up to the till, and (despite the fact that the aforementioned generous gift card was paying for them) I stood there all open mouthed and gormless wondering if they’d got the price right! Thanks HomeSense for making shopping for the home such a fantastic experience, and if you haven’t been, then you need to get your asses over there pronto, you don’t know what you’re missing.

(Flossie decided she wanted in on the action, and did a bit of modelling for me, so I’ve shared her best pictures with you!)

(Just in case you were wondering which lovely bloggers I met, and wanted to check them out, their amazing blogs are: What Sass Says, Anna International Blog and Samio. It was so nice to finally meet other bloggers!)

Have you ever had a lovely surprise gift? Have you been to HomeSense and just loved it. I’d love to hear about it, and if you liked the article please do share it with your friends x