Photo courtesy of jpmdesign
This is a long story so grab a cup of coffee… it will may be a while.

It starts with my love of this room, that mirror, and Target (pronounced Tar-shay… it’s french). This store continues to amaze me… its huge – the frozen food is a few aisles over from shoes which is a few aisles over from makeup which is a few aisles over from toilet cleaner which is a few aisles over from home home decor… it’s awesome.  Each time I come out with a new bikini, a plunger, candle sticks, and a bag of Doritos (for the ride home, obviously), or some combination eerily similar to that.

And can we give props to their inventory department? Everything is continually updated, which on one hand is great because there is always something new, exciting, and fun.  Unfortunately, things sell fast, so if you don’t snap something up while you are there, someone else will.  This is where my story of the quatrefoil mirror starts…

A few weeks back, while browsing the home goods department for fun, I spotted a fabulous quatrefoil mirror hanging among the picture frames.  “Twenty bucks?” I thought… “Great deal!”  But alas, Kris has me on a “budget” and so, in an attempt to be good, I thought, “This will still be here a few weeks from now.  I’ll sleep on it, and I’m still wanting it, I’ll go back for it.”  TERRIBLE IDEA!  Damn budget!

Who knew this mirror was in such high demand?!  Over the weekend, I headed back to Target to pick up three of the quatrefoil mirrors to hang above our bed.  What did I find? Empty shelves.  Some sneaky bargain hunters had beat me out!  “Deep Breaths” I thought… “I’ll find it online.”  And what did I find?  A whole lot of nothing.  I turned to eBay, Amazon, random Google searches and what did I find??  Super expensive mirrors identical to the one I passed up at Target!  Dah!

$150 on Ebay
$60 from Lowes
$229 Ballard Designs
$385 Amazon
$329 Shades of Light

NOOOOOOOOOO!

I am a resilient girl… I picked myself off the floor after 2 good hours of crying, and picked up the phone.  I called Target headquarters.  A very pleasant woman with a southern accent picked up, and I calmly described the mirror.  She said “Oh honey, we have a lot of mirrors that look like that across our stores… can you be more specific?”  Um… it was around twenty dollars?

Apparently that tidbit of detail helped, because 30 seconds later, we had a sku number, and she was listing off stores that showed availability.  Each store showed that they had one left.  Oh man, my work was cut out for me.  Sneaking out of work a bit early last night, I headed to the first Target.  None.  Next Target… they had one – SCORE!  Next target SCORE – they had one too!  Next Target?  Bust. It was 9:00 at night, I had already been to four Target stores, I was hungry and annoyed, but I just needed one more and I was home-free. I think someone in the heavens was rooting for me, because at my fifth store, I won.

Game over, mirrors acquired.

Along with the mirror I left with two blue and white chevron pillows, a sweet little scroll pattern breakfast tray, a new bikini, the DVD box set of Mad Men, and some girl scout cookies… just to show Kris what he can do with his “budget”.