LaDeals Part 2: Behind the scenes

By LaDiff's Graphic Designer & Marketing Liaison,
Juliette Heydenrych


You might be wondering, what to baby chicks have to do with furniture? Well, there are some similarities. In Part 1, I explained the raison d'être for LaDeals: Good design should be available for everybody.

With spring in the air, we decided it was the perfect time to roll out LaDeals. You know all that sexy furniture I mentioned in Part 1 which converted me away from the big blue & yellow box? Well, now it has a name.

Enter Elevation.

Elevation brilliantly branded LaDeals and came up with the idea for the television promotion. It involved about a hundred baby chicks and some bright yellow tags.

During the early deliberations of the LaDeals category, we tossed around names like BrightBuys, SoLos and a personal favorite… Wowsers. Sadly, Wowsers didn’t make the final cut, but LaDeals did. The next steps would be making sure our LaDeals would be bright and visible throughout the store.

Branded with bright yellow tags, LaDeals hit us with a little spring fever. Our heads full of baby birds saying “cheep! cheep!”, Elevation came up with our latest Television ad.

The ad opens on the white limbo of a studio. We see a collection of LaDeals pieces. All over the furniture and floor are dozens of fluffy baby chicks. Andy, the voice of LaDiff, speaks the voiceover.

“…some of our staff worried that the name ‘LaDeals’ wasn’t quite enough to convey exactly how low the prices are. SO we’ve covered some of our many LaDeals with these baby chicks in hopes that you’ll remember one important fact. Our LaDeals are really, really…”

Cut to an extreme close up of a chick.

“…tagged in yellow”.

The real challenge with this production was purely logistical. After all, we’re in furniture. Where are we going to get a clutch of baby chicks? (Clutch is the official term referring to a group of chicks.) What would happen to them post-production?

As it turns out, you can’t just write up an ad with a group of animals in it and produce the thing without at least a few hoops to jump through first. First and foremost, the ad needs to get approval from the Humane Society.

The Humane Society needed to make certain that the animals would be taken care of before, during and after production. They needed to know where the chicks were coming from, how they were going to be cared for and that they would go to a humane home after all was said and done. They can even designate a representative to be present during production to ensure the welfare of all the critters involved.

Our baby chicks were acquired from a local poultry farmer, and were just 3 days old on the day of filming (it’s amazing how fast they grow)! By the end of the day, these fluffy little peeps were already starting to turn a light brown shade, developing the first tips of feathers on their wings- right before our eyes.

Chicks not on camera snuggled together under a heat lamp- kept at a steady 90 degrees (critical to keep them warm until they start developing head-feathers). The rest of the chicks enjoyed the run of the studio- well, part of it. We created a miniature great-wall surrounding the filming area to prevent chicken run-aways. Inside the barrier, chicks hopped around as we filmed them dozing on sofas, chirping on chairs and pooping- yes pooping- on everything.

We kept the camera rolling as we hustled about cleaning up after the flock. Baby chicks might be small, but they, like all birds, have a seemingly endless supply of poop, which they will happily provide at any given time of day.

Luckily it was a short day. The chicks were only put to work for a few short hours, and by lunchtime we had collected enough footage to take into the editing stages and cut together.

Video is a medium that is incredibly time consuming- especially with regarding to setting up the shots, making sure the lighting is right and adjusting the camera angles. Expecting an extremely long day, I was pleasantly surprised to call it a wrap. We couldn’t have done it without the suspiciously well-developed acting skills of all these baby chicks. One in particular- named Diva by the Princess of LaDiff Lucy Thornton- stole the show flapping her (or his) bright yellow fluff, cheeping on cue and posing coyly in front a LaDeals tag.

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” she seemed to say.

Of course, no animals were harmed during the making of this ad. We hope our fluffy little actors enjoy their early retirement from the stage in their new home. They were donated to a local farmer where they will spend their days on a local Virginia farm, enjoying the view and cheeping to their hearts content.

After sifting through a few hours worth of completely adorable footage, I was finally able to pare it down to the highlights and create a little behind the scenes video of the making-of our ad with Elevation. Enjoy!

LaDeals Part 1: My Dirty Little Secret

By LaDiff's Graphic Designer & Marketing Liaison,
Juliette Heydenrych


First of all, I’d like to congratulate Elevation. As friends & colleagues they never cease to amaze us with their flare for fun & quality work. At this year’s Richmond Ad Club awards, Elevation was named best Ad Agency of the year- a well deserved and hard-earned honor. So, I raise my glass (re-usable water bottle, actually) to Aaron Dotson and Frank Gilliam.

Last year, I wrote a little blog about the making of our fun Bedroom Sale TV ad and our Perfect Seat Sale TV ad, both of which were produced by Elevation. BOTH of these ads won a silver award in the Richmond Ad Club awards for best ad with a budget under $100,000- beating out ads for Geico and FreeCreditReport.com. Again, I raise my glass to you, Elevation.

That said, I’m going to switch gears a little bit.

Now, if you’ve seen our latest ad on TV featuring LaDeals, you might be wondering, What the heck do baby chicks have to do with furniture? More importantly, what the heck are LaDeals?

I’ll address the latter question first.



If you’ve ever broken your back hunched over a disastrous self-assembly with no one to call for help, then LaDeals are for you. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I can’t afford anything at that store” when it comes to deciding where you’ll purchase your new sofa or office desk, LaDeals are for you. If you've ever lived with a cheap, crappy coffee table with a wonky leg that looks like it’s trying to walk away, then LaDeals are for you.

What I’m about to say next might be a little intimate and I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable, but I simply have to come clean about something if I am going to properly explain the true meaning of LaDeals.

Alright, here it goes. Deep breath. My dirty little secret: I am an IKEA shopper.

Well, I was.

It’s not the quality or even the style that first attracted me to IKEA, but the prices. As a poor, fresh out of college starving artist, IKEA appealed to me because it offered me the chance to lose the hand-me-down hodge-podge furniture and make my apartment MINE. My taste, my style, my stuff. Oh, and my wallet.

Hauling things home and assembling everything was time-consuming and painful, and when things didn't quite assemble properly I accepted it as a consequence of going cheap- I wasn't about to lug everything back to switch it out and do it all over again!

The interior of my home was okay, I could live with it for the time being. When I made the decision to move to Richmond from the West Coast two years ago, I did so knowing I had an extremely low budget and would have to leave a lot of things behind. I brought with me nothing but boxes, my mattress and my two lovely cats. I minimized everything I owned as much as possible, loaded up the car with everything I could not live without, and well, here I am. I made the 3,000-mile trek, paid for gas, food and hotel stays on less than $1,000. Let the record state that I am a professional CheapSkate.

So when I got my first Richmond apartment, it needed to be furnished! No longer living in close proximity to the Store-Who-Cannot-Be-Named, and not wanting to drive a grueling 2 hours north, I started my search at home in Richmond. At LaDiff.

The first thing I hear when I tell people where I work is “Oh, I can’t afford that place”. As a professional cheapskate, I have to say that I resent such a statement. With an apartment now crammed full of LaDiff furniture, and done on a shoestring budget, it’s everything I can do to shout to the naysayers, THAT’S NOT TRUE!

My apartment gets a lot of compliments. In fact, the company I rent from didn’t want to let me switch apartments last year until they had found a new tenant, JUST so they could show the place with my furniture in it. This was confessed to me by the rental company manager himself, who knows I work for LaDiff and added that my apartment “shows really well because of how it’s furnished”. It’s flattering.

So that’s how I feel about LaDiff. As a master CheapSkate extraordinaire, if I can furnish my apartment on a tiny budget at LaDiff, anyone can. LaDiff's team is always ready to help, and each item has it's own manufacturer's warranty so I don't have to live with a piece that I don't want to build myself, that might be missing hardware or falls apart when the cats run amock on it, that has a huge scratch out-of-the-box or worse.

Gone are the days of escape-attempting coffee tables, desks with peeling veneer tops and furniture that falls apart after 2 years. Here to stay are the days of LaDeals: Sexy LaDiff furniture with sexy pricing and even sexier quality (is that why there are so many hot chicks in our LaDeals ad?).

Good design should be available for everybody. It’s a sentiment shared by all of us here at LaDiff. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us in breaking down the myth that we can only satisfy those with champagne taste.

And that’s what LaDeals are all about.

Now, what to baby chicks have to do with furniture?

Stay tuned for part 2, and find out.

Spring Cleaning Time ... for your furniture

Years ago, I read Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns, about life in a small town in Georgia in the early 20th century. The story surrounds the Tweedy family and their general response to the grandfather's marriage to a very young milliner Miss Love Simpson, only 3 weeks after the death of his wife. Miss Simpson was from Baltimore - "practically a Yankee" by Cold Sassy, Georgia standards. There were many things about Miss Simpson that caused the town to gossip, but the one that has stuck with me is how she cleaned her house.

Yep. I remember the chapter on house cleaning.

Miss Love Simpson believed in true 'spring cleaning.' When she first moves in with her new husband, she begins to move room by room, cleaning, scouring, pulling out rugs, removing draperies, dusting, sweeping, scouring, and updating.

I love spring cleaning. There is just something about the new growth outside that makes me want to sort and clean and organize and purge on the inside. It's when you move the stack of boardgames on the shelf and find that missing Monopoly piece (oh, THERE's the little dog!). Or when you clean out your closet and discover a scarf from college may have actually come back into style (okay, maybe not).

Some people clean often, a lot, and regularly. Some clean in one long day every month. Some clean just before they're having guests over.

Here's the big question...

Do you CLEAN and MAINTAIN your furniture as well as you care for your house or your car or your clothes?

With every LaDiff delivery, we provide our customers with a Care Package of information. Included is a booklet that gives general ideas of how to care for your new purchase. Just like you gas up your car, refill the windshield wiper fluid, get the oil changed, check the air in the tires, and schedule yearly inspections, you need to take care of your furniture too.

The irony is that most people expect their furniture to last longer than their car or their clothes, but they provide little to no maintenance to ensure that it lasts and looks good too.

A website called, appropriately, furnituretips.com, provides starting answers for how to care for your 'furniture investment.'

A few simple tips and reminders from LaDiff are:

1. Wood furniture (veneered or solid) should be kept dust free to prevent drying out. Accumulations of dust particles that settle on wood eventually settle into it too, causing cracking and discoloration.

2. Unless you have granite, corian, or melamine, ALWAYS use a coaster to protect the surface from water rings, stains, scratches, or other marks: this applies to wood tables, glass, travertine, marble (marble does NOT like acids and one red wine spill can ruin your beautiful marble table).

3. Scratches happen: very few surfaces are completely impervious. If the surface is softer than whatever was set upon it, there may be a scratch left behind. (placemats, coasters, cutting boards... these can help keep the surface in good condition). Added note: some woods are softer than others! American cherry is one of the SOFTEST Hard Woods - if your child does homework on your cherry dining table without a mat or notebook under their paper & pencil, you may see their work left behind in your table top!

4. Often, the more expensive your purchase is, the more it will take to maintain it. Seems like the opposite should be true, right? It's like buying a car: a BMW and an Audi are more expensive to maintain than a Chevy or Ford. If you want a luxurious Elmo leather, for instance, remember that this is a natural hide in its most beautiful form, needing no correction. Because of that, it is soft, supple, and will age beautifully... but it is also NOT resistant to staining. Your richer, softer, more natural leather will absorb oils (pizza hands?), acids (wine?), and general dirt, making cleaning it and removing the stains a near impossibility.

5. Cushions do not fluff themselves. Wonder why your sofa has that smooshy look on one cushion only? Is that where you plop down to watch Real Housewives or Jersey Shore? You may need to do some regular fluffing. If the cushions are not attached to the frame, pull them off and gently push, pull, and pound on the filling. If necessary or if you can, remove the cover and/or restretch it around the insert. Feather or down filled? Feel free to pound HARD to fluff those guys back up. If the cushions are attached or it's a tight-seat style, you can fluff the seat and back with your fists. Of course, you really should consider sitting in more than one place - the other cushions are getting jealous. (photo courtesy of Apartment Therapy)

6. Glass is NOT scratch proof. Period. Glass is beautiful and very durable, but you need to use regular care, plus coasters or placemats, before you put your glass or dinner plate or serving pieces down on your glass dining or coffee table.

7. LIFT!!! please don't push & pull your furniture! Anything with legs or panel supports will break. I repeat... WILL break. Every time you pull or push an item one leg or panel wants to stay behind (that old science word: inertia). You weaken the joint where the leg attaches to the rest of the piece. This does not mean your furniture is not well made... it just means you have to move it properly. If someone tried to push or pull YOU, your legs would resist too!

8. Vacuum and dust the parts you DON'T see. Get between the seat cushions and under the chairs and UNDER the area rug (yep) and inside the shade of the lamps and on the top of the bookcase and behind the dresser and inside the tv cabinet. Embarrassing revelation: our dvd player stopped working a few years ago. When our personal Mr. Fix-it (my dad) took it apart, he found whirls of cat hair inside the unit. Turns out our cat had been climbing up onto the shelf and sleeping behind the dvd player. Gross? yes. Now we have glass doors and I dust out the shelves regularly.

9. Never lean back in your dining chair. Your mom told you not to. The teacher told you not to. Now I'm telling you not to. That leg thing mentioned in #7 applies to this, too. Your chair is meant to support you with all 4 legs on the ground. When you use only the back 2, they get stressed out and angry, the front 2 get jealous or start to taunt the back 2 because they have to do all the work. Seriously... you are damaging the physical integrity and joint structure of the chair... and you could fall and land on your noggin'! (p.s. those little protective floor caps at the ends of the legs will also be compromised, and fall out more often when chairs are pushed, pulled, and pressed inappropriately.)

10. Use cleaning products that are meant for the item you are cleaning. Do not use harsh abrasives on metal, marble, or wood surfaces. When in doubt, ask your design consultant, the retailer, or the vendor. Using the wrong cleaner on your leather sofa could discolor the leather or, worse, remove the color! Be sure to clean your wood with the right kind of oil or wax or paste. Most cleaners recommend approaching the entire product, not just the spot or stain, to prevent mismatched results. We've heard all kinds of horror stories about 'wrong product' applications: the wet-wipe used to remove gum off the newly delivered brown chenille sofa has to be the winner... that alcohol laden wet-wipe removed the gum all right, and all of the brown in the fabric too!

Basically, caring for your furniture simply means paying attention to what your furniture is telling you. You listen to the noises in your car and you look for the warning lights. You watch for loose buttons and frayed hems on your clothing. Your furniture doesn't have lights and bells, but it can give you other signs. Is a drawer pulling out slowly? Do you need to adjust the runners or is something 'stuck' in the back? Does a table surface look a bit dry? Is your leather starting to crack? These are all things that can be cared for easily if maintained regularly.

Good furniture should and can last a long, long time - if cared for properly. When you buy new furniture, TALK to your design consultant about the best way to care for your purchase. Manufacturer warranties generally cover the 'nuts and bolts', moving parts, and obvious defects, but they will never cover general use or general wear & tear. That's your job... take it seriously, and you'll enjoy your new furniture for many many years.

Operation Smile Reaction

Last week, husband, child, and I traveled to the nation's capital for some museum-hopping, 9-year-old style: American History, Air & Space, Natural History, and the Spy Museum. The Hope Diamond was "very disappointing" while the dinosaur and mastodon bone reconstructions were "awesome!" Husband and I loved the Lincoln exhibit at American History (well-told and very inspiring). All three of us were wowed by the Spy Museum.

Beautiful weather allowed for a long walk along the mall, past the impressive WWII memorial and the currently-empty reflecting pool, to visit Mr. Lincoln's "temple" and the flanking memorials to the Korean War and the Vietnam War - such powerful reminders.

All in all, a successful spring break trip... with one notable exception.

Most of the "service providers" we encountered "forgot" to smile. As retailers, our radar is set VERY high to the customer service responses of everyone we encounter. We understand that 'smile enforcement' often improves & increases with the quality and cost of service provided (i.e. fast food vs. high end restaurant), but this DC anti-smile trend was overwhelming and pervasive.

It started at the hotel reception.

We walked up to the desk with 2 suitcases and a very excited child, who knew there was an indoor pool. The woman behind the desk glanced up and said "name?"

Really?

No "good morning", no "welcome to the L'Enfant Plaza. Are you checking in with us today?" *sigh*

Maybe she was just having a bad day...

Later, at the cafeteria at the Air & Space Museum, the cashier never looked up from his machine. He simply stood and waited for us to speak. I honestly cannot remember if he even gave us the total. If he did, those were the only words he spoke.

Hmmm...

The next morning, as we were eating at another museum cafeteria (American History), husband said "have you noticed the lack of smiling here?" We both then acknowledged the lackadaisical, uninspired clerks who were sitting in chairs, chins in elbows WHILE THEY RANG UP THE SALES. Huh??? Seriously... imagine your elbow is on your desk, your chin is in your left hand, while your right hand rings up a customer... and you have the picture. A late lunch at a Penn Quarter Cosi gave us the least interested service providers yet... who not only didn't smile, but wouldn't speak above the roar of the ventilation system and screwed up our order to boot.

Curses! We were trapped in a city with a non-smiling epidemic! Our mission: find some smiling people, pronto!

Fortunately, the next morning saved us... of all places, it was a Starbucks. Now, this is a national chain that prides itself on its well-trained, welcoming staff, and that Tuesday morning was no exception. Amid a rush of commuters and morning-coffee-break DC-ites, they smiled at the trio of tourists. They made us feel welcome, and they said thank you. They made us feel like important customers.

Whew.

Here's the thing... what you PROJECT into the world through your facial expressions and body language can create a stronger reaction from others than any words you might speak. We all know the yawn syndrome: whether you're sleepy or not, if you see someone else yawn, your jaw starts to pull in that direction. (I'll bet that just reading this made some of you yawn! I just did.)

The same holds true for smiling (or frowning).

According to a January, 2000 American Psychology Society research report by Swedish psychologists Ulf Dimberg, Monika Thunberg, and Kurt Elmehed:

Studies reveal that when people are exposed to emotional facial expressions, they spontaneously react with distinct facial electromyographic (EMG) reactions in emotion relevant facial muscles. These reactions reflect, in part, a tendency to mimic the facial stimuli.

In layman's terms, this means if you are smiling, someone seeing you is more likely to smile. If you are frowning, they will frown. The next step is the mood change.

It's like the FISH philosophy, that started in the Seattle Pike Place Fish market: there are four "simple but powerful practices" that can change not only your behavior, but the reactions and behavior of those around you. Here are the 4 behaviors practiced by the Seattle fishmongers:

1. Play - bring some fun into your work life. A little laughter goes a long way.
2. Make their day - make someone ELSE happy. A small, sincere compliment will improve their outlook on themselves and on the day (and make them like YOU).
3. Be There - don't let your mind drift away to other things... the party last weekend, the bills at home... be THERE for your customer, guest, friend
4. Choose your attitude - only YOU can choose how to come to work each day. Show up in a bad mood and chances are you'll try to drag everyone down with you all day long. Show up with a sense of optimism and hope, and others will feel your mood.

This week, a good friend told me that I approach life with the glass half-full. I was surprised, because I've always thought of myself as a realist who thinks about what could go wrong in a project/situation/plan and then takes steps to prevent those problems from happening. There is so much in life that we cannot control... but you can control whether you're smiling at the next person you see. It's all about making sweet lemonade out of those tart lemons: Taking the time to notice a cardinal who is having a "bad crest day" on a rainy day makes the rainy day brighter... Try it! You might find it pays forward all the way back to you again.

Oh... and how should you handle it if you encounter a customer service person who isn't smiling? First - try smiling at them. If that doesn't work, and the opportunity exists, please try to let that person's supervisor know. Businesses want their employees to be friendly, first and foremost. If they aren't, we want to know.

I'll end with a shout out to the wonderfully friendly, happy, smiling team you'll find at LaDiff... and if you catch any of them in a mean old scowl, you be sure to let me know, okay?!

Has it really been 30 YEARS since 1980?

Wow.

We're 30.

The big 3-0.

No more swinging twenties for us... LaDIFF is officially OLD.

Here's the tricky part... we're THIRTY, and yet we were born in 1980.
Doesn't that just sound WEIRD???
Wasn't 1980 only a few years ago?

Well... to show you just how long ago 1980 was, here's a quick summary of some of the 'stuff' that happened in 1980. You can decide if it reads like history or is part of your short term memory...

• The underdog U.S. hockey team surprises everyone - themselves included - with their gold medal win over the U.S.S.R. team (psst... that's "Russia" now) at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
• "Blues Brothers" movie with Dan Akwoyd and John Belushi opens
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation (proving that history really does repeat itself).
• Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, killing 57 and causing US$3 billion in damage (hey! I remember studying about that in 8th grade science class when it happened!).
• In Australia, baby Azaria Chamberlain disappears from a campsite at Ayers Rock, reportedly taken by a dingo, (thereafter burning into our psyche's the phrase "The Dingo ate my baby." spoken in a thick Australian accent)
• Marlo Thomas (aka That Girl) and Phil Donohue get married.
• 21-year-old John McEnroe beat Bjorn Borg to win his 2nd straight US Open title. (many years before he was doing Amex commercials)
• IBM hires Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system for a new PC. The pair buy the rights to a simple operating system manufactured by Seattle Computer Products and use it as a template. IBM allows the two to keep the marketing rights to the operating system, called DOS.
• Atari becomes the first company to register a Copyright for two computer games "Asteroids" and "Lunar Landar" on June 17, 1980.
• Now 2-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks makes his television acting debut on a little show called Bosom Buddies, where he dresses in drag every night just to keep his apartment.
  
• Former governor of California and former actor & president of the Screen Actor's Guild Ronald Reagan defeats incumbent Jimmy Carter in the presidential election.
• Blondie's Call Me edges out Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to top the Billboard charts. Olivia Newton-John, Michael Jackson, and Captain & Tennille rounded out the top 5 (no, it wasn't Muskrat Love... although I loved that song when I was a tween).
• A gallon of gas (on average) is $1.19; average income is $19,170, and a new house costs $68,714. More importantly, most cars on the Price is Right still needed only 4 digits to guess the price (average was $7,200).
• Beatle John Lennon is shot & killed by deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, outside of his NYC apartment building, leaving millions of fans to mourn his talent.

And, to be fair, here's what had NOT happened (yet) by 1980...

• We all typed our papers on typewriters. If we made a mistake we either started the page over or used Wite-Out. Yes, there were a few word processors out there (that's what we called computers that let you hit a delete button to erase your mistakes!), but they were expensive! If we needed a copy of the paper, we used carbon paper between the sheets on the typewriter or our teacher let us borrow the 'mimeograph' machine (ah... smell the blue ink.....) "Xerox machines" were available at the library and the post office if you wanted to pay for a copy.
  
• When we called each other on the phone, we used phones connected to cords that went into the wall. Sometimes you had more than one line in the house if mom & dad didn't want to have to share with their kids. Car phones? only for the rich and famous.
• Want to walk around while listening to music? Simply record your favorite songs onto a Memorex cassette, pop it into your Sony Walkman, put on the headphones, and off you go... for about 45-60 minutes. (p.s. most of the time you recorded the songs directly off the radio, during Casey Kasem's Top 40)
• We had 4 television stations... including PBS (Shown on the UHF- Ultra High Frequency - channel). While Tuesdays belonged to ABC and Gary Marshall's hit shows Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, Friday night was all CBS: The Incredible Hulk (loved me some Bill Bixby), Dukes of Hazzard, and Dallas

Oh... and there was no LaDIFF in Richmond!
LaDiff was 'born' in Charlottesville in 1980. It wasn't until 1992 that we opened a store in Richmond!

Hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane.
If it's made you feel OLD, well, I can't say I'm that sorry, since I've been feeling that way for a long time now.

We'd love to hear what YOU remember about 1980 or about LaDiff when we were 'young'. Drop us a line or post a comment.

... and let the anniversary year celebrations begin!

Mr. Washington would WANT you to shop on his birthday.

Today, the United States is celebrating the birthday of the father of our country, the first president of our nation, the man as famous for his legendary-but-not-true tales of wooden teeth, cherry trees, and silver dollar tossing as for his crossing of the Delaware and leading the troops during frigid winters.

George Washington would be 278.
Well, not today actually... it would be NEXT Monday (Feb 22nd), according to the Gregorian calendar... but when Congress passed the federal law that recognizes Mr. Washington's birthday as a national holiday, and made it land on the 3rd Monday of February, no one did the math. The holiday will NEVER be on his actual birthday.

But, since his birthday was not originally Feb. 22, 1732, does it really matter? When Washington was born, the colonies were using the Julian calendar, established by the former Roman emperor, so baby George's recorded birth date was February 11, 1731... *sigh*.

So now we have Feb. 11th, Feb. 22nd, and a floating third Monday.

To make matters worse for the first commander-in-chief, most states, ignoring the federal 'ruling', call it Presidents Day. So now Mr. Washington has to share his day? Perhaps it refers to a joint celebration for Washington and Lincoln; after all Lincoln's birthday was Feb. 12, 1809. Some say it's to honor ALL of the 40+ presidents. Personally I like to think that it's for George & Abe. I'm not ready to have a holiday for Calvin Coolidge just yet (no offense).

Okay... so the holiday is set. The kids are gleeful because it's one more day without school (unless they have endured multiple snow days in the weeks preceding). Grownups without kids are gleeful if they work for federal organizations and the like who tell them they don't have to work that day.

And... retailers are gleeful because people go SHOPPING.

What? Shopping on Washington's Birthday?

What is the meaning of this unusual and possibly irreverent tradition?

Shouldn't we all be researching our history, visiting famous Washington monuments & memorials like the beautiful life-size marble created by Jean-Antoine Houdon that lives in the exquisite, classical Virginia State Capitol building right here in downtown Richmond? (We're rather smitten with Mr. Washington around here, since he is the first of the 8 presidents born in our beautiful state.)

Well, yes, probably...
But, instead, over the last several years, retailers have realized that they have a captive audience with a 3-day weekend. Unlike Memorial Day and Labor Day, the pools aren't open and the beaches are cold, so what's a federal employee to do?

SHOP!

The furniture industry took the marriage of Washington's birthday and selling furniture so seriously, they even founded the American Furniture Hall of Fame on his birthday (his, uh, Gregorian 'real' one: Feb. 22) in 1988.

I for one think Mr. Washington would want his citizens to shop on his birthday. It stimulates the economy. It helps your community. It builds a local tax base (when you shop locally, of course... and you do, right???). And that 'retail therapy' high you feel when find and buy something you love - well - that's gotta be good for America, right?

So, today, on this Washington's Birthday/Presidents/Presidents' Day, as a citizen of this fine country, of the beautiful state of Virginia where this important man was born, I ask you, I implore you, I beseech you to do your patriotic duty.

Get out there and SHOP! ...especially if you want some terrific modern or contemporary furniture that you can only find in a one-of-a-kind 3-story showroom in downtown Richmond...

p.s. LaDiff is open 11-5 today, just for Mr. Washington.

Home Entertainment... then & now

This Saturday, LaDiff is hosting our 7th annual Home Theater Event... except this year we've renamed it our Home Entertainment Event, because now we can 'entertain' ourselves electronically in any room of the house!

Ray Lepper from Home Media of Richmond is going to show us and you all kinds of gizmos and gadgets to bring us up to speed on what's available out there. He'll let us in on all the new secrets of wireless capability so that you can program, watch, enjoy, and be entertained anywhere and everywhere in your house.

Which got me to thinking...

The 'what' is really nothing new... it's the HOW that's the new part (the gizmos and gadgets, that is).

When I was a kid, my sister and I enjoyed 'home entertainment' all the time! When I think about it, our house was light years ahead of its time in terms of what was available... especially circa 1979.

You see, our dad was (and still is) a gadget freak. A nut. A junkie.

It all started with the trains. When little Jimmy was a boy, he liked trains. He liked Lionel trains, and he got new ones every year for his birthday and for Christmas (and he got upset if he did not get the one he asked for... yes, we have family video footage to prove this little temper tantrum to his grandchildren.) When I was a very small child, Jimmy's train village took up an entire room in our basement. Occasionally he would let my sister or me wear the conductor's hat, too. Now the trains are packed away... (we need to change that).

Then there were the phones. Jimmy worked for 'the phone company'. We had LOTS of phones. When most of our friends had 2-3 phones (1 in the kitchen, 1 in their parents' bedroom, and 1 in the study or den), we had... 17. Yes. We had 17 phones. Oh, and they ALL worked.

We had the expected princess styles in the bedrooms (and bathrooms), and then we had the novelty phones: Mickey Mouse, Celebrity, Stars & Stripes. When our friends came over, there were two distinct favorites: the switchboard and the phone booth. The switchboard had all of the wires and plugs, just like the kind Lily Tomlin used when she squawked "one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy" on Laugh-In. And it worked.

The phone booth was the real hit though. The payphone inside the booth really did require quarters to call out. ... which reminds me of the payphone episode in The Brady Bunch... a plan that went bust on poor Mike Brady... but I digress.

This was the kind of phone booth that helped Clark Kent become SuperMan, the kind that college students used to stuff themselves into for photo opps, the kind that my giant stuffed gorilla from a long ago boyfriend used to live in, after I left for college.

So, we've got the trains and the phones. We also had GAMES. Board games were a huge part of growing up for us. From Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, and Sorry, we moved onto Operation, Twister, Life, Trouble, and Clue. Of course we had the requisite Monopoly sets, multiple Scrabble boards, and, later, Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit.

And, of course, when 'video games' came out, my dad had to get the latest and greatest gadget of them all: PONG by Atari. For those of you too young to remember this early video game, you can click here for a PONG video version. Note the high skill and technical prowess required........ to stay awake while playing.

Thanks to my dad's gadget-habit, we girls also had great stereo systems, walkie-talkies, cb radios, early cell phones (the ones that actually came in a bag you kept in your car), and COMPUTERS!

So, I guess when I begrudge my daughter some screen time with the TV, Wii, DS, or computer, I really need to think back to the time I spent on 'Home Entertainment' growing up. Gadgets can make our lives simpler AND more complex. We love 'family game night' at our house, because it means we turn OFF the tv and play charades or a board game. We also love having teams and challenging each other to a bit of Wii bowling (my 9-year-old is darn good... and my Mii is cuter than I am, so it's a whole lot of fun!).

However you enjoy 'Home Entertainment' with your family and friends, we hope you'll visit LaDiff this Saturday, Feb. 6th, to get a glimpse at some of the NEW ways we can be 'entertained' at home.