Window Shopping + $100 Retail Therapy: The Paul Michael Company

Last Friday I was in Lafayette for work, and when I was driving over, I remembered that they have a GREAT home store there called The Paul Michael Company. I do not know who Paul Michael is, but we should be friends. There are four stores, so I'm window shopping on limited access, but this stuff is too great not to share. The store is well worth the trip if you are anywhere in the vicinity, or passing through or nearby one of the locations.

I really love the trend in giant lamps with see-through bases. The size of these could not be undersold, and the clear base lets the lamp command the space without overwhelming it. You can see by the scale of the Adirondack chair that these are not small. The shade on that clear one was about 18" in diameter. These were less than $100 to boot.

 

 

I loved this hutch armoire. At nearly seven feet tall, it is quite the investment. There were glass shelves on the inside, and you can see that the back was mirrored with beveled squares. Exquisite, and a lot of furniture for under $2,000. I'm being serious.

 

 

They have glass jugs and vases in all sizes. A little boy in my house would kick one of these or bump the table it was on, but my they could be pretty in your coastal or cottage house. If no rambunctious happens there.

 

These chairs seemed a little overpriced at $300, but I could see them as host chairs for my dining table or flanking either side of a console table.

 

I have nowhere to put these pillows, which are a little modern for what I work with, but as a turquoise person, the colors grabbed me. Also $50 is a fine price for big woven pillows.

 

If I had $800 that I was not saving for my next living arrangement, I would have left with two of these leather chairs. Dreamy. Gorgeous. And large. They were too big to put at my dining room table all the time, but they could flank my sideboard and be used at host chairs when the leaves are pulled out to seat eight. The ideal masculine feature to bring into a very feminine home.

 

I love coral. Not just the coral, but the sea-living creature. I have coral-print curtains in my living and dining rooms. I have faux coral on my tables. Sadly, I do not have coral hanging on my walls. I am indignant as a consumer that these, at probably 30 inches wide, were priced at $150, therefore making them ineligible to come home with me. The coral and frames were in all seaglass colors. They had smaller ones, twelve or fifteen inches wide, for less than $100. I have no use for the smaller ones, though. Go big, or go home without them.

 

This I carried around for a while before returning it, unable to conceive of where I could put it. This is painted wood, attached at the bottom to look like coral. It's large - about a foot wide at the top and a foot tall - and $30. It was also the only one I saw in the store. It did reaffirm for me that blue and coral in my next living room is the way to go.

 

I have been wanting a giant shell since they first hit the catalogs a couple years ago. This one was about three feet wide, and $200, or else I would bring it home with me to live under a console table. It would also be great for products in a bathroom.

 

My mother was a farm girl growing up, who showed cattle with her ag-teaching father in 4-H. She has not outgrown her love of bovine creatures, though we do not have room for them at her house in Jena. This cow print was orange and brown, with a fuchsia nose.  If I ever find one in either pink or red, I'm going to score it for her.

 

Also, this fascinated me. I do not know what one would do with a $1,000 driftwood horse the size of a pony, but I know that the mirror behind it would be great in a dining room, over a fireplace or as a rustic surprise in a bathroom. That leather chesterfield sofa with the tangerine and coral pillows on it was making sweet eyes at me as well.

 

I originally took this picture of these round, silver concave mirrors, at about 12 inches in diameter and $40. But after taking the picture, I decided I also loved this framed print of a field. It was an afterthought, so I did not check the price.

 

Oh y'all, this chair. I wanted to say vows with it in the store. It was big, like big enough for me and a little boy who has maybe one more year of lap-sitting. It was $700, and would not fit in my car. It was also linen, which means a dog and a boy would turn it mud brown in about two months. Nashville has also frightened me from tufting. Though I love it and have none, she swears dust and dirt will settle in there. When I sat into it, and sunk, I could see myself with my feet propped up on an ottoman watching TV in the silent privacy of my bedroom.

 

These are two separate mirrors. The diamond on in front was the perfect size and slender shape to go on either side of the Dutch boat painting in my bedroom. At $80, it was not priced for me to move home with two.

 

Though I am saving as much as I can to try and pay movers, security deposits, downpayments, what have you, in the interest of staging my house for someone to pay me a lot for it, I did come home with $99 worth of loot.

 

 Two small turquoise jute rugs for the kitchen (the other is in front of the sink)

Two linen hand towels to hang off the stove

A cotton table runner that looks like bamboo

A basket you could put a six-month-old baby in to semi-hide the ugly fireplace (blankets were just thrown in prior to bedtime)

 

 

This concludes the Paul Michael tour of Things I Have To Live Without But You Should Buy Them So I Can Tell You What To Do With Them. I thought I would feel less denied if I showed them all off in the store, even if I could not take them home. Didn't work. If you venture out and get anything from Paul Michael and his store, please share them so I can live vicariously through you, until the finances from recent unemployment, unmarriage and relocation no longer have me fleeing destitution.

 

Also, I possibly have it together enough to do the Spring Pinterest Challenge. I missed the fall and winter ones because I was crying in bed. At first I went straight for this ottoman slipcover I am dying to recruit my mother into helping me with, but I have to wait to see where I'm going to pick out the right fabric. Also because I need her to help me deep clean this weekend, and not sew something unnecessary. I do have a blank wall in my kitchen that's been needing attention, and these have been pinned since I started. They're a little bit country, so check back on Wednesday to see what I come up with.