Useful shutters, iHome review, & following up on orders

Despite my efforts of freshening and brightening up the home office, I'm still continuing with "moving out" of it. The elk still creeps me out and Husband forbade me to paint the room as I have done to many of the walls in our house over the last few months.

With certain things I'm an "out of sight out of mind" kind of person. With my to-do's that are filed away nicely in a little desktop file labled "to-do," I still forget about them. So I've decided to use this:

Now my to-do's stare at me in the face.

 Ta da!

I'd really much rather look at cute pictures and quotes, so that's my motivation to get my to-do's done. Less to-do's on the shutters, the more pretty I can put up in their place.

A few weeks ago e-Bay was offering refurbished battery powered iHomes for their "deal of the day" item. Well, of course they didn't advertise them as batter-powered. But that's just the beginning. Anyway, I thought it would be handy to have a little docking station in a couple rooms besides my own bedroom. After all, Daughter LOVES dancing, so having music hubs throughout the house would be beneficial to her self-proclaimed "I'm going to be a Cougarette when I grow up" career choice. And then I thought, how nice would it be to have calming classical music going in the library in the evenings when I curl up with a book {because OF COURSE by the time the little ones are tucked in bed, the laundry is folded, dishes are done, bills paid, every room is picked up and I've got loads of time to snuggle up and read....eh...yeah.  Remember, I am talking in ideals here. Reality is a bit different than that ideal. Sigh}?  And then I thought how nice to have a music hub in the play room so Daughter can dance or sing along while she is play-doh-ing to her heart's content. And then while I'm at it, of course I should have one at my "new" desk in the kitchen should I want to rock out to the Bangles while sweeping the floor.   I ordered three. 

I was surprised and initially disappointed they were battery-powered. Then I decided it wasn't SUCH a bad thing. One less cord is always nice. And it makes the iHome that much more portable.  It just wont charge the iPod while the music is playing.

I retrieved the package from the post office (annoying factor #1...I don't like taking trips there. I have enough daily reminders of the inefficiency of government-run organizations. Kind of a pain that "they" wouldn't drop the package off on my doorstep}After opening the package and pulling out the first iHome, I retrieved some batteries only to find it didn't even work. Bummer. The second one did, but then I discovered another problem.  The iHome stock picture is rather deceiving. They stage it to look as though the iPod really sits in it or on it nicely, like it's docked and charging:

False!  The reality is if you want it to be plugged in to the little chord to make the music heard through the iHome speakers, it sits like this:

and is really better off sitting like this:

I have yet to try the third one to make sure it works. I suppose for 12.99 or whatever it's not bad, but that's really what it's worth. Not the crazy list price of 39.99. I don't feel like I got a great deal. I feel like I got what I paid for. Now to send the broken one back...

Lastly, might I shed some light to you on the importance of being persistent? I ordered a media cabinet slash end-table for my home library ( technically according to the house plans it's a formal living room, but I think it's more fun to say "library" and we spend more time in it as such. Aren't formal living rooms usually that one clean, un-used room in the front of the house visible by guests so they think you keep your house tidy?) in mid-July. By the first of August I still hadn't received it, so I sent some e-mails to the company inquiring. I was responded to in a timely manner informing me the piece was on back order and I would receive it by Mid August. September first still no media cabinet, so I e-mailed the company.  This time, I didn't get a timely response. I then called and left a message. I was beginning to think I had been duped by a shady, non-existent company. I called last Friday and was pleased to talk to a person. A real, live person!  He put me on hold and called the distributor. Turns out the order had "just" come in to the distributors warehouse and was set to be shipped. As of Monday, my tracking number was available and it will be here this week. The gentleman was really nice and said he was glad I called because my order likely would have been shipped to another, more recent purchaser of the product had I not kept pestering them because it probably got lost in the cracks with the major distributor.

 Can't wait to fill this empty spot and show you the rest of this room that my lovely, talented friend Jessica helped me with totally designed for me.

Morals of this post:
1. If your neighbor is remodeling their home, hurry and grab their shutters out of the dumpster and sell them to an over-priced antique store. Either that or use them as a make-shift bulletin board in your office.
2. Research items being sold as "totally awesome deals" to make sure you know exactly what you are getting before ordering 3 of them.
3. BE PERSISTENT! Even if you think the company has forgotten about you, it pays to follow up, and follow up again until they know you by name.

{I better get cracking on downloading all those CDs to my music library....Yeah, still working on that one. Things always seem to take much longer than I anticipate}