It's All Relative, Part II--We Head to Winkie's to Decorate Our Window

I love having a nice display window, though admittedly, it would probably work a little better if there were filled storefronts to the north of me. You're just not in the mood to look in windows if the ones next to you are empty.

That said, you've got to fill them with something interesting! Sadly, I came up with two ideas for events that are very close to each other. I've already mentioned the ballet window, which unfortunately doesn't photograph well, due to window glare. In its own way, that window for our Apollo's Angels event with Jennifer Homans on Thursday, February 3rd at 7 pm with the Milwaukee Ballet (plug) is as disturbing as "The Black Swan." The doll just stares at you, as she'll do whatever it takes to be the best ballet doll ever!

But on Tuesday, February 8th, we're celebrating every holiday with Wade Rouse for his new book, It's All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays, and 50 Boxes of Wine (a Memoir). And we're cosponsoring with Winkie's, which is the store I thought of when I imagined where I would go for every single holiday imaginable. So that means a window.

Off to Winkie's Jocelyn and I went, in search of the most seasonal of seasonal decor. We did this in January, which meant that we found a nice assortment of Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, plus plenty of Christmas on clearance. I am a big fan of garland, which gave us strands of hearts and shamrocks and holly. Well, holly-like stuff. It turns out they weren't real shamrocks either.

But we were hungry for more. Tom (who runs the part of Winkie's we were dealing with) was at the Atlanta gift show (where I guess I should have been to, as Winter Institute was scheduled during the Chicago gift show I attend) so worked with a couple of other fine folks in the department. Of course they were a bit confused when we skipped into the store with a poster and a copy of It's All Relative. Who wouldn't be? We came in to the store to spread the gospel of Rousiness, which is sort of a religion/cult where you make fun of a lot of things and Barbie is the High Priestess and your religious holiday is the Oscars.

So we convinced the Winkites to go into the back room and find us some juicy out-of-season tinsel. Alas, I couldn't convince them to let me go back with them and document the journey with my camera. Errol Morris, I am not.

Success! Our Winkite returned with some swag that made my head spin, including Fourth of July stars and yes, Easter garland with bunnies. It's suitably pastel, and I was excited as when I was perusing one of our favorite gift catalogs and spotted the baby chick mug (from the same people who brought us the autumnal owl and Christmas moose mugs that proved to be so popular). Yes, I ordered it for the store, but they run out of things fast, and sadly, I'm considered to be buying a bit late for Easter in the home business. Hope they have the carrot tapers!

It turns out that even Winkie's doesn't sell Father's Day garland. It's the next frontier, I suppose. Perhaps there's a class where I can learn to make my own.

So we came back and Jocelyn decorated one of our flat windows, perfect It's all Relative, and it's funny friends, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear me Scream and Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler. Rouse's first memoir, America's Boy, is sadly no longer easily available, but I might still have my copy. What the heck? I linked to it anyway so you could see the book jacket of the paperback.

And yes, it is the perfect backdrop for a photo with the author. Come for the photo op, stay for the funny. Event reminder--it's Tuesday, February 8th, at 7 pm. We're hoping that Mother Nature is too exhausted to snow anymore.

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Weather-dendum. It's possible we will close a bit early both tonight (Tuesday, 2/1) and tomorrow (Wednesday, 2/2), depending on the weather. Jennifer Homans is flying into Milwaukee late Wednesday. That gives her some time for plane delays, 24 hours in fact. Let's hope everything goes as smooth as it can go on a February in Wisconsin.