HEARTH AND HOME: A JOINT VENTURE BETWEEN MAGNOLIA HOME AND TARGET

CHIP AND JOANNA'S DREAM SHOP

Sunday mornings are usually reserved for a lazy wake-up with Jane Pauley and the news magazine "Sunday Morning" but last Sunday was a little different. At eight o'clock sharp the doors on our local Target were unlocked to a waiting crowd and I was among them. Last Sunday Target's Hearth and Hand boutique was unveiled and I mean that literally.

For the week leading up to the unmasking of Chip and Joanna Gaines home venture with Target their niche on the floor of my Target was shrouded in black curtains hiding the space until the Sunday morning's reveal.

I have to admit I'm a fan of the pair even though they're a little too cutesy, and a little too formulaic. It's understandable that their HGTV program is coming to an end. How many homes in Waco are there that they can remodel with shiplap walls?

Their product line for Target on the other hand is well done, nicely designed, and offers a good selection of well-made objects at reasonable prices.

The stand alone structures incorporate Joanna's clear sense of good design. An open framed home establishes the footprint for the display.

Opening just in time for the holiday season meant that a lot of the product mix was devoted to holiday décor

I know they have a very Christian bent so there were plenty of items with a specific Christmas reference like their Advent calendar and "Letters to Santa" mailbox

Tabletop and ceramics played an important part in their collection. This array of ceramic pitchers in particular caught my eye.

Of course, their visual presence was tucked in everywhere including their New York Times bestselling book. They are pretty attractive so flaunting it when you've got is fair game.

When you talk home accessories and you want to keep your product line on the smaller and less expensive side hitting up the kitchen is a pretty safe place to go. Kitchen gadgets, dishtowels and containers were in abundance; they even offered a beautiful kitchen scale in their product mix.

Along with all the ceramic goods, metal and wood were additional materials that made a showing in their collection. I suppose anyone could come out with a metal tote but these storage bins mixing tin with brass had just the right amount of detail to set them apart from anything else on the current market

When you talk home décor and you're putting out a full product line you can't ignore fragrance. Chip and Joanna didn't miss on this one either. I fell in love with their metal containers with the brass band that came in four seasonal fragrances. I went home with two sugared birch cnadles to ring in the season on our Thanksgiving table.

Personal items was another category showing up in their virtual home display. Leather and canvas bags along with laptop and covers were part of what was being offered

These travel accessories were high on my list of holiday gifts.

They also  had these great leather gloves and at $14.95 I wasn't going home without a pair. I'm terrible with gloves and at that price I figured I could afford to lose them once or even twice and not feel guilty about having to go back and buy them again.

Not even the kids were left out in the cold. Chip managed to put out this great dollhouse. I'm only hoping that it didn't come with IKEA like instructions. No parent wants to struggle with a day's worth of profanity trying figure out how part D is supposed to connect to piece Y prior to having secured shiplap sections N through R to the mainframe.

If you didn't make it in for the 8am Sunday morning opening you may be out of luck. I'm hoping that they will continue to restock their shelves. In the past Target has developed these relationships with other prominent designers but if you didn't get there for the original shipment there wasn't a second chance. When the product was gone that was it

I felt I did pretty good with my shopping scores. Not only did I pick up a couple of candles and a pair of gloves but I grabbed this Magnolia wreath that has two beautifully chimed bells

that now hangs on our front door softly ringing in our guests for the holiday season.






















THE GALLERY

The Weinfeld Family, 2009
Frederic Brenner, photographer
Represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC