Thwarted. Denied. Stymied.

Update: The word on the street is that everybody had this same experience yesterday, only finding the Orla Kiely storage boxes and none of the dishes. The indefatigable Holly at Decor8 has discovered that the rollout date for the dishes and stuff is now February 15, and in fact, Target has updated their website to say this. So they'll probably get all the Valentine's stuff off the endcaps and replace it with the Orla Kiely. So I'm back down to DefCon 2.

We just arrived back in Atlanta from a weekend at the mountain house, with my parents in tow. Mom and Dad had been up in North Carolina for all of January, so Mom and I had two important items of business: to watch the first episodes of "Lost," which I'd tivo'd for her, and to go to Target to check out the Orla Kiely stuff. It's not like I'm obsessed or anything. I just didn't want to miss out on the lovely things.

So we walk in to Target and beeline straight to the housewares section. I don't see anything new anywhere. They still had the endcap with the storage boxes, but nothing else. No dishes, nothing in the table linens, nothing. So I nabbed a passing red-shirted employee. I asked him whether they had stocked the Orla Kiely, and he said no, but that it would probably happen "within the week." I gathered my thoughts and asked a pointed question. "Huh?" I said. He said, "We're kind of behind because of the holidays." I was like, "You mean like, the Christmas holidays that were over a month ago?" And he was like, "I'm going to walk through the little swinging doors that say 'Associates Only' now."

So I whipped out my handy iPhone. iPhone! And I got the number of the Target down the road. I spoke to the operator. She had no idea what I was talking about but got someone from Housewares. By then I could only croak, "Kiely. . .Kiely. . ." She told me to hang on, then she came back and said, "No, I don't see anything new over there." And I said, "Well maybe this week?" And she said, "Um, uh huh!" So they're behind too, apparently. Nobody seemed to feel any sense of urgency about this. Kiely! Kiely!


Did any of you go to Target today? Any sign of the stuff? My mom led me gently from the store, and only a trip through T. J. Maxx really took the edge off the pain. I now feel that my SuperTarget is not so super, but is in fact SlackerTarget. So we'll see.

It was still a nice-enough day.