CJC@HOME: Our best & worst days.

Here's the good. The bad. The best. In that order. Because that's how this event went down. CJC@HOME was last weekend, and Friday & Saturday of the event were amazing. It's just what it sounds like. CJC at a HOME. {we wish this was our own home...but we just borrow it from Lennar for a week.} It's so much easier, and more fun, to imagine our refinished furniture in your home, when you can see it in an actual home instead of our stores.

This home, to be exact. And a shout out to J Fuerst Real Estate Photography. The sod wasn't yet installed for our event, and they rocked the photo editing {and photo-taking...all photos on this post are by them}.

Our team brought in all the inventory, and then Aimee from The Vintage Estate and Gabe from Cotton Seed Designs staged the hell out of it. {That's the actual text they sent me when they were done on Thursday.} And they were right - we promised Modern Fall Farmhouse for this event, and I'm in love with how it was executed. I debated just moving right into the living room & never leaving, but Chad thought it might not look good if I was sitting in my yoga pants on the couch eating ice cream when customers showed up... J Fuerst took these photos Friday morning, and Friday night was the Early Bird event. We restocked & restaged Saturday morning & throughout the day Saturday, so while some of the furniture pieces were different depending on when you shopped, it was still really full throughout the event. If you saw our Facebook posts this past week, you probably know what happened next. To say "we were robbed" doesn't quite explain it. Even the Carver County Sheriff who originally responded said "wow, this is a big..." when he saw the house, and how much was missing...and then called in the crime lab guys, who worked on the house for a few hours gathering evidence. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten much in the way of leads yet. Fortunately, we have insurance. We pray that it'll be enough to cover the losses. But despite that, it's such a violating feeling. Someone we don't know thought they had a right to take our stuff. They spent 45 minutes destroying what we worked for 4 months to create. Worst day ever in our business, and we spent a little bit of time feeling bad for ourselves {and, let's be honest...a lot of time swearing.} We couldn't have a pity party for too long, because the second we started calling customers to let them know Sunday's event was cancelled, and posted on Facebook to catch the folks coming for at-the-door tickets, we got the most amazing response. We had gals who drove from St. Cloud to be there when we opened at 10 am. They didn't get the message that we'd cancelled, and had driven over an hour. And their response was to ask how they could help. Others showed up with donuts, and offers of coffee. It was a long day of moving everything out of the house, because it couldn't be secured, and there was no way we could re-open there. We literally got hundreds of messages from customers and people in our community, and every couple of hours, we took a break & read them. Our normal Carver store event is coming up October 20-23. Our team suggested that we take the goodwill, good thoughts, and graciousness we've received from our customers & neighbors, and return the favor. Literally, someone said, let's make some f'ing lemonade {because...when life hands you lemons}. We've still got quite a bit of furniture & decor left from the home; the a-holes didn't get everything, so the stores are full, and so are our trailers. We're doing a special event Wednesday night, October 19th from 5-8 pm. A "Lemonade Event" :)   We'll have a food truck or two, some lemonade drinks, and a store stocked full of the best selection we've had this year. From 5-6 pm, we're having a private event for the folks that had tickets to the Sunday portion of the CJC@HOME event, since we had to cancel on them. From 6-8 pm, we'd love to see everyone else! We just want to say a big thank you for the kind thoughts, good vibes, and offers of help & support. We have the best customers ever!