New Linens from France

I simply could not resist this beautiful French Linen line, produced in the countryside of Aix en Provence in France. The company is strongly dedicated to the authenticity of its "Provence" roots. CANNISSE has created a reputation in France, for garments which have unique shapes and matching layers. There are over 400 shops in France that carry Cannisse, and the company owns boutiques in St. Tropiez, Cannes and Juan les Pins. Now you can pick it up at Tender Treasures!

New CP Shades very cool stuff...

Sourcing through the Designers and Agents show a few months back, I came across clothing that I used to buy a lot for myself...CP Shades. This booth was so filled with natural fibers, eco fabrics, and soft luscious fabrics that I was just drawn in, and ended up buying a few things. We just received this delivery and although I"m still working on getting photos for everything, take a look. Lots of nice tops for spring and summer, especially if you don't mind the wrinkled gauzy cotton and linen look.

Now Available at TenderTreasures.com -- Flax Generous

We've had so many requests to carry the Flax Clothing Generous sizing that we have now added it to our website. Our first delivery begins March 3 but you can pre-order to reserve your items now.

We welcome your feedback, and your special orders. This is an exciting new addition to Tender Treasures, so we hope you will let us know your needs for this new department.

Our beautiful curvacious model was so much fun to work with, so I hope that you enjoy the new look of our Generous Flax page.

Montrose Link on the Tender Treasures Home Page

• Old Town Montrose has a lot of wonderful events coming up. You should check them out:
  
  February 24- Founders Day from 9-2 pm
  May 4 -Kids N Kritters Day 9-2
  June 7-8 Montrose Arts and Crafts Festival 10-6
  July 6 - Block Party and Hot Rod Show 9-2
  August 24 - Montrose Book Festival 9-2
  September 21 - Montrose Invitational Classic Car Show
  October 31, Montrose Halloween Spooktacular
  November 22 - Montrose Old Town Christmas
  
  If you are looking for a day out, and you would like to support those of us who are hoping to keep the spirit of a real small town America alive then please come on over! We would love to see you all.
  
  Tender Treasures staff would be thrilled to help you out, whether you're just browsing, or looking for a particular gift for a child, or some nice comfy linen clothing for yourself.

Costumes are BACK!!!

Please join us for our

Halloween Dress UP Day

Trunk Show

featuring a collection of costumes from "Little Adventures"

Saturday, October 13

12:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Refreshments will be served all day.

Don't miss the Fun and the Fantasy

Please call our store 818-248-2260 for reservations.

All kids with reservations are entered into a drawing for a $100 Gift Certificate

Our Montrose Store address is 2280 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 818-248-2260

But Wait! It got worse!!

This is the end of a LOOONG week. On top of all the failures previously mentioned we had a total and complete power failure at the warehouse on Tuesday. I sat in the DARK until 9:30 pm when the power finally was restored. My wonderful landlord here at the warehouse, and his property manager, plus the electrician were so great and they persevered to get the power restored so that all of our nighttime polling between locations was not interrupted.

I apologize to any customers who have tried to call us on the phone over the past few weeks, and received a "no answer." Between the phone and power failures we have missed many of your calls. But we're back now, and willing and ready to help.

Technology and the 25 year old Tender Treasures

In a few months, Tender Treasures will begin a year long celebration of our 25th anniversary. When the first Tender Treasures opened in a 100 Square Feet space on Raymond Ave. in Old Town Pasadena, we didn't even have walls that reached all the way to the ceiling. In other words, we were a cubicle inside what was then the Antique Mall. We paid $100 rent, and we had one employee. There was no cash register, and incidentally....there were also no customers! Old Town Pasadena had yet to be developed, and the empty buildings were a refuge for the homeless population of the area. A few brave souls who came for lunch to a wonderful restaurant across the street would wander over, and sometimes make a purchase. This was in 1983.

Flash forward to Friday, September 7, 2007. Tender Treasures is a 2700 square foot retail space, plus a 3000 square foot warehouse. We have ten employees, and the walls reach all the way to the ceilings in both locations! We have eight computers, and rely on them every minute of every day. Two weeks ago, while I was out of town, the software which imports our internet orders into our computers, stopped working and is STILL not fixed as of today. On Friday, September 7, I arrived in our warehouse to find that our phone lines, our internet service, and our alarm were not working!! This would have been a blip on the screen in 1983, but today it is a big deal. It means we cant do business. Although our phone lines were finally fixed on Friday, and the internet came back as a result, I had a whole day to wonder how we had morphed into a technology-driven business that can be stopped in our tracks by a telephone line. At one point, a customer service representative located in India, was telling me not to worry. He assured me it would all be fixed by September 11.

More later on this topic

Introducing a new look for Tender Treasures

If you are looking for a fresh new look, something a bit artsy and feminine then you might want to take a look at our new collection of Luna Luz fashions at Tender Treasures. And yes...that gorgeous model is Crystal, who used to be our customer service representative but has now moved on to a career in film editing. The dresses are just fantastic, and the cottons and lycras are so soft and beautiful. Please let me know what you think!!!

Los Angeles County Museum of Art Friday Night Concert Series

Meet me at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where my husband will be performing an all too rare Russ Ferrante Trio concert. You can get the details here: http://www.lacma.org/programs/FridayNightJazz.aspx#Ferrante

Charity Auction on EBAY

I am trying something new! Thinking of creative ways to raise money for the charities we support at Tender Treasures is a particularly enjoyable task for me. We've done lots of things in the past 25 years to help out our friends. At one point, we asked our Beanie Baby customers to bring a pound of coffee for the local homeless shelter, and they would get a discount on their purchases. We raised 5000 lbs of coffee for the homeless shelter, enough to last for a couple of years!!

Ongoing, we have a special rack called "Claire's Closet" which is cool recycled children's clothes that my daughter Claire finds during her constant thrift store shopping. We sell them and give the money to the Glendale Humane Society, a local no-kill shelter with a heart.

So now..I'm trying something new! I have lots of vintage Angelheart clothing, the special collections that were designed as a higher end offering by Jeanne Englehart when she owned the Flax company. I am putting them up on Ebay for sale, and donating the proceeds to Glendale Humane Society, as well as Union Station Homeless Services. So, for you Angelheart collectors, take a look.

Montrose and Tender Treasures

As many of you know, there has been a great deal of controversy regarding the changing of ownership of many of the older buildings in our fair city of Montrose, California. Having been founded by a series of developers and property owners who were approaching their latter senior years, many of them decided to sell the buildings at the peak of the real estate frenzy last year. My own landlord, a wonderful man named Steve Jeffers was one of them. Steve is one of the finest people I have ever met in my life. For most of the 19 years that I was a tenant of his, I didn't even have a lease because I knew that he would be more than fair in any situation. . Last year, he sold the building where Tender Treasures has been located for a nice sum, and I can't be happier for his good fortunes.

For many businesses in Montrose, the change of ownership has included raising rents. The long time ownership of the buildings insured that the rents remained incredibly affordable. Most of the older landlords were more interested in having good tenants that paid the rent on time. Now, with rising tax basis, and property values we see rising rents and lots of tenants who are facing the prospect of coming up with a lot more money every month for rent....or as I like to look at it....facing the prospect of taking home a lot less draw every month. There are leasing agents that need their piece of the pie as well, so all in all the small business owners who were able to make a decent living on their businesses find themselves in the un-enviable position of having to share a bigger portion with landlords and agents.

As one could imagine, this has touched off a firestorm of criticism from each side. A local leasing agent made an degrading remark about the merchants who were complaining about rent increases, and then merchants rose up in response. Caught in the firestorm of the mud-slinging is Montrose, the little city that I call "unreconstructed from the 50's." Its a jewel of a shopping district, nestled foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, with a winding "I brake for Squirrels" main street, and lots of shops that are owned and operated by local folk. Its a great alternative to the mall shopping, or the newer "Multi Use" developments. Its just down home.

Yesterday, I asked my employees to make a list of all the things that they liked about Montrose, and why anyone should come to Montrose to shop rather than the malls. It didn't take more than an hour for them to come up with over twenty different reasons! We had a grand time making signs for our window publicizing all of this. So...if you are here in the area..please come shop in Montrose. You will enjoy the experience, I assure you. If you do, please check out our window where the "bucketheads" are holding up their signage protesting change in Montrose.

Our Customer Service Representatives

Who are the helpful representatives at the other end of our Toll Free number?? Megan and Crystal are the two individuals who are responsible for answering the phone and taking your orders. If you haven't already seen these two fantastic women, I wanted to take some photos of them for you. Since we have a beautiful photo studio in our new warehouse, its easy!! You can also read about each of them on our Staff page . Just follow the link.

cheers

gerry

My daughter introduced me to this fantastic blog

My daughter, Claire, keeps sending me links to this blog. ITs AMAZING, its original, and best of all it is full of some really GREAT design. It takes a minute to load, but take a look. This is fun stuff. There are thousands of people who read this blog religiously, and the photography is enough to make you come back for more on a daily basis.

http://www.designsponge.blogspot.com/

Where else could you find a link for Damask Trash Bags????

We're honored to be Voted the Foothill's Best!

Tender Treasures was voted FOOTHILLS BEST CHILDEN"S STORE by the Glendale News Press. We are honored to be chosen, particularly because this award is given by a public vote of many thousands of subscribers to the paper. After Twenty Five Years in business...I"m glad our business is still appreciated by our customers. Thanks to all of you who voted for us! YOU are the best!

Take a look here:

http://glendale.p2ionline.com/SpecialSections/sitebase/index.aspx?adgroupid=100388&view=single&pageno=14&webstoryid=12170137

Re-Entry from Vacation

I wasn't sure how to re-enter my world at Tender Treasures after Vacation! It was glorious and re-energizing and so far removed from the day to day efforts of just getting out all of those orders every day and making sure that all our beautiful and wonderful customers were taken care of! But here I am. I have been filling the orders myself this weekend because of the holiday. My staff has a much needed weekend off, so I"m here at the ware house and just having a blast by myself.

May 2007 Vacation

Russ and I just returned from a wonderfully restful vacation in Santa Fe New Mexico. I grew up in New Mexico, and it is always a wonderful treat for me to return to the place where I once called home.

p>There is no place like it on earth. The sunlight is a golden, peachy and lavender glow that just surrounds you with a spectrum of warmth. The food which combines the Native American, Mexican and Spanish traditions includes the flavors of New Mexico Chile (you have not tasted CHILE until you taste New Mexico chile) and Blue Corn. There is fried bread called Sopaipillas that puff up when they are cooked, and become a hollow opening for local honey to be poured into the center and eaten.

Artists since the last century have journeyed to Santa Fe in search of this magnificent culture and light. So..you can spend days just browsing the artist galleries.

Starting out year 2007

2007 began with the death of my beautiful, brave mother Florence. She died from complications of Alzheimers Disease, but not without living a 91 year fantastic life that was widely celebrated each year on her birthdays.

The past few years with her were amazing. Alzheimers is a difficult and incredibly grueling disease for families...but we actually had a wonderful time with my mother. Somewhere along the line, I saw a celebrity on television describing her father's battle with Alzheimers. He told his children..."please do not leave me alone." That resonated with me, and our family set about organizing mother's life so that she was never alone. She had activities, and friends all day, every day. She spent the weekends with me. My husband, who is a musician, wrote arrangements of her favorite jazz standards and we had wonderful sessions on Saturday nights after dinner where Russ (my husband) would play the piano, my brother John would play the drums, and mom and I would accompany them on the tambourine, sticks, or other percussion instruments. What happened was nothing short of a miracle. Sometimes mother would not know where she was, or who we were before we began. After a couple of tunes, something would happen and on top of just pure joy, she was thinking more clearly. I do plan to write more about this, and other activities that we enjoyed together in hopes that someone else might benefit from what I called "Swing Therapy" for my mother. Write me if you want to know more.