The Essentials

The other night, on our way to see The King's Speech at the Amherst Cinema, we walked by the small essentials store that's next door to Tabellas.  We thought maybe we'd stop in for a quick look around -- I've always loved the store and we had plenty of time to spare.
But a note on the door said something to the effect of: Sorry, we're not here anymore.  Because of the current economic situation, a desire to focus more on our special order business, and a need to spend more time with family, we are closing the Amherst location and consolidating to our Northampton location.
I had a mix of feelings about this -- sorrow, because they had to close; happiness, because the Northampton store is staying open (really, I love this store); and respect, because I'm a big fan of people spending more time with their families.

To cut this post short, essentials is a super-cool store, full of funky things for the home, for the baby, for the adult, for the child, for a friend, for the kitchen, for the bathroom....  Stationery, furniture, dishes, baby clothes, stuffed animals, t-shirts, wrapping paper, jewelry, trinkets, bags, books, soaps, perfumes, things with a Euro flair, things with a Korean touch; they even do wedding stuff.  They play music from old records and have a friendly, helpful staff.
Stop in sometime and see what they've got.  It changes regularly -- I discover something new every time I'm there (which isn't nearly as often as I'd like!