Custom Week #7 (continued): Chocri
The chocolate we ordered from Chocri on September 30 finally arrived yesterday (along with a giant box from my dad, so yeah, set for life). Apparently they had trouble with their system. And never check their email. Also, I received an email that addressed me as Kimberly. I don’t know how to chalk that up to language barriers.
But the chocolate is great. In a $10+/bar kind of way. I made one with crystalized ginger, rice crispies, and chocolate-covered Pop Rocks, and it is just about the best bar of chocolate I’ve ever had.
So, I don’t know. If you have a lot of money and enjoy an element of surprise in your chocolate delivery as to when in a six-month period it will arrive, then go for it.
Chocri. An adventure in every box.
[more on Custom Week here]
more on custom week coming after Christmas
…particularly on how it made my holiday shopping much easier.
But for now, let me just say that when I had trouble with the codes for Gem Kitty (a seemingly inevitable hurdle in these custom orders), someone got back to me in under a half hour and fixed it. On a Sunday.
I am not much of a jewelry girl myself, but dang. Shop there.
Custom Week prize #7: Chocri chocolate
Custom chocolate is pretty exciting, even when you realize that $100 won’t go nearly as far as you’d hope. After I finished the Giant Box of Chocolate Bars 2011 in August, I was in sore need of a little sweet nibble at the end of my lunch. The temptation, as always with these customizable products, is to go insanely custom, ending up with an one-of-a-kind, thoroughly inedible product. We tried to resist and modify or recreate known favorites.
J, in protest to my generosity with the Slank Shack jerky prize, possessively labeled all his custom chocolate bars “DO NOT GIVE AWAY.” This was our most perfect score in terms of spending; we spent our $100 gift certificate down to $99.87 by carefully controlling our last few add-ins.
The bad news is that we ordered on September 30, and have seen neither hide nor hair of our chocolate bars (eww, hairy chocolate). I sent an email to customer service this morning, so we’ll have to see what happens.
In the meantime, Chocri has a tumblr presence! Check them out here.
So, I can get a pair of high-quality ballet flats for basically half off, thanks to that big Custom Week prize. Although I am cheap to the bone, this offer is particularly exciting because I am the owner of certified freak feet (indicated by the ridiculously narrow size S, which is basically Ax3).
In the past, I’ve always just bought shoes based on fit, and, secondly, based on price. Pretty doesn’t factor in much, so I’m a bit overwhelmed by choices now over at Shoes of Prey. I could use some help in picking out a pair of good everyday shoes I can wear to work at the circ desk and just generally around with jeans, trousers, and the occasional skirt. I want to go with a basic black, but maybe with some kind of fun accent, probably in either yellow (in keeping with my bag and belt) or green, because I am pretty seriously a green girl.
Advice?
Custom Week prize #7: LogoSportswear
[pictured: J, in blue, in his awesome free soft shell while hiking the Presidentials last weekend.]
When I looked at this website, I was not thrilled. LogoSportswear’s not one of the hippest websites, or the easiest to navigate, and I was expecting to put my $150 toward matching bridesmaid shirts or rock climbing team jackets for J and his friends.
On closer exploration, however, I discovered a surprising amount of variety, though it’s biased very much toward tops over bottoms, items that are more often customized, I guess. In the end, we were able to get four pieces of clothing for hiking for under $4 with the $150 gift certificate. I was able to get some lovely basic Columbia pieces for hiking and camping. They’re things I hate spending money on ordinarily, so it was terrific to get them for free, and now I won’t have to borrow embarrassingly belly-baring pieces from my much-shorter friend.
Custom Week Prize #6: Sheic Journals
A quick perusal of this website made it pretty clear pretty fast that I was looking at affording a single journal with my $100 gift card.
This grates against my frugal soul, but as I’ve been keeping a journal since freshman year of college, I decided to pick something nice out for myself, despite feeling more than a little extravagant.
I guess I was expecting one of those beautiful leather journals you see in golden-lit old shop windows in Venice, and it turned out the choices were distinctly feminine and a bit Vera Bradley for my tastes.
For comparison here, take a look at the Sheic journal and the journal J got me for our first married anniversary. I’ll go ahead and cut to the chase: Is one of these obviously way fancier than the other?
I didn’t think so. And once again, as with several of the customizing companies, I feel like you can’t customize the most desirable features. For me, those would be:
- pages — lined or not? Calendar or plain? Recycled or pure white? Thick or standard? Moleskine does a great job with this.
- size — I prefer a smaller journal so I can take it with me everywhere.
- format — I used my Sheic journal on Thursday at eReaderpalooza to take notes, and half the time I removed the cheapish little notebook from its bulky leather cover so I could write properly. I’m not sure how I feel about that big leather cover; it’s more like a Bible protector than anything else, and that may be how it ends up getting used.
[On the bright side, Sheic’s customer service was terrific when I had trouble using my gift certificate information, and the design process was simple and straightforward. To learn more, check out their site here.]
Custom Week Prize #5: Blank Label: Looks like we’ll be testing Blank Label’s return policy on custom dress shirts. My brawny boy apparently doesn’t run a standard dress shirt size.
Custom Week Prize #4: Laudi Vidni
This was one of the most fun design experiences so far, even though a.) I could only afford a clutch without going over and b.) when the time came to order, the sales associate and I struggled until she finally ordered for me.
You can’t choose pockets or layout, a feature that would be highly useful for a semi-organized hoarder such as your author, but you get to pick leather and fabric and of course shape — though the blingin’ LAUDI VIDNI charm seems to come mandatory.
But, honestly, the hardest thing was just forcing myself to get a practical color for a bag that, by my calculations, costs two or three times more than anything I’ve ever bought myself. So I went a little bold, and a little sensible, and now I’m in possession of a clutch with leather so nice it’s hard to believe it’s from the same animal as my little everyday Urban Outfitters purse.
Custom Week Prize #3: Evlove Intimates
This prize came at a great time. I’d just bought a beautiful, delicate little something for a friend’s bachelorette party, and was bemoaning the finances of a graduate student, which means I can’t afford this sort of thing for myself.
It may be because it’s pretty warm of a night around here (and also that I am in many ways an old woman), but I had hoped to find cotton among the options. I also wished that some of the customizability could have covered sizing — how many women could benefit from, say, choosing a large-fit for the top of a chemise, and a medium-fit for the bottom, for instance?
When the chemise came, however, I was even more disappointed. While the fabric was nicer than I envisioned, the fit was really strange and distinctive, especially for my freakishly long torse. I feel like a custom chemise would let you choose, for instance, if you wanted an asymmetrical hem.
Especially for $95.
Anyway, not something I’d recommend to those who can’t get it for free.
