Daily Ramblings - Duvet cover madness

I don't know how many of you may have tried attempting to shop with a straight male for bed linens, or linens in general, but it's rarely as easy as it should be.  Yesterday, I took it upon myself to go shopping for a new duvet cover.  The one we have now we bought off our registry when we got married and all was well until my smartass threw it in the washer without thinking to look at the care label.  Now, I should make the observation that I don't dry clean stuff.  I'm all about easy care and very rarely buy anything that can't be thrown in the washer, even if it's on the handy dandy "handwash" cycle (which I do not know how I lived so long without!)  Anyway, the point being that it turns out the duvet cover had a high enough silk component that it just started shredding after the washing machine incident.  It's never looked the same since and although the cat likes to play with the dangling threads, it's not the most attractive thing to sleep under.

Our bedroom is filled with lovely espresso colored wood furniture, and beautiful handmade chocolate brown curtains (one of my finer home decor projects).  Our sheets have a golden tone, while the current duvet cover is a bronze shade.  Armed with a pillow case stuffed into my purse, I set off on my trip feeling like one of the poor women on "What Not To Wear" because rather than having Stacey and Clinton in my head (now that's a scary thought), I have the "rules of bedroom linens" as imposed by my husband, who elected to stay home and watch the Laker's game, ringing in my ears.

• Linens should not be shiny
• Linens should not have texture
• By no means should they have any kind of pattern, applique, or anything remotely looking like flowers
• Decorative pillows do not belong on beds.  They are completely useless and just have to be removed every night anyway.
• Manly perceptions of how one might describe an ivory tone vs. a mid-brown vs. dark brown are different from female perceptions.  Men know that women are not describing things properly.  Women believe that men are color blind.

As if all of this isn't bad enough, it would seem that duvet covers just really aren't the thing to buy anymore.  Comforter in a bag sets are all the rage and after visiting 5 stores, I decided that Bed Bath and Beyond really might be the only physical shop I can go to that has a decent enough selection.  After wandering around the bedding section for a little bit, sure enough I find the answer to my problems - a really nice, modern, and manly duvet set.  After much waving around of the pillowcase, checking it against all the brown tones featured on the duvet cover, I was sure this was the one he would like.  I called home to have him check online and provide an opinion...so he pulls it up on his computer...and then says "doesn't that look kind of grey?"  (We later discovered that the colors on his computer monitor aren't calibrated properly.)  Several minutes of convincing him it was the exact shades of brown we needed, he told me to go ahead just as I find that they don't have any queen size in stock!  Urgh.

After calls to 2 other branches, and a trip home to fetch husband and make him accompany me to the store to be 100% sure he's ok with the purchase, we ended up doing an in-store online order - which is a first for me, but a great way to do it as they'll let you use your 20% off coupon!  Nowhere had this set in stock as apparently everybody in Southern California within a 10 mile radius of my house owns this duvet cover set and we're just very unoriginal in our choice.  When all is said and done though, by the end of this week our duvet cover set (complete with 2 euro shams, 2 regular shams and 2 decorative pillows - yes, that's 6 completely unnecessary pillows people!) will be in hand.