Nativity shopping (JP and Marie this is for you)

Hey Marie and JP this blog is for you. Today after class I went out to look at Nativities. In order to get to Bagdadi's you have to pass Omars. As we were passing a guy ushered us in. 'Mormon's this is the shop, nativity.' "oh its Omars". Then Matt loudly said "Oh we're gonna go to Bagdadi's first, then we'll come". Ouu, I couldn't believe he said that....ouch..., Omar's not going to like us. Anyway Catherine and I went on to Bagdadi's but we didn't have anything to compare him to so we went back to Omars. He recognized me as one of the ones who went to his competitors shop first. If I asked him questions and prices he'd say "This is grade A top quality, I know you go to other shop, its okay... look at the faces... that is how you can tell the quality, they don't have faces like that." Omar had a really nice big nativity, lots of detail, polished $350.00. "This is the best quality" Then he told his friend to show me a different one. He said it was the same quality. It had almost as much detail but it was significantly smaller. He told me it was the last one he had of that kind. He said he sold 6 of them yesterday, but this was the very last one, for $160. That's a good price but I don't think you guys (M and JP would be satisfied with how big it is) . It wasn't nearly as big as Mom's and I didn't like how the baby jesus looked. I stood there thinking about it. The people I went with weren't really giving me any opinions and Omar was being very pushy. "Okay fine give her a camel" he said to his friend. The camel he added didn't match the set it was too small. I told him it was too small and he jumped back. 'No, no its perfect proportion!' I stood there looking at it (it really was too small) "fine, give her the bigger camel". I don't think the camel he put down was actually bigger. "Or you can have the kneeling camel". That camel looked sort of cool but it was still too small and didn't match the set. There were three wise men but only one shepherd. I asked him about that. Okay, I trade the camel for a shepherd. He pulled out a shepherd with a sheep over its shoulders. It looked cool but it didn't match the set very well. It just wasn't doing it for me, nothing to get excited about. The problem with Omar's shop is he didn't make me feel comfortable enough to ask for what I wanted. I was happy to get out of there. We went back over to Bagdadi's. Bagdadi let me take some pictures of what he had which I am now going to upload for you. (Sorry I don't have any pictures of the one at Omar's for you to compare.) At Bagdadi's I found one right by the door that was a complete set. Everything matched. Nice looking faces (I like the people faces a lot, the sheep and cows are a bit more stylized which I think actually looks cool, and they are nice and big. I really liked how big they were, they fill up your hand (see picture for size). I asked him how much without the stable. He said $300. The picture below is this nativity. I knew before hand that you guys said $250 so I was going to see if I could talk him down. "I only have $250 to spend from my sister." "No, really, $300 last price." I got his card and decided I'd have to come back after I talked to you guys again. (Picture above shows size compared to me. Also in Baghdadi's shop a nice more modern looking one, smooth without faces for $100. He had some more sets around that didn't really excite me more medium sizes I don't think as big as mom's (maybe I'm remembering Mom's bigger than it actually was). I think I heard Davy and Kristy got one from Bagdadi's for $150 that looked pretty good. I don't know (Maybe the more medium ones have been cleaned out by now.) (Also out in the old city, I saw today that have smaller ones lesser quality and pretty small for about $30 once you talk them down.) I don't think you really want one of those, they're small. Anyway, I gotta go eat dinner now. It seems like there's just a certain size where they seem big enough. I think you want it to look like its on a table on purpose. Let me know what your thoughts are. Love ya, Em