“You Staged What?” “The Candy! I Staged the Candy!”

Now, some of you will think I've gone way over the edge. But some of you will understand, I know you will. I've taken to staging candy.

Now let me explain... I umm... well, may be just a little, just a teensy bit of a... perfectionist.

Just a wee bit.

I noticed it when I was out shopping for my latest staging project.

When I stage, I make it a point to always have an entry table in the foyer. Just a console table, nothing large, but just big enough for a lamp, the Realtor's flyers, a small dish for Realtor's business cards, and, well, a bowl of hard candy.

So I was shopping for the candy for the latest project and the discussion between my sister and I (she's my partner in craziness) went something like this:

Me: "Ok, we need hard candy and it must be wrapped. Unwrapped is too gross."

Lisa: "Definitely, but what kind?"

Me: "Well, there's this Country Time Lemonade candy that we used last time and it was good."

Lisa: "Right."

Me: "But this house just isn't lemonade, is it?"

Lisa: "Not at all! Lemonade is all wrong for this house!"

Me: "But lemonade was so perfect for the last house."

Lisa: "But not this one."

Me: "I'm feeling it should be more... butterscotch..."

Lisa: "Or caramel!" (said with great excitement)

Me: "How about Werther's?"

Lisa: "Perfect! It should be Werther's!"

Me: "OK, now we need to decide which kind of Werther's."

And that's about how it went. I truly prefer to think of myself as "detail oriented" with a true "quest for quality." (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

Really, I have fun matching candy to the house the same way I match the art, or the accent pillows, or the lighting. And one time I got really lucky and had a listing on "Caramel Drive!"

Michele Rose is a Realtor and Professional Home Stager in Burlington County, NJ. She has been assisting both buyers and sellers with their real estate needs for the last 6 years. In 2007, she founded Rose-Colored Staging, a professional home staging and redesign business, to help sellers and other Realtors successfully market their listings with professional home staging.