Shopping in Frederickson

Working across 16 locations around Puget Sound, the friendly folks at Savvy Mattress Outlet showcase popular, name-brand mattresses from Simmons, Serta, and Sealy, aiming to help sleepers of all stripes find their ideal match. They also offer next- and same-day delivery service, during which hired staffers will remove your old mattress, take it for one last spin down the stairs, and break the hard news to the kids—who were originally told that it was going to a country farm filled with other mattresses.

Displaying an exquisite painting without a decent frame is like breakdancing without pants on: the art is lost to the awfulness of the display. The Frame Makers celebrates its five-year anniversary today, having served the Tacoma area with half a decade's worth of dedicated matting and art encasing. Owner Anna has more than 20 years of practice in the framing business, bringing a sharp professional eye to every individual project. Mere paintings, jerseys, photographs, skinny instruments, and more become hangable presentation pieces for walls of all shapes and sizes through creative framing. Custom framing work begins at $69 for basic 8"x10" frames with standard matting, glass, and backing, while $100 can go toward frames up to 16"x20" in dimension with regular mounting materials.

Although most chefs have their own unique style of peeling, dicing, and julienning veggies, they all have one thing in common: they each require precise, sharp knives. At Excalibur Cutlery and Gifts, the staff ensures that tools remain as close to their factory condition as possible. During sharpening services, a water-cooled belt system and buffing wheels restore a piercing blade while removing a minimal amount of steel. They can sharpen kitchen, pocket, and hunting knives, as well as dull scissors and razors.

The shop also stocks premium models of nearly every edge they sharpen. The cutlery department stocks German-made Wusthof and Henckels, Swiss-made Forschner, and Oregon-grown Kershaw knives. Ideal for camping trips, pocket knives come in both blade and multitool varieties. More genteel wares include manicure sets and old-fashioned shaving kits. Excalibur also boasts a collection of swords for the collector or CEO whose business suit needs extra panache.

To call The Body Shop a mere skin and body care store is to miss half of what makes it special. Late founder Dame Anita Roddick was a pioneer for ethical business practices; upon opening her first store in Brighton, England, in 1976, she developed company values such as "Defend human rights" and "Protect our planet." She somehow balanced principles and profit, partnering in global campaigns with UNICEF, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and the United Nations, all while expanding her brand into 2,500 locations in 60 international markets. After her death in 2007, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “She campaigned for green issues for many years before it became fashionable to do so and inspired millions to the cause by bringing sustainable products to a mass market. . . . She was an inspiration.”

Indeed, the Body Shop exhibits an eco-friendliness that's hard to come by in a company of its size. Its products have been fair-trade since 1987, and its Against Animal Testing movement led to a UK-wide ban of animal testing of cosmetics. The products are made from ingredients harvested from around the world: shea butter from Ghana goes into body scrubs and butters, and Indian artisans craft wooden massagers and tote bags that are screenprinted by hand. But all that isn't to say the company's production practices overshadow its final products. Skincare treatments such as the Blue Corn 3-in-1 deep-cleansing scrub mask often appear in Allure, Marie Claire, and other national publications.

After opening their doors in 1986, the backyard beautifiers at Rosedale Gardens have continued to stock their full-service nursery with backyard essentials to keep homes lively year-round. The sprawling, 5-acre-plus campus boasts inspirational lawn arrangements and a vast inventory of accessories to help to foster budding green thumbs. Along with a panoply of blooming buds, the expansive inventory includes garden structures, ground coverings, and aquatic additions to help to realize the dreams of fish that always wanted to become garden gnomes. Skillfully shaped shrubbery inspires patrons to awaken their inner Scissorhands, and a range of bare-root trees stands as sanctuary for backyard birds. Upon leaving the nursery, each plant promises to be without disease or insects and totes along a one-year guarantee, which issues replacements for any flora that fails despite proper care.

A sweet tooth is frequently pegged as a mere candy-loving calcium mound, and people never think to mention how much sweet teeth love movies. Stock your goodie bowl with a 16 oz. bag of assorted milk and dark chocolate truffles from Seattle Chocolates. Once your sweet belly is sated and your DVD fingers are licked clean, don your favorite blanket and cuddle up to the artistic renderings of love presented on your double-disc set. A plethora of short international productions, such as Guido Thys’ Tanghi Argentini and Michael Lucas’s Turn, give amorous viewers a chance to pause, chat, and snuggle between each brief film.