(All Photos: Theo Richardson/Rich, Brilliant, Willing)

Find yourself wandering Design Miami discouraged by the price tags on the likes of Studio Job's Bavaria-inspired marquetry table (at Moss, booth 16)? Feeling inadequate in the midst of collectors writing five-figure checks for meta-art that makes your head spin, like Vik Muniz's photograph of a Cindy Sherman untitled film still (at Sikkema Jenkins, Art Basel booth D13)? Proceed directly to the Box Top Shop, which is chock full of limited-edition design objects that are much, much easier on the wallet than, say, Ai Weiwei's massive wedding cake-cum-light sculpture at Mary Boone (Art Basel booth F7). Box Top is no mere pop-up shop; it's a four-day retail experience. Open through Saturday in Miami's Design District (4141 NE 2nd Ave.), the ephemeral emporium is the collaborative effort of I.D. Magazine, Areaware (our favorite purveyor of extraordinary things), and "quintessential lifestyle navigator" Charles & Marie.

The interior of the 2,300-square-foot shop was designed by Rich, Brilliant, Willing, the Manhattan-based design firm of Theo Richardson, Charles Brill, and Alexander Williams (who also did the ever-so-lovely photography for Areaware's freshly redesigned website). It's a clever celebration of shipping materials, with multi-tasking cardboard boxes and tape serving as display surfaces, storage, and design elements while allowing the entire shop to be assembled in a single day.

So what's for sale? From Areaware comes 22-karat gold, copper, and chrome versions of Harry Allen's iconic Pig Bank, Rollerstop, and Banana Bowl, any of which should fit in one of I.D.'s limited edition of 300 tote bags ($50 each) that feature exclusive graphics by Konstantin Grcic, Tord Boontje, and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. Meanwhile, Charles & Marie offers a new series of Yoga Chairs by Lucas Maassen made especially for the shop. Conclude your afternoon of design retail therapy by relaxing in the shop's lounge (furniture by Vitra) and knocking back a Bionade organic soda. Don't forget to tell them that UnBeige sent you.

Last week we recommended the new Neiman Marcus Christmas Book's life-size Lego likenesses as a way of staving off (or at least wholly denying) the recession depression that has us rationing Q-Tips, but now that UnBeige HQ has received its hard copy of the over-the-top luxury gift catalog (with stunning cover art by painter Susan Sales), we can get down to the serious business of holiday coveting.

Forget the Legos, because now we're scheming to own one of ten M-Velope transformable structures created by artist and designer Michael Jantzen especially for Neiman Marcus. It's a cabana! It's an office! It's a place to keep one of the "12 to 15 thoroughbred horses" that are part of another Neiman Marcus uberpresent! Jantzen's rebuildable and rearrangeable M-Velope (pictured above, on what may or not be planet Earth) is a 15-foot high by 14-foot wide by 17-foot deep structure with a steel frame and hinged panels made of Accoya, a "new wood species" that's 100% sustainable. A green dreamshed can be yours for $100,000, not including delivery and installation costs.

We're still putting the finishing touches on our Charles and Ray Eames Halloween costumes, but Neiman Marcus is already stoking our excitement for the holidays (although we hear that Santa's portfolio is in rough shape). The luxury retailer has released its 2008 Christmas Book, and among this year's preposterous presents are life-size LEGO replicas created by New York artist Nathan Sawaya. For $60,000, Sawaya will "brickalize" you or anyone else you choose (provided that you have the right to his or her likeness, warns the catalog) into a life-size LEGO sculpture. A video on the Neiman Marcus website shows the artist at work on the LEGO couple pictured in the catalog (and above) as Sawaya fashions an evening gown out of tiny red bricks with the help of glue, reference photos, and a peppy soundtrack. Stacked behind him in color-coded clear plastic boxes are the 1.5 million LEGO bricks he keeps on hand in the studio. And really, what better way than with $120,000 worth of LEGO sculptures to tell your parents that they did a terrible job teaching you about fiscal responsibility?

We were sure that the iconic Strand tote bag had reached its design apex with the lovely toile de Jouy number we picked up on the way out of the bookstore's recent Richard Hell and Christopher Wool event, but Ron Hogan of our bookish brother blog, GalleyCat (and a tote bag expert if ever there was one), has the scoop on the newest version. Designed by cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic novelist Adrian Tomine (whose work you probably recognize from his outstanding, moody-hued New Yorker covers), the bag features Tomine's drawings of "the many faces of Strand customers, and there are different people depicted on each side," notes the Strand's website, where the tote sell for a cool $10.95 alongside those featuring illustrations by Art Spiegelman and David Hockney.

Tomine, a Strand regular, gave Hogan a peek into his process. "I am by nature a people watcher, but in the case of this project, the faces were mostly imagined by me while sitting in my studio," he wrote in an e-mail. "It's always a dicey thing trying to draw unsuspecting strangers in public, and I wouldn't have wanted to cause any commotion in one of my favorite New York book stores." Hogan reports that the Strand is now at work on bags featuring book covers drawn from a list of the store's all-time most popular titles. Here's hoping that Tintin In The Land Of the Soviets makes the cut.

Following up on yesterday's whirlwind tour of Olympic torch design, we bring you news of torch-related souvenirs, now selling briskly in Beijing. According to our UnBeige spy in the People's Republic, among the most popular Olympic trinkets is a lighter (pictured in box, at near left) that is "essentially a mini-version of the current torch design," says our spy. "Ballparking it, they should be around $10—less if one can negotiate in Mandarin." Sale of the torch lighters is technically illegal, because they are not among the products affiliated with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, which favors "medallions in fancy cases." Meanwhile, Olympic sponsor Lenovo is taking souvenir more literally and selling torch-inspired USB memory sticks (above, at far left).

As for other Olympic memorabilia, much of it is plastered with images of the "fuwa," the five sprightly mascots (Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini) that may or may not fulfill horibble prophecies and/or portend natural diasters. Notes our culturally astute correspondent, "Incidentally, as Chinese names are rather maleable—these names and the name 'Auyun' (the Chinese for Olympics) have been quite popular as new baby names throughout the mainland." Makes sense to us. What better name for a baby than "Beibei"?

In the town of Secaucus, New Jersey (which we like because it suggests a high-level meeting about oceans), there is a place where dreams are made—dreams of fully licensed, if slightly scuffed, design classics. We imagine this place to be at all times filled with directionally bespectacled people, many of whom as infants were soothed not by kitschy musical mobiles but by the comforting presence of a George Nelson Ball Clock. This place is the Design Within Reach Annex, which tomorrow kicks off a two-day warehouse sale (restocked daily, they assure us). And it's not just for people with cars and/or the ability to locate Secaucus on a map! DWR is running a free shuttle bus from its Manhattan studio, which on the hour will whisk you to a 12,000-square-foot discount design wonderland teeming with "non-pristine" furnishings discounted up to 70% off retail price. As for carting that dinged Saarinen table home, you can arrange for delivery. DWR advises you to bring both a tape measure and an open mind.

Banana splits. Sure, we've seen them in photos, TV shows, and comic books (where they qualify as a food group), but we've never seen anyone eat one in person. Maybe we're hanging around with the wrong people or maybe, just maybe, banana splits require too much effort to prepare, what with the procuring and peeling of the banana(s), the scooping of the ice cream just so, the artful drizzling of the chocolate syrup, and don't even get us started on the whipped cream. Enter "Banana Splitters," frozen bite-sized banana slices filled with chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry non-fat frozen yogurt and covered in dark chocolate.

This no fuss, no muss taste treat is the creation of the 13-member Virginia Tech Food Science and Technology Product Development Team, who entered it in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) product development competition. Their frozen confection was one of six finalists and earned the team a grant to attend last month's IFT Annual Meeting and Food Expo in New Orleans. One judging panel rated it a 7.6 on a sensory scale of 9. "That is between 'likes moderately' and 'likes very much'," said Annie Aigster, a Viriginia Tech doctoral candidate in human nutrition, foods, and exercise. The team is now working on licensing and patenting Banana Splitters. And to think they almost went with another idea. "We briefly considered slices of cream cheese packaged in an edible film," said John Koontz, a recent Ph.D. graduate in food science and technology who snapped the photo at left (in which the background split is missing both whipped cream and cherries). "But people spread different thicknesses of cream cheese on their bagels."

We love a sale, and with the exception of a Ralph Rucci sample sale (which we're pretty sure exist only in our wildest dreams), our favorites take place at the handful of Philippe Starck-designed Taschen bookstores scattered around the globe (the newest is slated to open in Miami Beach late next year). And so, what with the impending solstice, Taschen warehouse sale time is again upon us, having started today for those lucky enough to be in Cologne, Germany or Paris. The stateside sales (at the Taschen emporiums in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York) begin tomorrow morning and run through Sunday, offering beautiful books of "art, anthropology, and aphrodesia" priced at 50% to 75% off. Come early and wear your game face, because we might look sweet, but we will totally jump you for the last discounted display copy of Contemporary Graphic Design.

Now up for bid on eBay are HP laptops that PC Magazine commissioned nine artists and designers to give extreme makeovers -- think metal, spray paint, patent leather, and (in one instance) what appear to be mounds of colorful gumballs. Proceeds from "The Computerlicious Design Experience" auction, which runs through Monday, will benefit the National Cristina Foundation, a nonprofit organization that matches donated computer equipment with needy schools and nonprofit organizations. "We wanted to work with a select yet varied group of artists that would deliver creative, fun, and exciting works of art," PC Magazine editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff tells us. And it's quite a group: Shepard Fairey, fashion label DDCLAB, Paul Frank Industries, graffitist and street muralist de la Vega, handbag designer Rebecca Minkoff, Epiphany Media founder Coltrane Curtis, shoe design firm Matt Bernson Design, sculptor Peter Harper, and queen of interiors Suzan Fellman.

"The laptops had to be fully functional," says Ulanoff. "But otherwise the designers were not limited -- as you can see by the wide range of designs on the computers." Fairey's (current high bid: $1,150.00) has a decoupage-like flair that extends to the keyboard, while Minkoff's (current bid: $1,525.00) comes with its own smart handbag, a laptop-sized scaling up of her wildly popular "Morning After Bag." Fellman adorned her machine, an HP Pavilion dv6500t currently at $1,375.00, with a whimsical horse graphic that is repeated on the included carrying case. But who needs a bag with the laptop designed by Roberto Crivello and Savania Davies-Keiller of DDCLAB (now at $2,550.00)? They've wrapped HP's "Dragon" laptop in handcrafted leather. The big winner so far, however, is the Paul Frank-designed machine. Plastered with the lovable face of Julius the monkey, it has climbed from a starting bid of 99 cents to its current selling price of $3,333.33.

What do you get when you put three design-minded Bostonians into an 118-year-old former movie theater that is also now home to an environmental design studio and an architectural firm? Something grand -- more specifically, a store called Grand nestled in Somerville's historic Union Square neighborhood. Opened in January by Jonathan O'Toole (CEO and operations manager), Wendy Friedman (chief merchandiser), and Adam Larson (creative director), Grand brings to the Boston area a unique combination of art, commerce, and style. The founding trio, who met while working at Rykodisc, share a love for discovering contemporary home furnishings, apparel, and gifts by independent designers, and they happen to work well as a retail team. "Wendy is a master when it comes to finding new, cool, and unique products," O'Toole tells us. "Adam has an eye for design that is simply amazing. Plus, at the end of the day we're all good friends. We know each others like, dislikes, and generally trust each other to make good choices and decisions."

Designed by Larson, the store's look falls on a continuum spanning art gallery and cabinet of curiousities, with walls enlivened by two massive vinyl installations of a horse and the surface of the moon. As for what's moving most quickly off of Grand's mod shelves, SuckUK's SunJar (the solar-powered LED light in a Mason jar, originally designed by Tobias Wong) is the current top seller, O'Toole says, "closely followed by these cool screen-printed posters of Boston designed by Ork Posters" and clothing by such lines as Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and FluffyCo, the maker of O'Toole's favorite birds of prey-printed hoodie. Next up for the store is online shopping capabilities, new furniture and lighting pieces, and continued collaboration with clothing lines that O'Toole describes as "unique to the Boston market." Grand is also gearing up for its first ever sale, this Friday and Saturday, and O'Toole promises plentiful savings and Harpoon Ale to UnBeige readers who stop by this Friday night. After a few drinks, you won't be able to resist taking home a discounted litter of Harry Allen piglets.