So far behind...part II

Friday night (the 14th) my mom called me at around 10:00 to say that Laura from Never the Same had called to say that she had "won" 2 gift bags for the Girlfriend's Shopping Weekend. So, Saturday morning my mom went to the store to get the canvas bags. We weren't really sure what all was involved, but we were up for just about anything.

We were to register at the Hotel Fredrich by 9:30 where we received the goodies and a scavenger hunt list. Let me just say that these bags were STUFFED with all kinds of fun little treatsies (my new word--it'll be totally over-used for a while)!!!! This included: a bottle of water, a coupon for free batteries from Radio Shack (perfect since my camera was still lacking the 2 fresh Obama batteries, remember?), a coupon for BOGO at Girlfriends, samples of Face Food, some deli tongs, some lipstick, a measuring spoon, a jingle buddy with a coupon to Main Street Gift Gallery, a coupon for a cookie from Taylor's, a week free at Curves, lotion, a shoe horn, etc, etc, etc. On the list were local businesses that we had to visit. At one of the appliance stores, Stevens TV, we had to find out the name of the owner's dog. At Curves we had to try out some of the machines. It was so much fun that we are thinking about going next year!! We missed out on the Friday night festivities which included a pajama party, karaoke at Jim's Place (I heard I REALLY missed out on something there!), wine and cheese tasting, etc. We had so much fun, so thanks to Vanessa for organizing it!!

Since I hadn't really planned on doing much for the day, I REALLY needed some caffeine. We decided that our first stop would be for a little late breakfast & some sort of fancy-named coffee drink. Here we were to sample something....what was it? Cake, of course!

Thanks to Dawn for making a delish drink....yum!

Then we went across the street to Imhoff's Hometown Appliance Store where we received these super-cute (and mighty tasty) teacup cookies!

Then it was on to Intensive Hair to retrieve this message

Next stop: Celestial Body Aromatherapy for some essential oil sniffing. My fave? Lavender. (If anyone's wanting to splurge for Christmas, this gong fountain would surely fit the bill...it was like $2300.00, but oh-so peaceful!)

Vanessa's collection? Flamingos, of course!!
We stopped to get the name of the frog in the ladies' room at Jim's Place, searched Never the Same for the "Shutter" snowman, dropped in to see baby E at In Stitches (she wasn't there, though...sniff, sniff!), Stevens TV for the dog's name & then to a flower shop for a sign. Madisson had a basketball game so we took a small break and went to LSE for game 1 of the season. She didn't get to play because of a mixup with her physical (another blog, another time). They ended up losing mainly because Madisson didn't play. That's the supportive mother-ly thing to say, right?!

Anyway, after the game Madisson joined us on our trip to Radio Shack to get our free batteries & learn about the Samsung tele on display. Next stop: Dave's Country Market to try cheese...I love me some cheese. They had caraway havarti (YUM) & some mozzarella. We all decided that we liked the havarti best. Since we were getting hungry, we picked up Kat & intended to go to Louise's Tea Room for lunch. We had to stop there anyway to discover the "Pie of the Day". (Cherry for those of you that are interested!) Louise was already gone for the day so we just chugged on with our mission to completely fill our answer sheets. We're such over-achievers...we only needed 10 of them but we were having such fun that we didn't want to stop!! We went to Gordon Jewelers to learn about Troll beads & see the gorgeous yellow diamond that was bargain priced at a mere $16,000. We walked out of there with a new Precious Moments figurine (from '04, but still new to me!) & some pink hand sanitizer. Off to Main Street Gift Gallery to learn the temperature at which glass melts: 980 degrees. My mom was in stitcher-person heaven since she discovered that they sell DMC embroidery floss--the only place in B-ville & nearly CoMo now, too!

Our last stops were at Curves where we tried a few machines, visited with Jafra about the "Royal Jelly" & learned that the At Home America special was the Chip & Dip Bowl. We got a tour of the Garden Gate Bed & Breakfast's bedrooms (3, to be exact!) & then went back to the Hotel to see who won the prizes! My mom won a cleaning set courtesy of Stevens TV & I won a gift basket full of fun coffee-like things.

There were some rather rude "girlfriends" who were being ungrateful about the prizes they won..."I'm allergic to real trees", "My daughter doesn't live here", "I don't want this phone". With that said, I hope I wasn't contributing to the problem but I offered to trade my basket with the winner of the Christmas tree. My main objective was to offer an option for someone allergic to trees. Of course, I think the real motive there was to be put back in the pile in hopes of being drawn for the grand prize of a night's stay at the Hotel. Hmmmm....

Since we hadn't eaten lunch, we decided that a little LaHa was in order. What a great ending to a fun-filled day of Girls!!

BTW: I ended up with the Starr Pines Tree!!