Girl Stuff

This week, I got to hang out with some of my local blogging friends for the first time!  It all happened because Lisa from "My Pretty Baby Cried She Was A Bird" got an invite to an event from Dressbarn. Because she shows her flair for putting together beautiful outfits from vintage pieces,  she caught their eye and they invited her to come to a blogger event and asked her to bring three guests along.

Okay, no..I'm not a fashion blogger. In fact, if you all could see my sense of fashion, you'd put me in the category of the crazy aunt who has to be given a good talking to (and a trip back to the closet) before you'll take her out of the house. But still, Lisa was nice enough to invite me and take her chances on being humiliated on the imagined red carpet. 

This was a great opportunity because I have a habit of putting off meeting people because I'm a bit of a wallflower. She also invited Rae from "Say It Ain't So" and Jamie from "Owl Really".  I'd met Rae once before when I scared the life out of her in the pay-by-the-pound Goodwill parking lot but had never had the chance to scare the wits out of Jamie. Turns out, all of the ladies were super nice and kind of hilarious, just like I thought they'd be. I felt like I'd known them for years. Or wish I had.

Here are  Lisa and Jamie in the posh dressing room.


Lovely girls! I was also impressed with how nice this Dressbarn was as the one near my house is pretty much a cesspool of sadness.  It's okay. I talked to the sales clerks about it and they agreed. My local location puts the "barn" in Dressbarn. The location where the event was held was sparkling clean and had big dressing rooms with sofas and chandeliers like a nice boutique.

Here's Rae (on the right) and Adrienne from "What Lola Wants" who I was lucky to also meet that night.




Once again, really lovely girls! I like this shot because it reminds me of one of those "Who Wore It Best?" shots that fashion magazines do. But in this case, they both wore it perfectly. I would have been the third girl in this shot if this dress would have fit me. I looooooved it and could imagine it wearing it back to the Omni Hut but it so didn't work on me.

Dressbarn has some beautiful dresses but I'm really tall and many of them show both London and France if I so much as bend over.  Though, there is one dream dress that I'm still trying to figure out how to get.  It might just work out. I'll show you if I get it! Adrienne brought her friend, Steph with her who was also very nice and who did get the dream dress and if nothing else, I'll imagine her whirlwind life of soirees and skirt swishing if I don't get my own. And hand waving gigs on the back of floats because it's that kind of dress. But I'll digress....sigh.

It's really sad that I didn't get more pictures. I was too busy having fun for once, I guess! Though, here are some pictures of the gifts in the swag bags that they gave us.



This nice journal
                            (Coincidentally, the entry from May 18th says, "Get Art Lessons". )




                                  An intriguing Style Aid Kit and blinged out compact.

The Style Aid Kit contains all kinds of things for girly emergencies including pageant tape (which I'll use for my own back-of-the-float moment, I'm sure)  and some sewing, jewelry and hair doo-dads.

After the event, the Mister picked me up and took me to out for a drink (To Sonic of course. We roll hard! ) and I was chattering on and on about how much fun I had while opening the little swag packages and exclaiming, "Ooh! Look at this! It's like I'm a real girl!" I love free stuff. And free stuff that's sparkly - hello - I'm like a freakin' magpie!

A fancy good time was had by all. We closed that joint down, let me tell you. I don't think they'd ever seen anything like a bunch of vintage bloggers in one place like that. It was hard to get used to the fact that we were in a retail establishment and not in a thrift store! At first, we couldn't even deal with the fact that they wanted us to shop and huddled together over to the side. Even with the promise of discounts, some of us couldn't fully wrap our minds around it but before long, we got the hang of shopping in a place that has multiple pieces of the same item and in different sizes. And without the hazards of yellow stains and odd smells that we sometimes find in our usual thrift store haunts.

The staff was gentle with us though. They were really nice and catered to us which was fun. It was my first Pretty Woman-ish moment ever actually. They supplied snacks for the shopping weary and even wrote our names on the outside of our dressing rooms all The Price Is Right style.

If you haven't checked out the blogs of the other girls, be sure and do so. They are such genuine, funny and sweet people and I'd be happy to be stuck on a retail island with them any day.

Oh, and be sure and enter the giveaway for a Dressbarn gift card on Lisa's blog! 

Until next time,
x's and o's,
Eartha