Shopping is Hard Work

It is. Really.

I'm back from a whirlwind weekend with my BFF. We met friday afternoon, after a 4 hour and 45 minute drive for me and a 4 hour and 15 minute drive for her, grabbed lunch and were on our way. I came home with a good assortment of work clothes, sweaters, pants, etc - and a LOVELY coach bag - my one serious splurge. I've been wanting one for 3-4 years now, so all things considered - I think I did pretty good to wait this long!

And of course a HUGE chunk of my xmas shopping is done - the main reason for the trip - lots of adorable clothes for my goddaughter - the ridiculously cute two and a half yo Miss Gracianna (BFF's daughter).

While we were there, we ate dinner at the most adorable Bavarian restaurant Schankerl Stube - YUM! See that strange glass vase thingy? That's our half carafe of wine! It's some sort of gravity dispenser - you push your glass into the bottom and it moves a little metal stopper and lets the wine flow. Way funky. And can you see the waitress in her lederhosen? Do only men wear lederhosen? Well. She's wearing the female version - whatever it's called.

And I checked out the adorable yarn store Y2knit. D bore with me for that - and became reasonably inspired to start a blanket for her sister-in-law who is expecting next spring. I got some Brown Sheep Nature Spun in Chuck Berry and some gorgeous hand painted sock yarn by Claudia in a color called 'OOPS'. The yarn is from South Africa, a beautifully soft merino - she is located in Harrisonburg, VA, so she's local and that always makes me feel better about spending a little bit more than I would otherwise. Anyway - the yarn store was seriously cute and the owner was incredibly friendly and helpful.

I am SO jealous - I wish I had a yarn store like that near me!! Ours are okay - very nice, helpful people, but the selection is lacking in many ways. Here's the cardigan pattern in the picture.

So - two days of outlet shopping, we got up this morning, had breakfast at cracker barrel and were on our way. And 4 hours and 45 min back today and I am EXHAUSTED. It was soooo much fun! So much fun shopping - but really just tons of fun to spend time with my BFF - the kind of time that we always seemed to have in abundance when we were in college - but as we grow older those times seem to come less and less frequently. Because of that we have declared Veteran's Day weekend our official get together weekend every year - a blissful if insane 48 hours of shopping insanity to hang out and talk and laugh and renew our friendship.

And I am about ready to throw my computer out the window b/c this is at least the 15th time I've tried to publish this and blogger won't load my pics and picasa keeps hyperlinking all the text I try to copy in. I'm less than thrilled right now. Okay so a little editing got the hyperlinking out - but of course that eliminated all the actual hyperlinks I put in there. lovely - just lovely. Why do computers have the ability to make a person so completely irate???