Goodies from My Trip

 This past weekend was really great.  It was so fun to spend time with my mom and Mimi, and it was great to have some spending money to play around with.  As promised, here's a look at the things I brought back with me from my birthday trip. :)

First off, here's the adorable hat I got for Alice at the American Girl Place.  I knew I wanted a mini doll and another small souvenir from AG.  Since I brought Alice with me, who is never without a hat or her sneakers, a hat seemed like a great choice. :) 

Side view

Other side

Back view

It fits great and looks adorable on her :)

I also ordered a mini Addy, but she's still on her way to the house.  Once I get her, I'll do a full review. :)

Okay, so there's a funny story about the next few goodies.  On our way down to Palo Alto, Mimi really needed a bathroom break, and we were in an area we weren't familiar with.  She saw a sign for a Target store and got off the freeway.  We found ourselves in a rather bad part of town (I'm still not even sure where we were), and it took us a while to find said Target.  The bathroom was a necessity, though, so we pressed on until we found it.  While I was there, I found a ton of great Frozen stuff in the dollar section at the front, and I found a really fun set of Our Generation glasses for just $6.  The funny thing was, out of all of the Targets we went to, this one had the best selection.  We never saw Frozen stuff at the other Targets, and it was the first and only Target where we saw the OG glasses.  

Here is my Elsa reusable shopping bag I got for $1. :)  Oldest Gal gave me $2 from her bank for my birthday right before I left (she's such a sweetie), so I told her this was what she bought for me. ;)

Also in the dollar section were these Frozen color-in mini posters.  They have sparkly backgrounds and can be colored in with markers.  Mom picked one of them for each of my daughters.  It worked out perfectly, too, because Little Gal loves Elsa, Middle Gal loves Anna, and Oldest Gal can't decide, and there were three different designs: one with just Elsa, one with just Anna, and one with both. ;)

As you can see from the pictures, the girls had a great time coloring them in. :)

Here's a picture with a ruler to show you the approximate size.

Here is the "Be Speckled" glasses set from Our Generation.  I took the package pictures in the car so I could open them. ;)  The set includes four pairs of glasses (two regular pairs and two pairs of sunglasses).  It also comes with a cute little clutch that is used for a glasses case.  It fits all of the pairs perfectly except for the black pair (part of the glasses poke out even when the clutch is snapped closed).  

The back of the package.

I almost decided to wait on the glasses since it was our first stop, but decided to go for them since they were only $6 (especially since I knew that glasses would be $10 per pair at American Girl).  I'm really glad I did since we never saw them again.  They look great on the dolls, too, as you can see in the following pictures. :)  

I've been wanting a replacement pair of glasses for Hailey for a while now.  When I saw the black pair with the red bow, I instantly thought of Hello Kitty.  And since Hailey is a Hello Kitty fan, this pair seemed perfect for her.  She was even already wearing her Hello Kitty shirt. ;)

Side view of the glasses.

This pair is probably one of my very favorites from the set.  The weird thing is they don't photograph as well as they could.  They look really cute on the doll, but they look a little too big in pictures.  I wasn't sure who would get this pair of glasses, but I'm actually liking them on Jenna.  Hmm...I'll have to think about that. ;)

I call these the "Frozen" glasses, because they're blue with a glittery layer on top, reminding me of Elsa's ice. ;)

The next set of glasses is smaller by comparison (and as such, a slightly better fit).  I'm not really a fan of the whole pink sunglasses thing, but I can see how it would appeal to younger kiddos.

Side view 

These glasses cracked me up because I had heart-shaped glasses in the 80s.  Mine were pink, though.  These seem a bit large for Alice, but they're still cute in a funny way. 

Side view

Here's a closer look at the clutch.

It opens and closes with a snap.

As I said before, the glasses fit pretty well inside except for the black pair.

The whole gang with their new shades.  Which pair is your favorite?

We had a tough time finding a Disney Store in the area we were at.  We were finally able to find one in the second mall we visited, but I didn't end up getting anything there.  It was great to see all of the Christmas ornaments and to see the Designer Collection Prince and Princess dolls in person, though.

It was kind of weird not getting anything there, especially since I had $20 in gift cards and rewards points to spend there.  I was really tempted by the new Singing Rapunzel doll and the Pascal Christmas ornament (along with several other ornaments).  And if I had known ahead of time which of the Big Hero 6 characters would be my favorite, I probably would have purchased one of those.

The thing is, though, I really want to add THIS DOLL SET to my Frozen collection, and I kept thinking how I could save my gift cards towards that purchase.  And let's face it, with the way Frozen stuff is still selling, I have a lot better chance to pick up Tangled stuff later than a new Frozen doll release.  My plan is to snag it with my gift cards as soon as it's up on the website. ;)

Even though I left the Disney Store without any bags, I did manage to come home with some Disney-related goodies, thanks to Hot Topic: 

Here's what I got. :)

I loved the sketch design on this mini Elsa pin.

And this Beauty and the Beast stained glass window necklace was incredible.  I can't wait to wear it! :D 

Another sweet mini Frozen pin.

This is a full-sized pin.  I loved their choice of artwork on this one. :)

It's not a Disney item, but when I saw these TARDIS mini barrettes, I had to get them for Alice. :)  I had hoped to find a fairly inexpensive mini TARDIS charm to add to her necklace, but this was the next best thing. ;)

Here is Alice with her new barrettes. 

As you can see, they fit her perfectly. :)

I was a little bit bummed with this one.  The barrettes had one of those security pins in them, and you can still see the little hole on the right where the pin was pushed through.  Oh well, they're still really cute.

One of our other stops in one of the malls was Claire's.  I had a $10 gift card there, so I thought it was worth checking into and seeing what they had.  As it turns out, there was a buy one, get one 50% off sale on all Hello Kitty stuff.  It didn't seem that exciting until I saw all of the 40th Anniversary of Hello Kitty stuff which just happened to combine my five very favorite Sanrio characters together! :D

Here's everything that came home with me (aside from a matching keychain that was already on my purse).

This keychain, to be exact.  Once again, I took pics in the car so I could take off the tag and add it to my purse. ;) 

I really love the adorable tags attached to the merchandise.  I'm thinking of trying to incorporate them into a doll poster somehow.

The keychain is made of soft, rubbery plastic and features Keroppi, Badtz Maru, Hello Kitty, My Melody, and Chococat.

The back of the keychain shows them from behind. :) 

Another of the items I got was this set of rubbery bracelets.  I especially loved the adorable doll-sized charm that showed all of the characters stacked up.  I gave the bracelets to the girls as part of their surprise gifts from the trip.

This is one of those multi-colored ink pens, and it's the perfect size for my purse.

I have this adorable bag (and the pen, for that matter) thanks to Mimi.  While I was looking at some of the different Hello Kitty stuff, she helped me in my decision-making process by asking me what I would use the most.  It would have taken me a lot longer to decide on my own.  

When we got up to the register, she pointed to a sign that said "free Hello Kitty bag with a purchase of $15 or more in Hello Kitty items".  I thought the bag was really cute, so we decided that if I didn't have enough when the cashier rang me up, Mimi would grab me the little pen to add to my purchases.  First, though, we decided to ask the cashier about it.  

When we asked, she said, "I have one bag left."  She rang up my items, and I was a little short, so Mimi grabbed the pen for me.  That put me just over $15, so I got the very last free bag. :)  Talk about perfect timing!  Thanks, Mimi!

I love that the bag also has the characters from behind on the back side of the bag. :)

One of the places we tried desperately to find on our trip was a Toys R Us.  There were supposed to be three Toys R Us stores in the area we stayed.  Unfortunately, one was a Babies R Us (which have no big kid toys), and one was no longer there.  The store that was still in the area had one of the worst setups I'd ever seen.  Things were not displayed in a logical order, so it was hard to find things, and they were out of a lot of the items we were looking for, too.  

We were on a hunt for Zelfs primarily.  Each of my daughters had given me a list of their four favorite Zelfs from the new releases.  My hope was to find one of the four for each girl.  The first Toys R Us had Middle Gal's #1 Zelf (Sealia) and Little Gal's #2 Zelf (Ty Foon)...and NONE of Oldest Gal's.  I tried asking at the front, because often our localish Toys R Us has found them in the back.  No luck.  Everything they had was out on the shelves.  

We went to another mall on our second day (the one with the Disney Store) that was supposed to have a Toys R Us, but that was also a bust.  At least they had some other fun stores.  We found a really nice Babies R Us on our way to the San Francisco airport (we were picking up some of Mimi's friends who were coming for a visit), and decided to go inside just in case they had some regular toys.  Nope.  Before leaving, we asked a sales associate if he knew of any Toys R Us stores that would be on our way.  He suggested one, and we found it! :D  We were so glad we'd asked, because we wouldn't have seen it if we hadn't been looking for it.  It was a really nice Toys R Us with a great selection of stuff.  Still none of  Oldest Gal's Zelfs, though.  We ended up picking up the only new Zelf they had (Lullaby, the Unicorn Zelf) just so Oldest Gal would have one.  She ended up liking her anyway, so it worked out okay. :)  I'll try to get pics of the girls' Zelfs at a later date (I don't have them with me at the moment).

This is what I picked up from Toys R Us: two Lalaloopsy Tinies packages and a Strawberry Shortcake Toys R Us exclusive set. :)

The SSC set from The Bridge Direct is called the "Berry Best Adventure Collection" and features Orange Blossom (the only Orange Blossom to be released in this size so far), Cherry Jam, Strawberry Shortcake, Lemon Meringue, and Raspberry Torte.  I won't be going into any more detail on this set for now since I'll be doing a full review in one of my next posts. :) 

I got a ten pack and a three pack of Lalaloopsy Tinies. 

Here they all are! :) 

The three pack had Little Bah Peep and her two sheep.

Here are all of the Lalas that came in the ten pack (minus their pets). 

Pix E. Flutters, Confetti Carnival, Alice in Lalaloopsyland...

...Pepper Pots 'n Pans, Bubbles Smack 'n Pop, Pillow Featherbed...

...(Pillow again), and Mint E. Stripes.

There were also three pets in the pack.  Confetti's cat, Pepper's pig, and...rather randomly...Ace Fender Bender's monkey. 

I ended up sharing these with my daughters.  They each got a pet, and then they each got to choose one Lala out of Confetti Carnival, Pillow Featherbed, and Pepper Pots 'n Pans.  I kept the rest of them.

The whole haul.

We had a great time, made lots of fun memories, and got some pretty cool stuff on our trip.  I hope you enjoyed this peek at my birthday goodies. :)  Next up will be a review of my SSC set from Toys R Us. :)