Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

It began with a bag. Not just any bag. A Vera Bradley bag..bags...as in plural.

For those who don't know, I'm a self-professed "bag lady."  I love bags! I love to make bags, I love to buy bags, I will take any bag anyone gives me and find a use for it. My bags have bags! Don't believe me? Read the archives:  Confessions of a Bag Lady.

Okay, that fact established, on with the story!

Earlier this spring I found myself in San Antonio with Cousin Jimmy and his lovely wife Linda. Cousin Jimmy assisted me in a couple of A1 Quilting Machine set ups and afterwards Linda and I went shopping - I needed a bag (grin). Actually I did - a small shoulder purse that I could carry cross-body on my upcoming cruise. Our search lead to a Vera Bradley store.  Now I have always admired Vera Bradley bags - their construction, all the pockets - but quite frankly, I thought they were a little pricey and they just didn't have any colors that struck my fancy...UNTIL NOW! Ah....Safari Sunset...it's so me! so began the journey! My first Vera Bradley, Lizzy.  A big hit on the cruise - so much so I knew I was hooked.

Enter in another trip - this one a flight to MQS (Machine Quilters Showcase) in Kansas....I needed another bag - and not just any bag - a matching bag! The large bag in the photo is my Grand Traveler, and what you can't see is all the little matching bags inside (grin).

Okay...I could write an entire post about Vera Bradley bags, and I do have more to tell in the future....but on to the real story - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun...

As a "frequent shopper" at the local VB store, I have bonded with a sweet young consultant who shares my love of Safari Sunset, and she told me about an upcoming sale....SALE? Did anyone mention SALE?!?!?!

So I gathered up my girlfriends and made plans to meet at the store on "sale day" when the store opened.  I had visions of taking all sorts of photos of us shopping for Vera Bradley bags, but alas, I was too caught up in the hunt that the photos were soon forgotten..at least in the Vera Bradley store...

As girls tend to do, once we met our quest and found our treasures we decided to check out another store...and this is where we got silly!

This is Trish, my partner in crime. She has a shoe faddish and the perfect size foot that she can try things right off the display rack. We fondly refer to the above style as "hooker shoes" - but mean it as a totally harmless jest. Her 80+ year old mother has three closets full of "hooker shoes"...the story goes that her mother's doctor told her she was at the age where she needed to wear "sensible shoes" and her reply - "just as soon as they make sensible shoes with a three inch heel I'm all over it!"   Notice the tiara? Trish really wants one of those .....

 This is my sister-in-law Jennifer - she said anything that Trish could do she could do better - balancing act extraordinaire.

 Not to be outdone, I feel back to my Tennessee roots and pulled a Minnie Pearl.  Trish isn't the only one that can sport a little hair bling!

The forth member of our girls day out is my only niece, Allison. Poor Ali - I think we totally embarrassed her on a few levels, but she was a good sport and joined in - trying on bracelets and several hats... We all think she looks best in a Fedora - but truly, she looks good in any hat!
  

I got a little serious for a moment and wondered if I could pull off blue? Needless to say, I put it back on the rack, having spent my dollars at the Vera Bradley store...

I do think the funniest moment, besides Trish starting off the silliness with the hooker shoes, was when Jennifer just had to show me a bracelet stating "now this I could use in the classroom!"

Hum...

We settled down, with some of us making small purchases...and parted ways - with promises of doing this again sometime soon!

I think I will cherish these photos, even the blurry ones (after all you can't expect miracles from phone cameras) and remember how we turned the ordinary into the extraordinary  - yep! Girls just wanna have fun - and need to do so on occasion!