private shopping parties

a friend of mine from the non-profit I'm involved with somehow won a private shopping party at the Cynthia Rowley boutique for her and I'm pretty sure as many friends as she wanted to invite.  the event wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be, but it was still cool nonetheless.  they had champagne (though I wasn't drinking since I'm in the middle of training for a half marathon) and small desserts for us.  some of the clothes were quite interesting (I mean that in the nicest way possible) but others were really, really cute.  the discount was 20% off of everything (they even had the brand new fall line that just debuted at fashion week!), which isn't a whole lot but when do clothes like this ever really go on "sale?"  I unfortunately did not buy anything as I just booked a roundtrip ticket to Paris that day (for future travel, so no worries - it will be included in a later post) and couldn't really afford anything after that.  however, it was cool to be able to say that I was invited to a private shopping party at a designer boutique!  :)

hopefully there will be more in my future...  (especially for Manolo Blahnik!!  hey, a girl can dream right?)

heaven

I'm not sure if everyone knows this, but my ultimate dream job is to be a wedding planner.  and my ultimate dream idol wedding planner is Preston Bailey.  I mean, look at this photo (borrowed from the lovely internet) of him.  why wouldn't I want to be this?  sitting in the back of what is sure to be a Rolls Royce, being driven around the city to your appointments, with as many gadgets surrounding you as you can possibly get. 

so you can imagine how excited I was when I found out he was teaching a class at The Learning Annex.  I bought my ticket right away (probably was one of the first ten to do so) and waited, impatiently, for the next month until it was finally time for the class.

it was at a hotel and there was legit a line waiting outside the doors for them to finally open so we could go in and sit down.  I ended up sitting next to this woman who is a florist in Vancouver.  she does the occasional weddings, but her main thing is movies.  never thought about it, but all the flowers you see in movies are put together by a florist.  she even said she got to do all the floral arrangements for the movie New Moon (all you Twilight fanatics will know what I'm talking about).  the scene where Bella gets thrown into a table because a vampire is about to attack her... well, there are flowers on that table.  ;)

the class itself was amazing.  the first hour and half (was supposed to be just the first hour) Preston talked about how to be successful in this business.  I ended up with three pages of notes!  and second part was what the title of the class was, "How To Create One-of-a-Kind Events."  which, in reality, was really just a chance for Preston to show off his work.  but his work is gorgeous, so I didn't mind seeing it too much.  ;)

after the class was over he stayed around to sign books and take pictures.  I was planning on buying one of his books on Amazon, but when the man who is your idol is there signing books at that very moment you can't really wait for a cheap price (they were of course selling all of his books there - how convenient).  so I bought his book (that's the cover of it below), stood in line, got him to sign the book AND got to take a picture with him too (GAHHH)!!

my entire walk home I was as giddy as a 12 year-old girl who just got to meet her favorite long-haired pop star.

snow tubing

I absolutely love this city (what's not to love?), but it is an abusive relationship (mostly coming from the city side) and it therefore makes getaways, even if only for an evening, a must.

so Fabulous and I decided to do just that.
we went snow tubing in No-wheres-ville, NJ through livingsocial

the trip left from the city (we got to ride in some PIMP buses - Mercedes Benz no less ;) ) and we headed on over to Jersey. I really have absolutely no idea where we were, but the scenery was seriously like something straight out of a movie. I mean the houses were picture perfect, especially all covered with snow. they even came complete with snowmen in the front yard. and almost every tree had the correct amount of snow on it. I seriously don't think you could have gotten any better even if you could have photoshopped the whole thing.

the actual snow tubing was AWESOME. Fabulous and I were screaming like we were five years old. and I don't think I have ever laughed so much in my life. first, the lanes we went down were really fast and bumpy and I seriously thought I was going to eat it so many times. then the last few times I went down the kid working at the top spun my tube, so I was going down the lane forwards and backwards and I swear every which way in between. Fabulous and I even had a "race off" with a couple on the trip (the couple won pretty much every time).

(seriously what we looked like - minus the Asian part)

after the snow tubing was over we all got back on the buses (there were 3 of them each holding about 50 people, so needless to say, there were a lot of us) and went to a local bar for a buffet and drinks. I wasn't too impressed with the buffet - it was this lame pasta and then sliders and buffalo wings. I've been trying not to eat meat a lot lately so there really weren't a whole lot of options (going for that whole vegan thing, though it's going to take me a LONG time to actually be fully vegan but baby steps right?). so Fabulous (who is fully vegan) ordered sweet potato fries and we ate those :)


then of course Fabulous and I started a dance revolution. :) we didn't have the greatest choice in music to dance to (you can only bust out your moves to Ke$ha so many times) but still had tons of fun nonetheless. we even inspired a few others to start dancing too. and I don't know how it happened, but we managed to make friends with pretty much ever single one of the guides there (they mentioned they were hiring and I was thinking about applying, if for nothing else than to make better music CD's). while we were having our dance party there was almost the biggest game of flip cup going on that I have ever seen. I say almost because my flip cup game in Israel still wins as we had every single person at the bar, including the bartender, playing.
we unfortunately had to head back to city after that, but let me just say, I will most certainly keep my eye out for this deal again!! :)