A Road Trip To Borders

Last Friday, my husband's $25 Border's card, and my $10 Border's card arrived. That put me at $135 in Border's cards to spend, plus a $5 rewards card! The nearest Borders is about 45 minutes east of here.

Usually, I shop at the small Waldenbooks here in town, but the selection is small, and there are no movies. I figured with as much as I had on hand, a road trip would not be that bad.

I went on Saturday, and made the trip down there easily enough. It was located right off the highway, so no fumbling about to find it!

Inside, I first noticed mini-trees on sale for only $3!! They had lots of colors, but only the green/black versions were on sale that cheap. The others were $6, so I went with the black/green, and grabbed 3, one for each of the kids.

Next, I looked over the movies. The prices were just so much higher than at Walmart, that I couldn't justify spending the gift cards that way. I did find both Antz & Clueless in the $9.99 area, though, and Gilly already has a DVD for Christmas, so I grabbed those two. Raegan is starting to get into teen movies more, and Clueless is a fun one.

After that, I located the childrens area. Back there, I focused on books first, but the kids are alrady getting quite a few books for Christmas, so I looked at the toy selection. Like the movies, they were over priced. I did find some unique items, though. For Chris, I got a big hard book (like baby books are made- with all the pages being hard) that has stencils of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cut out on each page, plus ideas on how to color them, and story snippets. It was $9.99.

After that, I located a scratch art book for Raegan- the pages are covered in a black wax-likesubstance, and you use a small pick to 'scratch' the wax away to make a picture. Underneath the wax, the pages are a swirl of holiday colors (red, green, silver, gold, blue, etc) in a metallic holographic pattern. That was $12.99.

For Gilly, I got a book that has an activity book on one side, and the other side stores markers in it, so it can be taken with her. It's just a small art kit, with a handle- perfect for her to take in the car. I picked the Hello Kitty one, and it was $5.99.

Then I looked for books my husband wants for Christmas, and located those easily enough. As I was wondering around, though, I found something I despretly HAD to have!

It's the collector's edition of "A Christmas Story" Monopoly! The only place I've seen it for sale is this wacky cataloug I get in the mail. I wanted it badly- A Christmas Story is my FAVORITE Christmas movie of all time. I watch it probably 30-40 times every year, and start watching it around Halloween. It's one of the few Christmas movies that doesn't get packed away. And even though I own it on DVD, it's not Christmas without watching it during the 24 hour marathon that TNT does. Usually, I have it playing while we put the presents under the tree from Santa.

That little tidbit was $35.99, though, so I had to regroup, figure out what I'd spent, add in tax, and see how much I had. I had roughly $20 I could spend. I passed a display with the first Stephanie Meyers vampire book, Twilight, and remembered I wanted to pick that up, so I went and hunted around for it. They only had it in hardcover, though, but I grabbed it anyway.

Maybe with my next gift card, I'll grab the 3rd one for under the tree as well.  That was $18.99, so I had spent all of my money. I checked out, and I ended up with about $3 left on the card I have in my purse.

On Sunday, I cashed in for another $25 Borders card. Yay! Thank you Gather, SOOOO MUCH! I had an awesome trip, found books I wanted, and found the most amazing gift ever in the Monopoly game.

I debated whether to wrap it, or open it and play it now, but opted to wrap it. It's even wrapped in Christmas Story wrapping paper. Yes, I'm a tad bit obsessed.