Haul from the Mall

On Saturday, instead of weeding or painting the hall, we went to the Aurora Mall. It's an old-style enclosed mall, with air conditioning; and we had the best time. For one thing, this mall is not just stupid clothing stores--they actually have toy and dollar stores, interesting food, a game store, and a book store. So there is stuff to see and do. It was also full of people shopping and hanging out (there are couches). There is a Merry Go Round, a sandpit with kid-sized beach chairs, a place where you can take your food court food and picnic on the floor, a fun squirty fountain, a place to paint pottery, and a huge play area.. that I am not sure what sort of play things are in there because it was totally covered with kids. There are also cart vendors of various kinds of odd merchandise and coin vending machines (which offer endless amusement to watch kids either work the machines or try to extract coins from their caregivers to feed the machines). There is also an "Oriental Gift Store" which has every kind of bug imaginable, preserved in plastic and embedded in keychains and knife handles, dodgy looking weapons, incense, feng shui supplies (a sign tartly reminded would-be shoplifters that "stealing from the Feng Shui section is VERY BAD LUCK" which makes me wonder "why not include all the merchandise?" But ok)...and they had "wine bottle covers" which are silly-- but as soon as I saw them I thought one would fit a Soom girl perfectly...and they were six dollars. That's the bottle cover up there in the photo, the "shirt". I had to stop myself from buying little brocaded bags and boxes and shoes and a tiny "jadeite" (plastic) dragon, reminding myself that the place should be here the next time I come. I think every Abercrombie and Fitch in the nation should be replaced by dollar stores and Oriental Gift stores and comic book stores. With gaming every Saturday. I also went into a "Special Occasion" store, which does have clothes, but they are all fabulous rhinestone-encrusted princess dresses. I want one just to wear around the house, but instead I contented myself with looking at the Wall of Bling for something to take apart and reassemble for the dolls. It was hard to choose--it's like looking at a prop room for Pirates of the Caribbean and "No item over 15.00." We had a nice lunch at Panera and went home happy.