Girls Day Out

I had such a fun day with my daughters on Saturday. They had planned this day to celebrate my retirement, but we wanted to wait until it was a little nicer outside.  So, Saturday it was!

Here we are in Grand Rapids a little before 11am.  The place we planned to start at was full, so we headed off to visit some of the cute shops around the city.

This shop was full of beautiful, handmade leather things, and also some great smelling candles. We smelled lots of candles and yes we bought a few too!

The sun was shining, but it was only 33 degrees.   Even in the cold we enjoyed walking in the city.

I love this old church we passed.

Isn't this a beautiful, old building?

We went to this excellent restaurant for lunch.  It's called Tupelo Honey and it serves Southern food.  We really enjoyed it.

Here's my girls enjoying their brunch.  They had some fun coffee drinks too.  Laura had a mint chocolate cold coffee and Heather had a Blueberry Mocha, which they enjoyed.

After lunch we went to the place we originally started at.  It's called Aroma Labs, and you can make your own scent for perfume, soap, lotion, air freshener...

These scents were divided into floral, nature, food (spice) and one other that I can't remember.  :)
We had to smell each bottle and set aside the ones we liked.  We had coffee beans to sniff occasionally to clear the scents.

Here's Laura trying to narrow down favorites.

And Heather, choosing hers.

After you choose some favorites, you put drops from 2-6 scents on a sample stick to see how you like them blended together.

When you come up with a blend you like, you can place your order and take it home with you! We each got a small bottle of perfume and they all turned out good.  This was such a fun activity.

Here's something funny.  We got out of the Aroma Labs place and had to figure out how to find where our car was parked.  Laura had her GPS on her phone looking where the street was.  We joked that us country girls can't handle life in the city!

We found our car and went to another part of the city that had some cute shops.  This was our last stop.  It's called The Established Home. There's a show by the same name on Discovery and The Magnolia Network showing homes that the owner has redone.  I have watched several seasons of this and enjoyed it.  If you want to check it out, you can find links here. This shop was full of beautiful things - but most were too pricey for me!

Then it was time to head home as it was getting close to suppertime.
We had such a fun time together and I loved spending the day with my girls!