Labor Day Weekend

The past three days just flew by!

Saturday morning we headed to the Aurora Premium Outlets because I wanted to check out their new expansion, as well as hit the New York & Co outlet. Part of the new expansion included a Vera Bradley store which was swarming with people when we popped in to look around. I’ve seen Vera Bradley around before but wasn’t necessarily interested due to how expensive they are and because most of the patterns do not appeal to me. That being said, I couldn’t pass up this cute little purse that was on sale for $14 (which retails for $45).

I also grabbed two $5 t-shirts (1 in navy, 1 in deep turquoise) and another pair of sunglasses (also $5) from NY&Co. Finally, I purchased a crossbody purse from the Zumiez outlet store.

Neither purse I bought is very large which will force me to stop lugging so much stuff around with me when we go out.

After shopping we headed to Red Oak Nature Center in Batavia. It’s a cute little place but not exciting enough that we’d go back. I did like their turtle tank, though.

We stopped at a place called Just Kabobs for lunch and it was really good! It’s been bookmarked in my Yelp account for quite awhile now and I’m glad we got to try it. You get a lot of food for the money and everything is so fresh and delicious. We will definitely be eating there again.

From there we headed to Sleepys to look at mattresses. That is NEVER fun, but ours is really sucking hard after eight years so it’s time. We weren’t completely sold on anything, however, so we decided to keep shopping around. We were leaning toward the Beautyrest Phenom which is exclusive to Sleepys, though.

Sunday morning we headed to Schaumburg’s Septemberfest. We arrived at the fest just after it opened (at 9 am) so we found free parking down a side street about a block away which was nice. We were surprised to see all the carnival rides already going so early. There was a huge line to buy wristbands too. Plus there were a ton of craft booths which took us over an hour to peruse. We ended up buying a couple of Halloween decorative stakes to put out in front of our place. One is a Minion Frankenstein, one is an owl-bat, and we also got two ghosts. I’m sure I’ll be posting a picture in October when we put them out. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more organized festival before. I liked how all the food vendors were grouped together inside a gigantic tent with their prices on boards hanging high up so even if there was a huge crowd you could see their menu. Next door was a second large tent with picnic tables too. It was awesome, and had it not been for the hot muggy weather we would have stayed even longer than we did. But we had to get out of the heat so we headed over to Jamba Juice to take advantage of their BOGO offer.

We drove around Schaumburg for awhile sipping on our smoothies and checking out old haunts. At some point we headed home for a bit, but then went back out looking for a mattress. We didn’t care for the sales pressure from the guy at the nearby American Mattress, plus they didn’t carry Beautyrest which was the manufacturer we were leaning toward, so we headed to another Sleepys, Mattress Firm, and Macy’s to shop around. Still undecided, we called it a day and went home to grill some burgers.

This morning we headed to Naperville to test-drive a couple of cars. Yep, we decided Labor Day weekend would be a great time to shop for the two most frustrating things to buy ever – cars and mattresses. We’re crazy like that! Our first stop was the Subaru dealership and I must say, I will be very surprised if I don’t end up buying an Impreza. We were both highly impressed with all the standard features they come with for the price, plus I felt very comfortable with how it handled after going for a test drive (and the sales guy didn’t even come with us which was cool). It completely knocked the Ford Focus 5-door off the number one spot in my list. We headed to the Mazda dealership next but no one ever came outside to help us. Finally we went inside and we were ignored until we specifically asked someone whether a sales person was available. They told us they’d find one, we waited awhile, and still no one was available to help us, so we left. I’m sure we’ll get around to test-driving one at some point but I didn’t feel like spending hours at the place when overall I think I’m liking the Subaru best anyway.

Next we went mattress shopping again. We stopped at another Sleepys to look at the Beautyrest Phenom so we could lay on all three models. At that point we ruled out their firm and plush/firm models which left us with the plush. Then we went across the street to Mattress Firm to try out the Beautyrest Black series since we had narrowed our choices to those two overall but couldn’t decide. Unfortunately they only had the firm option and we (more like me) still couldn’t decide because we wanted to try the plush and pillow-top models in their Black series. So we headed back toward home, and stopped at Chipotle for lunch because we were getting hangry. Afterwards we went to the original Mattress Firm we visited on Sunday to try all three Beautyrest Black series and settled on the plush model. However, since it was so close in feel to the Beautyrest Phenom from Sleepys, which was $800 cheaper, we decided to head over there and order one.

If I lost you awhile back, trust me, I get it. We went back and forth like mad between these stores due to 1) lack of full inventory 2) misinformation from one of the sales people at Mattress Firm and 3) Nicole’s fear of making the wrong choice. How Joe didn’t kill me this weekend I don’t know. But the good news is we finally made a decision and we’ll be getting our new mattress next weekend. I swear, I think pulling the trigger on a nwe car is going to be easier.