life (lahyf) | chicago blogger crawl

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the very first Chicago Blogger Crawl (#chibloggercrawl) hosted by Nikia of Chitown Fashionista.  Much like a bar crawl, we went from one Marshalls and TJ Maxx stores to another scoping out the variety of goods that each was carrying. 

The day started off at 9am, where we all re-grouped before our first store to catch up and get the layout of the day.  Nikia is so super organized that she put together this fabulous agenda full of attendee names, our blog sites, details for a fun scavenger hunt activity at each store and info on how we can share our adventures with our Twitter followers through a giveaway that was taking place while we went from store to store.

With all that fun information, a great playlist (c/o of Melvin) and eager shoppers - we were all prepared for our day to find some great items.  As you can tell from this group shot - we obviously were a fun bunch to be around the entire day.

attendees (l to r) | andrea | gabriel | nikia | rai-jean | dee dee | hallie | patrice | yours truly | jen | elise | mariposa | lisa

From store to store we wandered with intentions of finding the best deals and that we did.  Everything from Elise's Rebecca Minkoff bag and Hallie's Cynthia Rowley purse to Mariposa's throw pillows for her daughter's room- everyone walked away happy with their purchases, but more importantly their great deals and money saved.

By the end of the day, we not only picked out some of the best things from all three store locations, but knew so much more about each other.  We spent our time in the van talking about life, blogging, shopping and food, that by the end of our trip I almost didn't want it to end.  Thanks to our wonderful hostess and her hubby (also driver of the day) Melvin, I spent a good portion of my Saturday bonding with some other fabulous bloggers who I can proudly say are real life friends.

*A HUGE thank you goes out to Nikia and Melvin for planning the day.  In addition, thanks to all the folks at each TJ Maxx and Marshalls for letting us take over the stores, and last, but not least, Kellogg's Special K for providing us with gift bags full of food to fuel us throughout our trip.