Girls Gone Shopping - How Was It?

I went with two of my favorite neighbors to the Women's Expo today. It continues onto Sunday, and you may wonder, (likely female) citizen, if it's worth your precious time. I, for one, liked it! Here are some of my takeaways:

- First and foremost, I won a hairdryer, which is awesome. Conair has a little wheel to spin and if you spin a "bad hair day" (which coincidentally, I was having in real life) you win a hair dryer or curling iron. Even if you get the more common "good hair" section of the wheel, you still get some swell little hair elastics.

- Second, there are some amazing things to see - and I barely scratched the surface. Standouts included makeup artists on hand to make you beautiful at the Lord & Taylor booth (I walked away with some extra bat in my eyelashes) and raffles for pretty much anything you can fit into a basket wrapped in cellophane. There is a lot of jewelry, some of it lovely and some of it awful. Good thing that we were in a beautiful jewelry booth when we spilled coffee all over it and felt so guilty that we bought some jewels.

- Third, it's completely overwhelming. The event is vendor after vendor after vendor, and they are there to vend (aka, sell!!). You'll be pitched everything from new gutters for your house to services to surgically improve your (uh) nether regions (*blush*). The disadvantage of all those salesfolks under one roof is that you'll get well versed in saying "no thank you," but there are quite a few cool products you'll want to know about. Even vendors with nothing of interest to you may give you free stuff you like in hopes of winning you over. Some other treats I got for free include a toothbrush from a dental office, a mirror/sewing kit from a limo company and playing cards from Foxwoods. Not too shabby!

Use your best judgment, but I found it to be a nifty way to spend the AM hours. Event runs on Sunday from 10am-5pm at the Stamford Plaza Hotel.