Best Friend Friday No. 9

Yesterday's Best Friend Friday adventure was one of the best I've had in a long time! It was the epitome of Best Friend Fridays!

We started the cold and slightly drizzly day at Starbucks where I picked up a chai to take with me on the subway ride to Old City. I don't go to Starbucks that often, so whenever I do it seems like a huge treat. They have so many cute holiday mugs this year. I especially like all of the ones with gold accents, but I was good and didn't take any of them home with me.

A few weeks ago I asked my siblings what they wanted for Christmas and all of them responded with, "surprise". That doesn't help at all. My brothers are seriously the hardest people to buy presents for. I don't know what kind of things boys like. Girls are easy to shop for; clothes and jewelry are always a safe bet. A few days later Nate texted me again and asked for a Philadelphia sweatshirt. That was so relieving! I knew exactly where to get the perfect sweatshirt for him. So yesterday, Lauren and I headed out to Old City and stopped at Old City T-Shirts (again). The owner was super friendly as usual, and even gave us candy canes and a complimentary "Shop Small" tote bag!

Because it's super important to get my 10,000 daily steps in, we then walked over a dozen blocks to hit up Staples. I still had more rewards to use up before the end of the month, but even more essential, my printer ran out of magenta colored ink that morning and I actually needed to come here. Of course we picked up more than just ink though. Lauren picked up some supplies to start a new planner and I selected a fun book for Abby as part of her Christmas present.

The big highlight of the day though, and the main reason for venturing out yesterday was to visit Christmas Village in the iconic Love Park. I've been reading and looking at pictures of the event, so I was pretty excited to go and take a gander at all of the vendors' booths. I was hoping to get even more Christmas shopping done. There were several dozen booths there, each one occupying their own little wooden makeshift shop. The event's set up was so cute and festive! Both mine and Lauren's favorite attraction by far was the indoor German holiday market, featuring hundreds of ornaments and holiday decor handmade in Germany. I wanted to buy all of the ornaments and lots of the nutcrackers, but sadly money doesn't grow on trees. Just as exciting though, we both picked out our favorite ornament to receive for Christmas. I know this will become a yearly tradition for us besties!

After walking around Old City and Center City throughout the day, it was time to head back home. We stopped at the grocery store on the way and much to our amusement, we found two bags of Tings (basically, vegan cheetos) tucked in with the regular Pirate's Booty. It seems like this particular store received these few bags by mistake since we've never seen them here before and there wasn't a respective tag for the item on the shelves. But a happy mistake this was. We quickly scooped these two bags up and along with our other groceries, walked back home.

As soon as we got back to our apartment, you can bet I immediately started making pizza dough. No Friday is complete without pizza, but I'm sure you're tired of hearing me say that.

Christmas present shopping, Christmas Village, finding Tings, and indulging in pizza...what could make a Best Friend Friday better?