why pay more when you can pay less...follow us to the honey hole

day 4 of vacation and we have had the best time hanging out, watching some world cup ( : ( usa), sitting on the deck, sitting by the fire and just doing nothing. yesterday after we held out for the usa team and watched their defeat, we left the mountain top and road tripped to asheville. pb has an old friend there that we went to meet up with for the evening. he used to teach at darlington and is now at the asheville school. he lives in the coolest house on campus so we were able to take the tour of the school when we arrived. it is beautiful. so interesting to visit and find out about another southern boarding/day school and make all the comparisons to our school.

earlier in the day, pb had spoken with this friend and the two of them were making plans for our evening. pb mentioned that i wanted to visit the j crew store in biltmore village sometime during the evening. "have you been to the outlet store that is next to the j crew distribution center?" his friend had asked. at that point pb realized i was probably going to lose my mind with this info so he decided to include this stop as the first stop in our evening plans. he was right.

the outlet store was great but we were too late for the sale at the distribution center. it would continue today at 10:00 am so we decided that we would come back to asheville in the morning for the sale. pb's friend said it would be worth it and that it is unlike anything he had ever experienced and that you need to be mentally prepared for the event. that is all the description that he would give us so we had no idea what to expect this morning. we left the outlet store and went to biltmore village to have drinks before dinner. it was a hip little restaurant with the freshest appetizers, yummy desserts and a great place for people watching. we enjoyed our drinks, caught him up on all the darlington and rome news, and then left there for dinner at a different venue. i had the best mahi mahi with sweet potato fries and asparagus. pb had shrimp and grits. it was delicious. after dinner and a really fun time hanging out with pb's friend, we headed home.

soooooo...today. where do i begin? we got up at 8:00 and had coffee, threw on shorts and t-shirts and left for the mecca of all sales. the sale started at 10:00 and we arrived at 9:50. there were already cars in the parking lot and a line at the door. we thought that sunday morning might be a little slow but people were there and ready to shop. we had know idea what to expect. first of all, there were 2 policeman at the door. pb asked the lady in front of us in line if she had ever been to one of these sales. she laughed and said no. her mom had been the day before and called her to come today. she drove in from charlotte. wow. it must be some sale. at 10:00, the policemen opened the doors and ushered the long line of people into the building, down a hall, then down another hall. it was kind of creepy. at the end of the hall, there were double doors opening into a huge gymnasium size room. a lady was standing there with a counter to keep track of the people that would come through today. she also handed each person a list of prices for tops, bottoms, shoes, sweaters, dresses, etc and a big clear garbage bag. and we were off...

there were boxes everywhere labeled women's tops, women's bottoms, men's shirts, men's pants, shoes, boys, girls, and on and on. so we split up to see how much damage we could do. one guy that was working there asked me if i had ever been to this sale before. he suggested just throwing anything i was interested in into my trash bag and going through it all later. i was overwhelmed. how much cashmere does one really need? and as you know, i love j crew and peruse the catalog regularly. it is always an exciting day when the new one comes in the mail. everything i was seeing in these boxes was current merchandise they are selling now. we still don't get it. after an hour and a half, pb and i took our bags to a corner and started going through all of the finds. we tried on pants over our shorts but some people were just stripping down. after we made our final decisions, we piled it all into one bag and headed to a long table where one lady called out the items and another made tally marks on our price sheet. she piled it all back in the bag, taped it closed with bright orange tape and directed us to a table by the back door. this lady took our checklist and totaled our items so that we could pay. on a side note, pb had also been given a 30% off coupon to apply to our total because he has that kind of luck. some man saw him shopping in all the boxes and started talking to him and then handed him the golden ticket. so we applied that to our total, paid and left. we were dumbfounded. it almost didn't seem legal.

when we got back to the mountain and unloaded our bag of goodies, we put everything on the floor to try and take it all in. so here is the grand total of what we would have spent in the store...we looked it all up in the catalog at home but most things still had the original price tags on them: $2,414.99. what we actually spent today: $192.04. a grand total savings of $2,222.95. to put it into further perspective, we paid $10.50 for a cashmere sweater that retails in the catalog for $158.00. we walked away with 25 items, some treats for the kids and some treats for us. i need a nap.