best trip ever part duce

So Friday morning we got up and had a surprisingly good breakfast in the lobby then headed off to the Fiesta Factory. Ok, so picture this. A factory built in the early 1900s (no, I am not kidding) with vines growning all over it, mismatched windows (if they weren't broken out) sitting on the side of a river in the valley. That's the Fiesta Factory.
We had a tour scheduled for 10:30, but of course we were early, so we had time to check out the shop. They had a HUGE room of 'second' pieces that were so cheap- more on that later.

Our tour guide was a somewhat nice lady who had worked there for over 30 years- she really knew her stuff. We put on our goggles and were off. It was the neatest tour. There were are all in our flipflops and goggles walking all around, touching whatever we want. I can't believe this tour hasn't been shut down. We couldn't take pictures inside the factory, but believe me, it's cool. I just couldn't believe that these pretty dishes come from somewhere that looks like that.

After the TWO HOUR tour we went back in the Outlet, grabbed our milkcrate shopping cart and started shopping. We scored some incredible deals. Mom and Anna got a canister set for like $60, when just one piece of mine I got for my birthday was $60! The whole time we are shopping we kept wondering, how are we going to get all this on the plane (much more on that later). We gathered all of our purchases and headed out.... this is what our cart looked like.
Oh, funny story. We all decided to get a grab bag for $2. So this is what was in them and how excited we all were.



We knew we needed to head out of Newell to get something to eat, because as I have told you, there is NOTHING to eat there. We decided to go BACK to Ikea to do a little personal shopping for a friend, Marty, who had emailed me her shopping list. We drove the 45 minutes back to Ikea and had lunch before we filled up ANOTHER shopping cart full of stuff- yet again, how are we going to get all this back on the plane.
We decided to head back to the hotel early and try to get our stuff all pack up and figure out how we were going to get through security with about 100 pounds of fiesta and three bag fulls of Ikea business.
How we got this all home will come later....