I will not do this experience justice ...

I realized a few weeks ago that a dear friend would be visiting me from Victoria when NAS opened to the public on the 21st. I emailed her and asked if she'd like to go and she said sure.

Nordstrom opened in Toronto last fall so this was my first NAS in-store experience. Last year I shopped through email from the Ottawa store and the year before I ordered online from the US.

I looked up the store manager and emailed her my wishlist, asking her to let me know if any of my items were available and letting her know two friends would be joining me. Little did I know what would ensue.

I invited another friend to join us for the shop. She hasn't bought herself anything new since her daughter was born 6 years ago.

These friends and I go way back. We were students and roommates together at university. We'd been shopping together many times before but not in a very long time.

The store manager, Kim, let us know that we would be meeting the SA, Samantha, at 10:00 Friday morning.

We arrived at the mall at about 9:30, after dropping my daughter off at day camp. We headed to Nordstrom and grabbed a London Fog and pastry at the cafe, e-bar.

At 10:00 we made our way to the service bar to meet Samantha. She proceeded to take us upstairs to the change rooms where she told us she had pulled several of the items I had on my wishlist. We had no idea that we would be the only customers in the VIP lounge!! I looked through the items and then we went back out on the floor to take a look at the offerings (my friends didn't know what was on offer).

As we kept pulling items, Samantha would take our picks back to our room in the VIP lounge. She gave us bottled water, offered us biscotti. We shopped the floor for about an hour and a half and then headed in to try everything on. We had a blast showing each other our hits and fails. Samantha would pop in asking us if we needed other colours, sizes, items. She was just attentive enough without being overbearing. My 47 year old self felt like a twenty-something again shopping with my gals. We had a lot of laughs!

When we were finished with clothes and footwear, we headed out to check the beauty department. We couldn't believe how busy the store was! It was like we had been in our own little oasis for 1 1/2 hours!

When we finished in the beauty department we told Samantha we were ready to settle up. She offered to bring us lunch in the VIP lounge on Nordstrom! We shared a delicious salad, charcuterie board and cheese plate with San Pellegrino. What fun!! At the end of it all Samantha and Kim thanked us (and we them). Kim took our picture with our Nordstrom bags (hilariously we each ended up with three bags and spent within $100 of each other!).

What a day and experience. We truly appreciate the experience the Nordstrom staff created for us. We are not high rollers - most of the items we bought were under $100. No matter, they treated us to the full experience and I will definitely be back next year to shop NAS!!

Thanks to Angie and the forum for making me so knowledgeable about the sale and the merchandise. I felt like an expert!

Pictures below of my two friends (you can see me in the mirror), the VIP lounge and my car after.

The finds are some of the items we picked up at the sale.

ETA: they also gave each of us a little gift of sample beauty products!