My trip to 1800baskets.com

You know those blogs that used to be about interesting topics, but now they're just pitches for a bunch of products?

Well, this is about to become one of them.

But only for one day. I don't have that many companies giving me products to pitch.

Yesterday, thanks to the connections of my friend Farrah, I went and toured the facilities at 1800baskets.com. They're also affiliated with The Popcorn Factory, Fannie May, Cheryl's Cookies, winetasting.com, and celebrations.com. Which adds up to a whole lot of delicious stuff to eat and take home. And not only did I make out like a bandit, but all of you are going to get ...

... the opportunity to hear about my experience! Yay!

We started off in like the prettiest room ever.


The flowers! The chocolate-dipped strawberries! And the cranberry-vodka mimosas:


Next we went and packed baskets of our own. And we got to take the stuff home. Here's mine:


This guy Shawn Rabideau is apparently famous for his party consulting on Bravo. As you can see, I was more interested in capturing the tree made of cookies.



Here's a close-up of the cookie tree:



And here's a cookie wreath:


And then we went in this big fancy room with pretty tables. Shawn was explaining to us that we could use some of his decorating ideas for holiday entertaining. For example, he explained that you could make a combination place card/menu made of paper and velvet. We all smiled and said stuff like wow, that's a terrific idea, but I think Shawn was assuming a way more advanced level of entertaining than I currently demonstrate. Like, place cards? There are five people here! And menus?! You can just look at the table to see what we're having.

But, whatever. It's not like he could be all, "Well, what you can do is make sure that you buy generic sodas whose cans are the same color as your napkins."

Now, the torturous part of that room was that we were standing there listening to this presentation while we stared at all this:

Cheesewinechocolate!

We listened to some people present about appropriate wine pairings. I think this went on for approximately 57 years. And then we could have eaten, but people had to go and ask questions. You know, like when you had that class in college that ended at like 9 p.m., and the professor would be all, "So, as long as nobody has any questions, we can leave early"? And then some weirdo sitting in the front row would ask some kind of long-winded question? Yeah, it was like that.

No, seriously, more influential bloggers, I love you guys. It's just that time moves at a different rate when you're staring at an aged Merlot and a cracker spread with bleu cheese.

Finally we got to have at it. And they had this goat cheese with fennel and lavender. And I thought lavender was for lotions and stuff, but ... O ... M ... G. If it weren't for the "other people" and "social norms," I would have shoved the entire package of cheese into my purse when nobody was looking. Plus the package was such a pretty purple.

They took out more cocktails and, like, chocolate-dipped everything.

Then it was time to go. Oh wait, did I mention my kid came with me? Yeah, I kind of forgot about him for awhile, too. Anyway, he was over in the childcare area, so I picked him up, and then we both got a bunch of free stuff to take home. I got the basket I made, plus another huge bag with more stuff (popcorn, candy, chocolates, wine, cookies, love, pretzels). Nathan got a cute snowman lunchbox filled with treats.

Although 1800baskets did not pressure us to pitch their products in any way, I want to give them a shout-out because they were so good to the mom bloggers today. Few of us get the opportunity to spend a pleasant kid-free Tuesday eating fancy cheeses. I think they really made us all special.

And throughout December, when you order from 1800baskets, mention code "SHANNON" at checkout. You won't save any money, but won't it be fun to practice typing my name?