Spring has sprung over at DownEast Basics and their new spring collection for 2013 is in full bloom. Last week a few of us headed over to check out the latest and greatest spring fashions that they have to offer. Splashes of beautiful colors welcome you into the store. Bright yellows, pastels, greens, coral, oranges, teals, and pinks are in this season.
Wine anyone? 😉
How about a quick get away to wine country with about 25 of your closest girlfriends?
Then join me on the adventures of planning a wine tasting trip!
1. If an offer looks *TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE* It probably is.
I found an offer on one of those discount type sites (think Groupon/LivingSocial). Once it was purchased I quickly called up the company to make our reservation, done and done! Then it was off to decide which wineries we wanted to go to, so I could call this company back and give them our desired itinerary for the day we had chosen to go on.
THAT’S when I started to see all these red flags go off in my head about this limo company…
2. DO YOUR RESEARCH
I found this wonderful and informative website called the Temecula Valley Wine Country (Temecula is in Southern California, google for the website, I had to remove the link for the time being here as they were having issues with their website), which has a list of all the fabulous wineries in the area, their websites, and all the information you could ever need about them when planning a trip! On that site there is also a tab titled “Plan Your Trip” and has a listing of Transportation Partners in their Responsible Partnership Program. Registration is recommended for ALL transportation companies. Reservations are highly recommended for all transportation companies prior to bringing any guests to any of the wineries in the Temecula Valley. Needless to say, I did NOT see this company listed as an approved company on their very LONG list of transportation companies that had been approved. They did have a registration form that could be filled out and the company in question could easily register…. that is if they were a legit company running business legally…
Upon further investigation I found ANOTHER important website that you will want to BOOKMARK and save for future reference in case you ever want to rent a limo, party bus, or any other form of transportation (or for a Moving Company as well!) I found the California Public Utilities Commission page. You can look up a company in California and find out what their TCP# (Carrier ID) is, and what their status is! Turns out the company in question had their Carrier Permit REVOKED back in April of 2010…. which would explain WHY it wasn’t listed on any of their other websites. Not only that, but when I asked the company what their TCP# was, they had given me a DIFFERENT companies TCP# which was valid, but was a totally different company.
Needles to say, I canceled our reservation ASAP and quickly got a FULL REFUND from this discount website.
3. Ask around for references from people you know and trust.
Back to the drawing board for a company to work with that was legit. It didn’t take long for me to figure something out. Earlier that year my mother had gone on a limo trip with some friends up to Hollywood as someone’s son had a limo company in Long Beach so they had gotten a SUPER deal on a limo. I found out the needed contact info for this wonderful company, which you can find here at Limo 4 Me. If you click on that link and scroll to the bottom of that page, you can check out the party bus we traveled on, which is called Pirates of the Carribean! All of their info checked out and were a complete joy to work with! I hope to be able to plan another fun trip with them soon!
4. Make RESERVATIONS at the wineries! If you come in a limo or Party Bus, you WILL need one!
Okay, so now we are really ready to ROCK N’ ROLL! I found a couple of wineries we could make reservations for our group that did not require a deposit on the wine tasting (since I could not afford to put a deposit down or pay in full for 25 GIRLS up front for wine tasting), I was already taking a risk by putting a down payment on our party bus, not knowing if I’d be able to have 25 girls willing to pay for the Party Bus. Which, without a doubt this will be the MOST stressful part of planning your Wine Tasting Trip by far. Collecting the funds from your friends that are going on this trip with you as some will be more timely than others. Or you just might not end up having enough people wanting to go, then you’ll end up having to pay more than your fair share for the limo. Luckily the later part did not happen to us. We had enough girls going, it was just a matter of rounding up the funds from everyone. Which isn’t something I exactly enjoy doing.
This was in September and our Wine Tasting Adventure was set for Saturday, November 5th, 2011. I had plenty of time to gather up all my wine loving friends and some of their friends.
Being the extremely detail oriented person I am, went so far as to plan a nice breakfast for our group so that everyone could mingle and enjoy some food and drinks before while we waited for everyone to arrive and for our party bus to get here. Our bus was leaving at 9:30am sharp, so I also wanted to make sure everyone had something in their stomachs before we started drinking any wine around 11am! 😉
It’s a holiday weekend. I live in California. We’ve been having the most GORGEOUS weather ever this past week. What better way to take advantage of this amazing weather and holiday weekend than by spending as much time as I could outdoors and have a picnic!? A new picnic set was waiting to be used as well, another reason a picnic sounded like a great time. I’ve been itching to use this set! Now, where should I have this picnic though I thought? There are so many places to choose from, a park, the beach, my own backyard? Those are all such typical places to have a picnic though… I wanted something a little different. Then the light-bulb went on! The barn! Everything is so green and beautiful at the barn right now, it would be the perfect setting for a picnic and there is a picnic table there, so why not use it? I could combine two things I truly have a deep passion for: horses and food! What could be better? Now I just needed to get started on my menu and shopping list of items that I would need to purchase to have this wonderful picnic! For decor I thought it would be fun to use a Saint Patrick’s Day theme since that’s just around the corner, and I love the color green.
On Saturday evening after spending a day out in the sun at a beautiful private barn in Bradbury, I went to my local Smart & Final to pick up all the goodies I’d need to orchestrate my picnic adventure.
Here is a little peek into my stroll through Smart & Final. The first thing that caught my eye walking into the store were these beautiful flowers! Valentine’s Day flowers and they happened to be 50% off!!