Taylor Swift in Philly

This past weekend I went to visit my best friend in Pennsylvania.  She bought tickets for us to take her daughter and a friend to the Taylor Swift concert.  It was a great excuse to go. I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift.  I'm way above her typical fan's age, but the tween in me can still totally relate to her music. 

Before the concert, my friend's daughter and her friend made t-shirts... Well, actually, since they involved iron-ons, my friend made them, and her daughter designed them.  They turned out pretty cute. Maybe even cuter than the t-shirts they were selling at the concert. (Which we all bought, by the way.)

The home-made T.S. t-shirts- Aren't they cute? 

Taylor is from Reading, PA so this was sort of a "home town" show for her.  She played two consecutive nights in a row, and we caught her on the final night.

Our seats were super high up in the stadium but the screens were big, we could feel a breeze (thank god!), and we got to see a great view of the light show provided by our bracelets (our "gift from Taylor" given to us as we walked in the gates of the concert).

About 10 minutes before Taylor took the stage

I said to my friend during the concert that Taylor seems to be the Oprah Winfrey of young girl music.  She made these empowering speeches during her concert which could have come of cheesy if not so genuinely and eloquently delivered.  Nothing came off cheesy at all tho.In a stadium full of thousands, Taylor was able to make lots of young girls feel like they were getting a one-on-one pep-talk with her about being true to yourself. It's really something to see, the way she can so intimately connect with such a huge audience.

We left the concert just a few songs before the end (we had looked up the set list online, so we knew what we had to miss...) to avoid the traffic jam that was sure to follow. We did have to miss her final song, which was "Shake it Off".  But like I said, we knew what we were missing, so it didn't feel so bad. 

Anyway, what a great weekend I had in Pennsylvania.  The concert- obviously, and also spending time with my friend who's been my bestie since we were 11 years old!  We would have been big fans of Taylor for sure, as we are now, even tho we are decades beyond age 11.

And no trip is complete without a little flea-marketing/antiquing. We went to the same area we had gone during one of my fun visits a couple of years ago.  I bought a big jar of old costume jewelry- Lots of it was junk I threw straight into the trashcan, but look at all this stuff that is awesome!! I plan to use for repurposing!!!  I had the best time digging through my little treasure chest when we got home.

1950s, 60s, and 70s costume jewelry-- YAY!

As great as the Taylor Swift concert was, I'd say for me the highlight of the trip was when Sara (my friend's 12-year-old daughter) found a huge bag of jewelry marked $40 and had her first ever experience in price negotiation.  She's so charming and sweet, she wound up taking that whole bag of jewelry home for just $10!  It was probably about 100 items of jewelry.  So no matter how junky some of it was, it was still a great deal!  I should have asked Sara to do my negotiating as well!  She's a pro.  I was so happy for her and loved seeing how giddy her big score made her.  She was so nervous to ask the seller to come down on her price, and nearly talked herself out of it.  But she got a great life lesson of seeing that sometimes, you just have to ask, and you shall receive!