Demi Lovato at MOA

Demi waves to the crowd as she leaves

Yesterday we were so excited to go the the Mall of America (MOA) – partly to do school clothes shopping (which, by the way, is a definite FAIL at MOA on a Saturday afternoon….), but mostly because Demi Lovato was going to be there signing autographs!

Our nanny, ecbaby, had found that little tidbit of info online and passed it on to Peaches.  They forgot to look into the fine print, though, and at 10:00am I discovered (to my horror), that you had to have been in line, with your brand new Demi Lovato CD in hand, at 7:00am that morning to get wristbands in order to stand in line for autographs from 1:00pm-2:30pm.  AUGH!

Well, disappointed as Peaches was, we went anyway, and were able to get a pretty good look at Ms. Lovato from the second floor overlooking the rotunda where she was. (A sort of bemused and half-dejected Jordan Pruitt was sitting all alone at the next table, where some girls even passed her by for autographs because they were so busy gazing at the sig they had just gotten from Demi).

My camera, sadly, stinks. So what we had when we got home were 48 fuzzy pics of Demi and Jordan. AUGH again!

Peaches’ take on the experience:  Really disappointed that we hadn’t known about the wristband thing (I mean really, who knew?), but still thrilled to have at least glimpsed them.  Her quote of the day, made after we walked away from the second floor railing:  ”Really Mom, if the floor had been closer to the ceiling, or the ceiling had been closer to the floor, I would’ve jumped down there!”  I love that Peach.  She’s always thinkin’.

Peach is determined that next time one of her favorite celebs is in town, we will be there at 5:00am, to wait for the 7:00am wristbands, to get in line for the 1:00pm signing. Right, Peach. Right.

Today’s Hot Topic: Hot Topic

The Peach and I were at MOA (Mall of America for those of you not from the Land of 10,000 Lakes) yesterday. As we were leaving a birthday party at American Girl, we happened to notice a Hot Topic store. I had remembered that Fred Figglehorn (Lucas Cruikshank) makes appearances at Hot Topic stores, but had never actually seen one, so we went in.

First, let’s note that there are probably not two more disparate places at MOA than American Girl and Hot Topic! The music was LOUD and metal (punk? I’m 47 – I don’t know what you’d call it anymore) and the sales guys were pierced. This was no well-lighted Justice, with cute Miranda Cosgove vids playing on big screens as moms and tweens shopped. However, the first thing we spied were Fred shirts on the wall… way better Fred shirts than he has on his own website. Second, a big display of Harry Potter merch, and third… Twiliiiiiiiiight! Ahhhh.

Listening to the lovely music (I joked with Peach that we should get the CD…) we tried to pick our favorite Fred shirt. The sales people we actually very helpful and polite, but they didn’t have the size we needed in any of the Fred shirts. Oh well, no matter. We moved on to the incredible array of Twilight merch.

We’ll do a separate post on our latest obsession, but suffice it to say, they had lots of great Twilight stuff, even some exclusive items, and Peach was torn. Only allowed to get one thing, she ended up choosing their exclusive New Moon tee. Exciting!

We began to walk toward the back of the store, and very quickly realized the key thing you’ll want to know here: Anything a tweener would want or be interested in is in the very front corner of the store. Which is a good thing. Overall, I’d give the store high marks for having really exciting exclusive character items, and I would definitely go there again. They make it easy for you by keeping the more mainstream, younger kid items in the very front of the store. But beyond that front corner, it’s not a store for tweeners. It’s a store for punkers with copious body piercings and strange leather and fishnet outfits. Thank goodness I’m a few years away from dealing with anything like that yet! *sigh of relief*

Peaches says: The people had creepy mohawks that were dyed different colors. The store was creepy, with long necklaces and other gangsta-type stuff. I would go back there, but only for Fred stuff, Harry Potter stuff, and Twilight stuff. I loved the Twilight stuff! The music was kinda creepy too.

Mom: You said “creepy” already twice!

Peach: But that’s the description of the store!

Our conclusion: Some great stuff for tweeners, as long as you stay in the front, and you’re in and out as quickly as possible!