Hello Kitty at Target

It's time for another post about Hello Kitty finds at Target! First up, some cute Kitty makeup items. I have only seen these at 1 of the Targets I generally frequent, and oddly, it's not even the biggest one. But I've seen some of the items pop up in other peoples' photos, so hopefully you might find these if you go look. They are already starting to run out at my Target, but here's some pictures from when they were brand new.


Cute 'endcap' display!


Lots of little makeup items here. Mostly things like lip gloss, nail polish, nail files, cosmetics pouches, stuff like that...


In the baskets, you can see some shower puffs and some disposable hand wipe type things.

It's all pretty cheap, in the $1-$5 range. Nothing *too* exciting from my perspective - I don't really like to buy Hello Kitty makeup, it's more aimed at kids. But still fun to look at!

I ended up buying a new hand mirror (my old one broke - the case part, not the mirror part, but still...) and a lanyard.


Here's the hand mirror. I love the design on this stuff! I wish I could come up with more things I could have a use for. It's sort of like the 'emoticon' theme (or whatever they were calling it) from sometime last year, but it's modified a bit...

I ended up using the lanyard for Anime Boston, which was fun!


The lanyard actually came with some lipbalm stuff, but I took that off...



The other thing that is new, but even harder to find are some new plushies. I saw these just before Easter, I think, and then they promptly disappeared. I finally saw a couple again recently, but they seem to disappear as fast as they appear. If I'd realized, I probably should've bought them all the first time I saw them! XD
But for posterity, if nothing else, here they are:


They're "Kittys of the World". There seems to be Japan, India, Russia, and the US.


I am totally amused that the US is represented by a cowboy, but I guess I don't really know what other kind of "regional costume" we might have...

I like the Japanese one, the kimono is very pretty. But I ended up buying the Russian one because she matches my other Russian Kitty plushie.


Here you can see her headcovering a bit better...

I'm hoping to find these guys one more time so I can get the Japan one too. It's hard not to want to collect them all! ~.^

Milford Harbor Duck Race

This is another 'review' post for those of you who watch my flickr stream, but it's also my Pinkys' most recent adventure PLUS the event itself is toy-oriented, so how could I not post about it?

I had planned last weekend to go to Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, but I was feeling poor and lazy, so I didn't. I did end up in CT tho and lucky for the girls - who were dressed in their festival clothes - I discovered that there was a fun little event I could go to that was much closer to where I already was. Apparently there's a rubber duckie race that they've been holding annually every spring to raise money for charity. I would link you to the website, but it seems to be down? It's been up and down a few times this week, I think. If it's working, it was at www.milfordduckrace.com. I vaguely recall hearing about this in recent years, but I don't remember it going on when I lived in CT. I am not sure how many years they have been running it? But it's another in a series of cute outdoor events that go on in Milford Center. They seem to have something going on nearly every weekend in the warm months, which is nice! This was my first time going to the Rubber Duck Race tho - but let's get to the pictures!


Happy Duckies in their natural habitat! ^^

Here's how it works. As you can see above, all the ducks are numbered. You 'buy' a duck (you don't get the duck, really you are just putting your money on a number, like a lottery) and the duck goes into the race. The ducks are loaded into a frontloader, which is driven to a bridge. The ducks are dumped into the water and they 'race' (there's a strong current there) to a finish line. The first ones to cross win a prize for the people holding those numbers. All the ducks are collected in a 'trap' so they don't go floating off to see. Here's a look at the race map:


My favorite pictures! The ducks being dumped into the water:




Here they all go!



"Go ducks go!!"


"Oh, I wonder who will win?!"

She may have cause to worry - it seems some of the ducks were too lazy to proceed to the finish line. They prefered to clump up around the edges of the river and gossip... XD




Here's an overview of the race near the end. I think there was a problem with the ducks escaping the raceway (that's why so many of them were over at the bank, I think. See, they really were lazy! They just wanted to hang out, not swim!) and so they were out there with a kayak trying to herd them back into the trap for collecting. I didn't stick around long enough to see how they caught them all, but I'm sure they did. Can't have a bunch of ducks floating around in the harbor after all!

If you need more pictures of the ducks, you can check out the rest of my flickr set.