A short excerpt on my affinity for bingo

I would like to think I was raised a bingo-er. A bingo-ette, perhaps. All throughout my younger years I would watch my grandma venture off to play bingo every week and wonder what was so enticing about waiting for some old guy to call numbers off a little white ball... the other six days of the week I would beg her to let me color with her bingo daubers.

Then to keep us kiddos occupied at Christmas instead of howling our yearly "Presents" chant (I'll share this golden oldie a little closer to Christmas time!...and the paper crowns too) for hours on end, they threw bingo cards on the kids table and we battled for prizes like notebooks and packs of pencils and whatever else they could find lying around my grandparents house. (And yes, we have carried on this tradition even after my sweet grandma passed away)

Except now it's fueled by alcohol, and includes awesomely hilarious prizes like that Hard Rock Cafe fanny pack my cousin Amanda is sporting here.

My bingo-loving grew the most one year while on Spring Break in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. We were staying at the Riu Palace Macao (highly recommend, btw). We accidentally stumbled upon bingo one day and ended up crying we were laughing so hard because of the bingo-caller's crazy antics ("internass-ee-an-ulllll nummer... sisssty niinnneee"). We made it a point to play every day... and on every vacation from there on out.

(Getting our daily fix in Puerta Plata - March, 2007)

Needless to say, when I received an email from my aunt a few weeks ago regarding a "designer handbag bingo night" for a local charity, I was all over that like white on rice!

Saturday night my mom, myself, my aunt and a few of my moms friends all piled into two cars and headed on our way to (what we hoped would be) handbag heaven!

(Yes, these are all my cards!)

My mom and my aunt realized they were both waiting on the same number for a Bingo... and then the craziest thing, her friend Gina was also needing the same number. Can you imagine how excited our table was when B4 was called and all three of them won gorgeous new purses?!
They were true, authentic designer hand bags too! Gina's is a leather Cole Haan, my mom's is a Coach crocodile and my aunt's is a pleather Coach (they all still had the original tags attached and WOW, let me just say it was DEFINITELY worth the $30 we paid to play!)

I didn't win a purse, I pouted a bit and talked the girls into stopping for ice cream from the McDonald's drive-thru on the way home so us LOSERS could enjoy a treat! HA! We had a blast, and I jokingly said I was going to start Googling and find handbag bingo to participate in every weekend!