Guess what was waiting for me at my front door when I got home from (ironically enough) Starbucks last week?

A GIANT BOX 'O' STUFF FROM COFFEEMATE!  (click read more below)

 

February 4th is “Free Flavor Friday” (which I will from now on refer to as FFF because it saves me an entire whopping syllable) from CoffeeMate.  A little over a month ago, I signed up to host a CoffeeMate Art Party for FFF.  A bunch of other bloggers that I follow occasionally do these things, which are basically like advertisements for whatever brand or product, and they wrote about the opportunity to do this.  I filled out the form on a whim and didn’t put much thought into it.

Then I got them email saying that I was selected to be a party host.  I have to admit, when I started really thinking about it, I wasn’t big on the idea of shilling for anyone in exchange for some free stuff.  It feels weird.  I have had a great experience with this whole FFF thing, but I still feel like a sell-out about it and I don’t think I’ll be doing it again. 

But just this once, I went for it.  I love coffee and wanted an excuse to get some of my girlfriends together at my house for something a little different than Game Night or our usual Eat Mexican Until You Bust Evening.  I thought CoffeeMate would send out, like, some coupons and some of those crappy colored pencils and such, and so I decided that the focus of our Art Party would be that we would make cards for the kids at one of UVA’s hospital sites with our crappy colored pencils and half-dried glue sticks.  Then I opened the package. 

This was not what I was expecting.  When they said “Deluxe,” they meant “What you could get at Michael’s with about $50.”  I gulped a little when I saw all this stuff; did I maybe get in over my head?  I kind of wished I had gone with one of the other party options, like the Bistro Cooking one where you just got a muffin pan, an apron, and some recipe cards.  This felt like more than I deserved for my small party.

One hilarious addition to the kit is this sheet that is basically a CoffeeMate Talking Points Memo.   Do they seriously think that we’re going to stroll on over to one of our houseguests and say, “Did you know, Sandra, that CoffeeMate is available in over 25 flavors?  Well, hello, Diane!  What a lovely sweater!  It reminds me of how CoffeeMate has five special seasonal flavors available during the fall and winter, starting in October!”

 

more on the party in my next post...