1st ever Sephora & Ulta shopping!

Went shopping at The Mall of Georgia for a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding. I didn't find one, but had fun anyway & managed to get dresses and shoes for both nieces. No small feat that!
The night before, I made a list of the stores where I wanted to shop for polish because the mall is massive & I knew I'd forgot while looking at the overwhelming directory of stores.
H&M was a bust. They didn't have any polish. Neither did Charlotte Russe. :( Claire's had a ton of polish, but no Dreamcatcher, one I'm hunting high & low for. There was a mini pack on the clearance rack with a green that could have been Dreamcatcher, but it didn't have a label and I had no interest in the other colors. I decided to pass because I didn't want to pay $3.25 basically for that one little bottle. When I asked if they had any bigger bottles, the cashier said they didn't but that Icing had tons. They did!
None was Dreamcatcher, of course, but there were so many gorgeous ones I couldn't decide. I bought 4 after seeing they were buy 1, get 1 half off. I was trying to conserve funds for Sephora & Ulta or I would have bought some of their blues & purples. *sigh* I wish Icing was at our local mall!
Directly across from Icing is Hot Topic. I'd read that one of their colors was a close dupe to MAC's Peppermint Pattie, so I ran in and got that and an iridescent blue-green.
On to Sephora! I was so excited to shop there for the first time, but after oohhing & aahhing with my SIL & nieces, I realized I couldn't find the Illamasqua anywhere. The cashier had no idea what I was talking about. She'd never heard of the brand (seriously?!) even though I spelled it in case I wasn't pronouncing it correctly. She said it was a small Sephora! (that seems amazing to me! LOL!) and for me to check some other Atlanta stores.
I saw a few of the Sephora OPIs that I liked but not $9/bottle like. I ended up leaving empty handed. My nieces, however, have a new favorite store. Once they realized they could try all the products on...they did! It was hilarious! We had to drag them away.
Ulta was our last store & we were so ready to be done after ~8 hours of shopping! It was a little disappointing, too, though. They were renovating the store and there were a lot of empty shelves. I did manage to find one bottle I'd gone there to nab, Essence Surfer Babe: The World's Coolest. Annoyingly, posted prices were a rarity. I would have bought a few bottles if I'd realize it was only $1.99! Same for the Piggy Polish Poet Tree I was ecstatic to find. $1.99 on clearance! (I didn't see the price on the receipt until we got back in the car & didn't feel up to going back in. LOL!)
My SIL found the clearance section for me and I was psyched to find Orly's Enchanted Forest (woot!) and Pixie Dust for $2.99 each! I made myself stop at 6 bottles of polish and some CND Stickey, which I'm dying to try!
So Ulta was a little more successful than Sephora even though I overpaid for CG's Lemon Fizz. I knew I should have bought at SBS when I saw it earlier in the year!
All in all a great day and I wish we lived closer! Kind of regret not getting the minis in Claire's now.  Really hoping I can talk my SIL to going to another Sephora if I find one with the Illamasqua! Wish me luck!


(pictures to come!)