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 By Pat Lindsey

One of the greatest holiday joys for women is to get together with their best friends or relatives and go on a shopping spree. There’s no better place in Missouri to do that than Branson. By the first weekend in November, Branson is decked out in holiday splendor, making it easy for anyone to get into the holiday spirit for Christmas shopping and a lot of female fun.

Destination birthday parties are especially popular among baby boomers, so I spent my birthday this year with five wonderful friends at the Blue Wilderness Club at Big Cedar Lodge. For this trip¸ we planned to limit our show-going and concentrate on shopping, dining, and enjoying the great outdoors.

   Branson Landing was our first stop. There, we found well-known stores such as Chico’s¸ Coldwater Creek, J.Jill, White House/Black Market, Lane Bryant, Victoria’s Secret, as well as Kirlin’s, Bass Pro Shop, Belk’s, as well as many boutiques. We were pleased to learn that Dino had just opened his 24 Karrot Cake Co.on the Landing, so that’s where I bought my birthday cupcakes.

There are plenty of lunch and dinner restaurants to choose from on the Landing, but we had decided to drive to the College of the Ozarks for a special birthday lunch. The drive there was gorgeous¸ as is the entire campus. Students enrolled at the College of the Ozarks do not pay tuition, but instead work on campus for a set number of hours per week.

At the campus restaurant, we were greeted and served by students, while other students were in the kitchen preparing the meals. The service was outstanding and the food was delicious. At the end of our meal, a group of student servers came over with a candlelit dessert and sang, “Happy Birthday!” to me. Shopping was also part of our campus tour, as we loaded up on handmade items from the gift shop. Some of those items were used for prizes when we played cards and board games back at the condo later that night.

   Silver Dollar City filled Day 2 of our trip. Shopping can begin as soon as you enter the park and walk through the enormous gift shop. Every street in Silver Dollar City is lined with shops, but the strategic shopper knows that you can make purchases along the way and the shopkeepers will hold them for you until you’re ready to leave at the end of the day.

Lunch that day wasn’t a big deal, because we knew we were having dessert at Silver Dollar City’s Culinary and Craft school, where we had made reservations for a 2 p.m. cooking class. The recipe for that class was Sweet Potato Pie, something I had never tasted before, but will certainly be on my Thanksgiving table this year.

Chef Debbie Uhrig took us through the steps of making outstanding pie crust and a crumb-topped filling to die for, before we got to sample the finished product. For $12.88 (including tax), a cooking class in Silver Dollar City is a real bargain.

No trip to Branson is complete without a visit to the outlet malls. They’re easy to find. Just look for rows and rows of red or blue roofs. As we paced ourselves through the Tanger Outlet Mall, we noticed groups of women wearing identical sweatshirts. They were letting everyone know that they were either sisters “born to shop,” “girls gone wild” or birthday buddies. We overhead one group say that they get together in Branson every year to shop and it’s, by far, they’re favorite time of year.

Lunch on Day 3 was at Mel’s Hard Luck Diner, one of the most enjoyable eating spots in Branson. Every member of the wait staff and some of the kitchen staff, too, have recorded at least one CD and take turns singing while they wait on tables. It’s not unusual for a diner to be singled out and serenaded while sipping a milkshake or eating a burger.

   Mel’s Hard Luck Diner is located in The Grand Village on Hwy. 76, where my friends’ favorite shops were found. Kringle’s, the largest Christmas store in the state, takes up almost one side of the Grand Village. Art galleries, book stores, glitzy boutiques and my personal favorite, Mulberry Mill, line the other sides of the village. At Mulberry Mill, free samples of dips, cheese balls, coffees and ciders are on counters in the culinary half of the store, while clothing, handbag, unusual gift items and gorgeous articles to adorn a holiday table fill the other half.

For Vera Bradley products and upscale gifts, visit Puttin’ on the Glitz, a couple of doors away.By the end of three days, my van was full of packages and we barely had room for one last purchase on our way home to St. Louis.

No matter how stuffed we were from eating or how packed the van was, we had to stop at the Russell Stover Outlet Store in Ozark, MO to get our chocolate fix. It didn’t matter if the best buys were from Valentine’s Day or Easter, the chocolate was still yummy and the price was even better—75% off. As we got closer to home, we reflected on the good times we shared during the past few days, all the great deals we found in Branson, and then reality set in…..How are we going to figure out whose packages are whose?

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