Amazing adventures in Hollywood!

For months, the girls and I have been trying to get to go see a taping of the Ellen Degeneres show. For those living under a rock.... We love her and think she is hysterical. Every time we would check her website, there were no tickets available. Well this month, I checked and they had some availability. So I signed us up to attend a taping on October 14th. After I signed up for the tickets, I sent an email to Ellen from Smirk.. The email had said that the girls wanted to take me for my birthday... As it is a big birthday... And guess what happened!!!

Last week we got a call from Ellen's production company. They didn't have tickets for the 14th, but had standby tickets for October 7th. They were only standby and we might not get in but they assured us that if we didn't get in we would have guaranteed tickets for a later date. We all felt lucky and said OK!

So today we drove up to Burbank, went to the studio and checked in. We were handed standby numbers 302 - 305!!! This was for the 2nd taping of the day!!!! There were 200 people inside the studio at a time.

As we stood at the street signal to cross the street I happened to notice a very tall, sun glassed guy standing on the opposite corner of the street. I grabbed Grin by the arm and said "Look, MEN IN TREES!!! Abraham Benrubi... The bartender!!! We were so excited! We loved that show and he was fantastic in it!! Grin nearly stopped breathing!!

So after we crossed the street, we were escorted to the riff raff room right inside the entrance a very large sound stage. Really nice, huge screen tv's couches and the Ellen store. We got to watch and listen to the taping. It was so fun!!! Today's show taping was actually for October 16th. Now every day, on Ellen, she gives away fabulous gifts and door prizes. Carlos, the production assistant told us that the Riff Raff doesn't usually get the swag that they give away, but he would try! And low and behold he did!!! We all received copies of Natasha Bedingfield's CD.... Again for those rock people http://www.natashabedingfield.com/home.html. Natasha sings the popular song, Pocket full of sunshine. She is also helping promote a Wii Video game called Boogie Superstar. We got both of those! But the most amazing and wonderful prize. Since this is breast cancer awareness month, and Ellen is a big supporter of breast cancer research, she is raising money for the Susan G. Komen foundation. (if you would like to donate... visit www.ellentv.com) Wacoal ,the bra company has decided to help her cause. The folks at Wacoal donated $50,000 to Ellen's race for the cure and they donated bras and a fitting to everyone in the audience!!!! We were soooo excited to find out that we in the Riff Raff room got all of these things too!!!!! WAHOO!! We all get new bras!!! How excited are we!!!

We got to see a star and get a new bra too!!!! We also got our guaranteed tickets and will be going back to see the actual taping of the show in November! Hollywood is so fantastic!