Costco is open!!

Hi Y'all!
Well I have been waiting for almost a year for the Costco near us to be finished, and finally, yesterday, it opened! So Willy, Jaimeson (in the Baby Bjorn strapped to Willy!) and I headed off there about 12:30pm today. I knew there had to be some good points to moving back to Hotel d'Lam, and one is that Costco is 5 mins away. Hooray! LOL! I have been waiting for it to open in the hope that I can get some cool American foods that are in my American recipe books, like Monterey Jack cheese and Ghiradelli Semi-sweet Chocolate chips, both of which I saw when we visited the Melbourne Costco on my birthday this year. Well, wouldn't you know it, the choc chips were recalled cos they didn't have that annoying disclaimer on the packet (you know, may contain traces of soy or nut, even if it's never even been near a nut.) and we couldn't find the big block of Monterey Jack cheese either! But I did find a shredded "Mexican cheese" blend which contains Monterey Jack, cheddar and 2 other types of cheese which I've forgotten so I got that instead. But I did find a 1.5kg patty (if you could still call it that!) of Western Star butter! It's only $10!
I know you are probably dying to know what I bought {smirk} (I bet you don't care a smidgen, but sorry cos I'm going to bore you with it!) so here it is (see first pic).
I got *Apple Pie- $15
*Mexican Cheese mix -$8 for 1kg
*CC's Corn Chips- $4 for 500g bag
*Hershey's Chocolate Syrup -$4.50 for 1.4L
*Mocha Frappe Powder Mix - $10 for 1.1kg (I already made a hot choc using it and it was YUMMO!)
* 12 Turkish Bread Rolls- $4.50
I had to stop myself from buying the bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups cos I've still got chocolate left from Hawaii! (yep! {smacking back of hand for not being dedicated to eating chocolate!})
We really didn't buy much (especially compared to most people shopping today, we have about 2% of their total number of products!) cos Costco is only round the corner from our house, we mostly went today (second day open) cos I was excited and hyped up from seeing the building progress every time I visited Spotlight across the road! And now I have a good idea of everything they have for when I'm ready to do a "proper" shop. You did have to be dedicated to visit today cos it took us 45 mins in the checkout line! The parking wasn't bad at all though, and we easily got a park on the basement level at the Costco site.
Here's my rundown:
*Costco is awesome if you are having a party. You can get bulk products that would be great for parties, like a massive box of Party pies or 500g packets of chips ($4 approx) and 3L of Salsa ($8 approx)
*If you have a giant family (or live at Hotel d'Lam) it would be great to get all your branded products for cheap, such as Cold Power laundry powder ($47 for 9kg) or Kleenex toilet rolls. The proprietor of Hotel d'Lam prefers 2 ply cheapo toilet paper (you know, the one where you have to use half the roll at a time to get a decent wad to use) that lands at about 30c per roll, so she can't be convinced 50c a roll is actually cheap.
*They have interesting "special buy" products, like Osh Kosh childrens jumpers for $15, I think they are there to entice you into the store, but you can pick up a pretty good bargain with the clothes and they all looked like decent quality.
*The Bakery products are amazing! I got a bag of 12 Turkish Rolls (which I could eat til the cows come home) for $4.50. Don't fall off your chair, really, $4.50. Bargain. And I ate one for dinner and it was delish. I think we're going to have Turkish Bread pizza's tomorrow night and use the Mexican cheese too. Damn, should have bought that tub of Basil Pesto too ($10 for like, 1kg)! And that Apple Pie looks awesome, especially for $15. {Cue Darryl Kerrigan's voice} You couldn't buy the materials for that.
*Huggies nappies were $60 per double box which worked out to be 31c per nappy for Infant size. It was only 1.3c per nappy cheaper than Woolies at the moment, but as soon as Coles and Woolies stop having Nappies on special I know where I'm going!
*They have interesting hard goods like Outdoor furniture, eskies, canoes!, play equipment, kites, books, DVDs then they also have some office equipment, kitchen stuff like pots, pans, knives etc, Prada Handbags (no really!!) and electrical goods like TVs and Cameras.
*I reckon if you have a big family you could shop at Costco once a month and stock up and save lots. I'd say the prices are as cheap as when the products are on special at Coles and Woolies, so if you only shop the items on special at Coles and Woolies then Costco isn't for you. If you can never wait for the specials at Coles and Woolies then you would love Costco cos they have the "specials" prices all the time! Also, they don't have a broad selection of the one product at Costco so if you like to buy only particular brands then it's not for you either. But if you're like me and are interested to see what they have in hard goods and special items (their book section looked pretty extensive and cheap) and if you like American products (like a box of frozen Mozarella sticks for $15) then you'll love looking in Costco!
And cos you work up such an appetite we stopped at the food kiosk- reminicent of the Ikea food kiosk- and grabbed a giant slice of pizza ($3) and hotdog ($2.50 with a cup of coke and free refils) which went down a treat! Look at little Jai's dummy you can see poking out from under Willy's arm! LOL!
So that's it! I hope you enjoyed my run-down! Feel free to come to Costco with me sometime (you have to be a member to shop).
:) C