Aaahh! It's Good to be Home!

I never thought I would say this but I was glad to be home and even back to work today! There is something to be said about routines and your normal way of life being comfortable!

I wanted to share a few things with you from the CHA Supershow and tell you some of the cool things I bought! So I hope you don't mind a little recap of my weekend!

First of all as I arrived on Friday evening it was too late to go to the Supershow because they were shutting down within the hour, so I made my way to my hotel room where I met up with Vianna. Vianna and I met through Stamp TV's Florida group and it turns out that we live less than two miles from each other. We had already met each other before this weekend so that we could be more comfortable rooming together. She was such a sweet roomie. She thinks of everything and even brought us some wine and pepperoni and crackers to have before going to dinner!

Christina and Vianna at Giordanno's

We met up with Christina from Scrap Time in Canada for dinner. I had never even heard of Scrap Time before, but you can be sure that Christina's site will be some place that I visit much more frequently from now on! She took over a thousand photos from CHA's trade show and has them posted on Flickr. Check them out right HERE! And be sure to go to her site regularly where you will get to see her use and report on many products from the SB industry.

We had dinner at the famous Giordanno's pizza restaurant. They make the heaviest pizzas I have ever seen! Their pizza's are stuffed and look like they are a calzone that is turned inside out! The pieces stand a couple of inches high and are filled with the ingredients of your choice! We had a good time getting to know each other!

So Saturday morning after a breakfast at Denny's, we headed into the Supershow! I will say that I was a little disappointed that it seemed more like many other expos I had been to. I think I thought I would see more of the trade show displays and get to see some of the new stuff coming out! But all in all there were great things to buy and lots of make-n-takes to do.

Vianna hooked me up and saved me a seat for one of PaperTrey Ink's Make-n-Takes and I got to meet Debbie Olson! Here is the card that we made...

I also got to meet Dawn McVey and the owner of PaperTrey, Nichole Heady. I have always been impressed with how she runs her business. Nichole does nothing that isn't pure perfection! There stamps are awesome and I am glad that my collection of them grew this weekend!

Dawn McVey, Vianna, Nichole Heady

I also went over to the Splitcoast Stampers area where all the company sponsored Make-n-Takes were going on and I got to meet some of the "famous" people from SCS! Here is a picture of a few of the people that were in the area helping people make their SCS pins and greeting people!

Back row from L-R, Beate Johns, Lori Craig, Daven Nolta

Front row from L-R, Jen Balcer and me!

I have a funny (and embarrassing) story to tell you about the guy you see pictured above. He was helping me make my pin after I had introduced myself to Beate and Lori. I said to him, "so did someone drag you along with them to help out today, or how do you belong to Splitcoast Stampers?" Turns out he is none other than the founder of Splitcoast Stampers, Daven Nolta (along with his wife Tracy!) I wanted to crawl under the table and hide! So I kind of laughed it off and went along making my pin! LOL!! How embarassing!! :-)

Here is the adorable pin that they had us make...

Then, to no surprise to anyone who ever reads my blog, the highlight of my time at CHA was meeting Angela Magnuson and the rest of the Unity crew! I had heard that they had left before the Supershow started so I was sorely disappointed, but then much to my amazement they were doing Make-n-Takes in the SCS area between 11am and 1pm on Saturday. Thankfully I showed up just at the right time or I would have missed meeting them. I gave Angela a big hug and I am sure that I gushed like any groupie meeting her idol for the first time!! She is so sweet and beautiful on the inside and the outside! And the thing that blew me away the most was that she actually recognized my name as one of her customers and regular uploaders to the Unity Gallery on SCS! She really made my day!

From L-R, AJ Otto, Angela, me and Brooke!

Here is the Make-n-Take from Unity...

You can't tell it from the picture, but the base of this is a wood block! Oh so cool!! And some more great news is that Unity is going to be having a line of scrapbooking stamps coming out soon! I got to see a sample of it and am so excited to get my hands on those too! I didn't buy any Unity stamps while at the Supershow because only one store was selling it and I had practically everything already that they were selling. I did get to see a sneak peek in person of the August KOM and it's another great one!! Woohoo... can't wait!!

I also got to meet two other special people that are a part of my daily online life. I met Sue Morris (but she has the picture of us) and Deb Felts. Both of them are in the Florida Stamp TV group and I recognized each of them in the crowds and introduced myself to them. The Stamp TV Florida group was supposed to meet up for dinner, but as it turns out, I think a lot of us just got too tired to make it til the end. I ended up leaving at about 3pm with sore feet and an empty bank account! LOL! So my apologies to Jean and any one else who had hoped to meet up. I certainly hope to do that in the future! I love all you ladies and appreciate your comradery on Stamp TV!

Deb Felts with me!

So where did most of my money go?

• Seven new PaperTrey Ink stamp sets
• Seven new Cornish Heritage Farms sets
• Stamp N Foil in eight colors
• The complete collection of Judikins Mica Gloss inks
• Assorted papers and collections of paper from Nikki Sivils, October Afternoon and Imaginesce
• A collection of sand glue mixtures from MuddPuddles
• Many colors of flowers from KaiserCrafts
• The I-top Brad Maker kit from Imaginesce and
• The Crafter's Companion

I am so excited to put some of these things into use! I will let you know as I use these things how they work. I am really excited about the brad maker and the Crafter's Companion.

I hope I get some time in the stamp room or it is going to seem very wasteful that I bought all this stuff if I don't use it!

So for now that gets you all caught up with me! I am glad to be back and into my routine. I hope to have some projects to share with you tomorrow and I will also start showing you some of the assignments that I completed using this month's SheetLoad sketch. I hope you went to the site to get your free copy of the eZine. It is a really wonderful sketch that you will want to use over and over!

Have a great day and may your bucket overflow with exciting new things to keep you inspired in your craft room!