CHA - Day 1

The first sentence of the blog post is always the hardest for me....I just never know where to start.

Tonight, I am going to start with bagpipes....have you ever heard bagpipes? I've heard them at parades and once at a funeral, but I don't usually associate bagpipes with a Crafter's convention. For some reason, it is a tradition to open CHA with a bagpipe serenade just before the doors are opened. Picture 300 people standing in a line, shifting from foot to foot, waiting patiently to get in the doors and see all of the goodies beyond.... Now think about the mournful sound of bagpipes.... I don't know about you, but it just doesn't go together for me...I could not wait for them to stop playing and just let us in the door!

We finally got in and found lots of goodies and some good friends too! I know that you guys don't really have any interest in seeing any sneaks of new products (hee hee, ha ha), so I decided to just show you all of the folks that we met instead.

Emily found our new friend Stacy Michaud. Some of you may remember Stacy as one of the winners of the free 6 month subscription that we gave away for National Scrapbook Day.

Later on, Scarlet and April found Laverne Boese. Laverne has been a long time subscriber and is always a joy to be around. We even talked her into joining us for dinner later (scroll down for those pics and a good story).

Here you see Scarlet with Rebecca from Sassafrass. I know that none of you will be surprised that we loved the Sassafrass release. I can say with some certainty that you will be seeing pieces of it sometime in the future.

We had so much fun at the show today. It was very laid back and we had more time than normal to browse each booth and really talk to the designers and manufacturers. We also took the time to create several of the make-and-takes. Here you see April working on a necklace at the Ranger booth featuring Claudine Hellmuth's line of paint and sticky back canvas.

We also went to a booth that will be releasing a new screen print process. They have created a sticky back screen print that can be reused up to 20 times. They are also releasing paint to go with the canvas. Stephen and his wife Hannah took a moment to make a shirt. Here are a couple of pictures of their creative process and the end result.

Finally, after a long day of treasure hunting, we decided to call it a day and go and get some dinner. We invited anyone that wanted to join us to come to Fudruckers and have a burger and a little fun! When we picked Fudruckers, we were unaware that there are two locations that are about a half hour apart. We left the hotel in two vehicles, IPhones in hand with directions at the ready. Unfortunately, our wires got crossed and Stephen, Hannah, Scarlet and I went to one location and Greg, April, Tina and Emily went to another. Ours was the right location because when we got their Cindy Liebel and Wendy Bretz were there waiting for us. We called Greg and eventually, they navigated their way over to where we were. Sometime later, Laverne and her friend Mary Lou joined us as well. They too had gone to the other location and had just missed Greg and company. Finally, we were all in the same place and we had a very enjoyable dinner.

During dinner we had a TGM....those of you that read April's blog know what TGM's are. They are Typical Greg Moments...here's how it went. Greg went through the line and ordered his meal and added a chocolate milkshake. When it was delivered to the table he was excited about his milkshake, but decided to save it until the end of his meal. In the meantime, Emily went through the line and ordered a double chocolate milkshake...a special that they have for a limited time, but not listed on the menu. She gets back to the table and her milkshake is delivered a few minutes later. Greg sees this milkshake, which is twice a dark as his and with Hershey's syrup on the top and decides that he wants one like it instead. Here is where the TGM comes in....if a normal person asked to have a brand new milkshake just because he thought that another one at the table looked better, the restaurant would say sorry, enjoy what you ordered. But Greg, being Greg, turned on the charm and the "milkshake guy" took back his regular chocolate shake and brought him a brand new double chocolate shake plus the extra that was left over in the mixing cup! He leads a charmed life. Here is a picture of "milkshake guy" bring food to our table and making sure that we had everything that we needed.

Later in the meal, Stephen decided that he wanted a milkshake too...he went up and ordered and then patiently waited for the "milkshake guy" to deliver. In the meantime, we decided to take group pictures. Greg was taking pictures and a man in a read shirt passed our table...Greg hollered, "Hey, catch the "milkshake guy!" The only problem was that is was not the "milkshake guy" passing by, it was another customer in a red shirt that looked somewhat like the milkshake guy. He was very good natured about it and ended up taking our group pictures for us so that Greg could be included. After a couple of minutes, he walked back over to our table and said, "Hey, I may need to loose a few lb's, but I do not look like the milkshake guy!" April found this all so funny that Emily caught her in a rare moment of hysterical laughter.

As we were leaving the resturant, we decided that we needed on more group picture. Believe it or not, "fake milkshake guy" was leaving with his family and offered to stop and take our picture again. After the photo op, we asked his wife if she liked to scrapbook and she said yes. We gave her a business card and told her to send us an email with her name and address and we would send her some goodies because they were such good sports! All in all, we had a fun day and it ended on a great note.

For those of you that are avid blog readers, stay tuned all week! Make sure that you pay special attention to all of the CHA posts. I'll be posting a quiz next week and will have a drawing for some great prizes for everyone that answers all of the questions about our CHA week correctly!! Trust me, this is a prize that you want to win!!

Goodnight,
Lorie