Friendship

One of my very best friends, Wendi, called tonight. I was so happy to hear from her. She moved back to Utah two years ago to be closer to family. I only see her a couple of times a year now, but the phone is a marvelous invention. It is strange how we can be just talking away like we saw each other yesterday, when in reality it may be anywhere from 3-12 months since we really were together. Wiping tears away and serious one moment and then having to wipe away tears from laughing so hard, we finished our call tonight and discovered that almost two hours had flown by! Friendship is such a precious thing. I went to Utah in August for a scrapbook convention called CKU, where I took roughly a billion pictures (give or take a few). Surprised anyone? After talking with Wen tonight, I was thinking about that trip. The whole thing was great, but one day stood out in particular because I spent the entire time with not one ~ but three of my best friends! Combine that with one of my other favorites (scrapbooking ~ surprise again!) and you have the making of a fabulous time. Wendi, Rachelle, Joan and I took a combo scrapbook tour/shopping trip. All of the places gave us tons of amazing freebies and opened up their warehouses at huge discounts for shopping.

We started out at this store in Tremonton (sp?) The owner was the one who arranged the tour. The store was in the basement of her house. The dynamic was a bit strange, but there were some really cute things for sale at large discounts. The only bummer was that we waited in line FOREVER because the computer till was very slow. Luckily, we just talked and had fun.

Next stop was Carolee's Creations, which is also known as Adorn It. She was one of the first ones in the scrapbook business. Her start was with tole painting patterns, which she turned into paper. Those were the beginning ones that lots of people liked, but were a little too cute for me. I like a lot of their stuff now though. She has great boy paper. It was really fun to hear the process that she went through. After the history, Carolee (who is a sweetheart) showed us how they create their papers with a combination of painted pictures and computer graphics. We also learned how her company is almost completely run by family~which I thought was cool. One of the things that they specialize in is wood home decor shapes and letters that you can scrapbook, then display. Carolee helped me find a few of the sets that I have never been able to find here in MT, then instead of charging me 18-25 dollars for them, she sold them to me for 8 each! She also gave us the most adorable large box to store the handmade cards you make until you use them. Thanks!

These were some backboards from a CHA trade show. Rachelle was doing a little modeling ~ showing the Fall 2008 Happy Scrapbooker look that is so popular right now. :-)

Next was SEI. They make a wide range of product. I love their lines. We went on the tour where we were given a full size of their spray dye and one of their iron on designs. One of my favorite parts was when we went into the board room and were taught how they design new lines. First they showed us the mock up boards where they pin all of their inspiration pieces. The next boards showed the paper lines that were designed from them. Then came a surprise. We were asked to vote on our favorite 3 out of 5. The winning 3 paper lines will be printed this spring. It will be exciting to see if any of ours were picked! If all of this wasn't enough, a couple of people struggled in with bags at the end. In the bags were decorative boxes filled with two albums and all of the paper, embellishments and ribbon to create them! Wow!

We had to rush to get to Bo Bunny, eating on the run. We came in the back, so I am not sure what their sign looks like, but the first sight that met our eyes was a huge aisle of ribbon! I could have stayed there looking for a long time, but the girls at Bo Bunny had an awesome mini class prepared for us. Thankfully they had some snacks and bottles of water for us. They even took the time to wrap each bottle with a sticker that thanked us for coming. They also tied an adorable pink ribbon around the bottle neck. Refreshed and sugared up, we then took a tour and saw a ton of cute projects. At the end of the tour we went into the warehouse again, where they had laid out a sale table, almost everything was a dollar, cards of ribbon, packages of brads, rub-ons...there were some bigger ticket items too, but everything was priced very low. It was very fun, I am a sucker for ribbon and brads. As if all of this wasn't fun enough, they packaged our purchases in the cute lime and green bag Joan is holding in her picture. So fun! I use it for a church bag now. They also gave us rub-ons as a thank you for coming. Joan won the prize so we all were happy about that! Go Joan!!

Cosmo Cricket was hard to find..but one of my constant favorites. I really like their paper and chipboard. I finally found their Cogsmo line for little boys that I have been searching for. All kinds of neat robots and gears in happy colors. They opened up their warehouse too, with below wholesale prices. They have one of the cutest scrapbook company websites I have ever seen. The Jon the Warehouse Guy videos are very funny. We were given snacks, water (very welcome ~ even for the Diet Coke girl) and a very cute lacing card home decor kit. I have been eying those kits forever so that was very exciting!

Rusty Pickle was even harder to find. A thousand thanks go out to Rachelle for all of the driving that she did while we were down there!!! Rusty Pickle also opened up their warehouse, with their paper that normally cost 60-89 cents marked down to 10 cents! They had big boxes of chipboard to go through for only 5 cents each! So much fun! Then when we checked out we were given a bag filled with at least 2 inches of paper as well as being stuffed with other goodies like alphabets and embellishments!

This was such great day. I loved spending time with my friends! All of us live in different towns now, and don't get to spend very much time together so this was doubly treasured. Joan and Wendi were our models for the goodie filled trunk. I think that the car was riding low by the time we were finished! We were all exhausted, but we couldn't believe how fast the day flew by.