I made it! After a whirlwind day of travel, I arrived along with about 125 other Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators for the Founder’s Circle Retreat in St. George, Utah.
I can easily say that I enjoyed my travel day, which included a pedicure in the airport spa in the Dallas airport plus getting to chat with 2 new demonstrator friends on my flight from Dallas to Las Vegas.
Stampin’ Up! always welcomes us in style, and this year was no exception! After the fabulous Decor Elements on the outside windows of the hotel (in patterns of the Cottage Wall Designer Series Paper, of course), our luggage was delivered to our rooms. Each of our rooms was marked with a gorgeous custom Decor Element, personalized with our name!
Here’s my scrapbook page of the day, created with the My Digital Studio software (new, available October 1st from Stampin’ Up!)
After signing in and playing the color-coded butterfly scavenger hunt game, we each received a brand new stamp set–you’ll get a chance to see it in an upcoming Mini Catalog 🙂 Plus we each received a cute little butterfly net that we can use all week to “catch” candy from one of the many glass candy jars stationed around the Gathering Place. You name the candy, it’s here! I saw taffy, chocolate, mints, lemondrops, toffee, jelly beans, licorice and more… it’s a Candy Wonderland!
I spent much of the afternoon visiting with old friends and meeting new friends, and then it was time for the Welcome Dinner. The tables were decorated with satin tablecloths in Rich Razzleberry, and each chair was decked with a Certainly Celery stain cover and bow. At each of our places was a terra cotta charger with the cutest grapevine wreath napkin ring (complete with Big Shot diecut Beautiful Butterflies) and a hand-stamped welcome card from Shelli, Stampin’ Up!’s CEO.
Whew! After all that I was ready to head back to my room and crash for the night, but before I could put my head down, I had to check out this evening’s pillow gift from Stampin’ Up!. While we were at dinner, Stamping Elves had visited our rooms and deposited ANOTHER new stamp set (not yet released!) plus a set of the new In Color Stampin’ Write Markers and 3 rolls of Polka Dot Grosgrain In Color Ribbon, all nicely packaged in the fun Thoroughly Modern Gusseted Envelopes from the Stampin’ Up! catalog.
And now I’m off to bed, so that I’ll have at least a little bit of rest before the adventures of tomorrow!
