Phew! Made it home!

Well, I am finally home from the Stampin Up! Convention after a very long travel journey!  I took the red eye out of Salt Lake and stopped in Charlotte and then on to Greensboro (where my very handsome husband was waiting to pick me up!) and then finally home sweet home!  I must admit that I have been a total tree sloth since I got here too!  I have done a whole lot of nothing! LOL  Also, every entry on my To Do list for the rest of the day is about the same! Nothing....check, nothing....check and nothing...(still left to do!)!  I did do a few loads of laundry, but that is about it! I thought I would at least stop by and share some pictures from my wonderful trip with you though!  This was my fifth year going to Convention and every year it is a little bit different, but every year it is super amazing and wonderful and just tons and tons of fun!  They somehow manage to squeeze about two weeks worth of entertainment, activities and fun into the 4 day event!  Ok, enough blabber from me!  Let's look at some pictures, shall we?!

My adventure started on Tuesday morning early, early, early!  I met the nicest taxi driver named Harvey!  He took me to the airport! I educated him all about Stampin Up! and he filled me in on some of his wacky customers! LOL

Here was my ride to Dallas!  Sun hadn't even thought about shining yet!

This is my good friend Candi!  We went to high school together and have since reunited through Stampin' Up!  We have gone to the last two big SU! events together!  We managed to arrange our flights so that we could meet up in Texas and fly to Utah together! 

This was our first stop after we dumped our bags in the room.  It is a wonderful little Mexican restaurant close to our hotel!

It is called the Blue Iguana!

This cutie hangs on the wall waiting to greet folks!

Next we were off to the My Paper Pumpkin Party (say that three times fast!)!  They spoiled us with all kinds of fancy, schmancy desserts and there was a make n take and fun give aways!

More of the goodies!

Then we went to stand in these loooong lines to pick up our bags and catalogs and make n take packets!  We stood in line forever, but I met lots of fun people while waiting!  There were close to 4,000 people there this year and I am pretty sure we all got in line at the same time to get our bags! LOL

Here is my pretty new bag!  I am not really a red person, but I must admit I do like this little guy!  

It came with a cool stylus, our annual convention pin, a lanyard, our wrist bands (I got Always Artichoke, but mine must have been broken becasue it did not win a thing!) LOL and  lots of coupons for the surrounding areas.  We also picked up our stamps, a catalog and our make n takes!

This was the very nice workout facility in our hotel!  I promised myself I would go at least half the days I was there and I did!  Yay!  Go me!

            

The other days I walked lots and lots so I definitely got my exercise in! :)

This was my breakfast most mornings!  I got either this yummy unsweetened tea or a vanilla coffee and a piece of banana walnut bread...yummm-o!

Official Day #1 opened up with pyrotechnics and all of the Stampin Up! staff comng out on the stage for well deserved kudos!  General session was full of announcments and sneak peeks and loads of info!

Becky Higgins was there to talk about the oh so cool Project Life by Stampin Up!

This was the backdrop on the main stage.  They always go all out with awesome stage displays!

This giant banner was hanging in the foyer of the Convention Center.

This was my lunch on one of the days we bought lunches from the vendors. It is vegetable lasagna!

There was a Convention store this year that let us purchase items from the new Holiday Catalog!!! We also got a copy of the new catalog!!! *thud...falls over!!!*  I must say...I haven't been this excited about a catalog in a long time!!  It is full (and I mean full!!!) of  stuff!!  Gorgeous new stamp sets and framelits and punches and ribbon and paper and ...oh my!!  So many wonderful new things!!!

Candi and I went to Johnny Rockets one day for lunch and since I could actually eat any ketchup (I am allergic!) our waitress brought me a beautiful piece of art work made from ketchup! LOL  How cute is this?!

Here is another one of our lunches!  This one was provided by Stampin Up!

There was a big party on Friday night!  The theme was county fair and there was a live band!  

There were funnel french fries...

and nachos and popcorn and...

ice cream!!  Candi was having a midnight snack! 

Here we are hanging out at the county fair!

There was even a mechanical bull....which I rode!!

It was too much fun!  There was face painting and lots of places to take pictures and line dancing!

Here I am after surviving the bull ride! LOL  It was a really fun night!

Here are a bunch of the goodies we got for free!  I also got the silver and gold 12 x 12 paper which didn't make it into the picture!

This is the Salt Palace Convention center!

This runs through the mall that is right next store to our hotel.

Killing time at the mall!

Entrance to the mall!

And again...!

Street view of the convention center!

This was in our hotel!  I just love it!

Picture of Candi and I in one of our classes together!

This year I was fortunate enough to be a convention display stamper!! I was on a team with some VERY talented ladies!  Here is a picture of our board! Our team name was Fast & Fabulous and our theme was birthday!  Stampin Up! got to keep our projects when we were done.

These wonderful ladies were some of my teammates!  Jackie in the center (our team leader!) and Sharon  on the left. It was such a cool thing to have our work displayed!!  Now you know why my poor blog was being neglected!!  All of my extra minutes prior to Convention went towards working on these 13 projects!

And because I am dorky that way I took a picture of people taking pictures of the displays!! LOL  The table at the end here housed the rest of our projects!

Well, there you have it!  If you managed to make it all the way to the end thank you!  Now that things have calmed down I will be spending lots more time here on my blog! I look forward to spending that time with you! There are so many fun things coming up and I cannot wait to share them with you!

I will be back soonest with lots more to share!  Have a wonderful day!