Saturday September 9th, 2006

Boy have the past several days been busy ones.

The store has been getting busier and busier. I have had alot of familiar faces come in and do a double take and ask me if this is my store. When I respond "yes" they are so surprised and very complimentary about everything. I am still at my fulltime job and to avoid any conflicts of interest I dont discuss the store there. I know the time is coming soon for me to leave. I have been working straight thru for 13 weeks without a day off from both places. Thats over 3 months without a day off ! I have so many ideas for the new store and I know I wont be able to get it to where I want it while still working fulltime. But I have been at my job for so many years and always been proud to be in the top for what I do for the company that it will be extremely hard to leave :(

On a more positive note:

The new Autumn Leaves section looks great! I cant believe we SOLD OUT of our 1st shipment of acrylic stamps the first day! The second and bigger order should arrive this week ! I hope it does sinceI sold 2 of the sets I really wanted :)..... One of the gals who is teaching at the store made me 3 AWESOME layouts for the 3 collections I ordered. I will post pics of these later. They are very cute. She is one talented gal and I am very lucky that she found her way to my store. She has been a great source of support the past week or so. Especially when I doubt something or need a second opinion or when I am feeling over-whelmed overwhat to order she is always there and I truly appreciate everything she does:)

Karen Foster Trio Collection is enroute and due Monday ! It is the complete Halloween, Thanksgiving & Christmas Collections minus the tag box cardstock sheets. Other than those I ordered everything :) I already have the slatwall space cleared and waiting for all those goodies.

KI is due to ship early to mid September so I am hoping its earlier than more in the middle.

We have a total of +10 classes offered the next few weeks in addition to our Crops and are working on Oct and Nov classes. Everything from matchbook albums, baby layouts, pet layouts and altered clipboards for adults to altered purse journals ,frames and letters for kids.

Our crops nights are doing well. Last night we had several people cropping till midnight. This week was a no theme general crop week with pizza,sodas, chips,pretzels and of course chocolate :)

Next week is out 1st themed crop ( a luau one) we already have 4 people pre-signed up and I am expecting probably a
total of 8-10. All the goodies and decorations are luau themed. I got some really cute giveaways from Targets Dollar Spot last week. Plastic pineapple glasses with lids, luau straws, swizzle sticks, decorations & more.

I am going to go help DD Jen double check all her outfits for her senior pics tommorrow afternoon.
(I cant believe she is a senior already) She is planning on doing her formal pic, one in her letter jacket and since she is so involved in the Drama Department and a Thespian she is doing a casual theater one with a clapper prop, comedy and tragedy prop masks and a few other theater props. Our photographer is TERRIFIC. She has done all of Jen's varsity fastpitch pics, cheerleading pics and pics for my fulltime job as well. She is very creative so I cant wait to see how these turn out :)
Then work on some more ideas for the store. I will post the pics as soon as I can :)