Well what can I say the Stamp-a-thon has been and gone and what a wonderful day it was!!!!

Firstly I want to acknowledge that this day wouldn’t have been successful if it wasn’t for all the wonderful ladies that attended the day and got right in there and enthusiasically joined in!

The day was extra special because is was devoted to be a fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation (Australia).

Recently a special friend and fellow demonstrator was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She has undergone a double Mastectomy and is currently undergoing Chemotherapy. I was devastated by the news as she is young and has two gorgeous boys the same age as 2 of my own children. So I thought lets have a great day of doing what we love best and see if we can raise us some money for this great Foundation. So it took many late nights of planning, but it was worth every minute! 

I had 48 people register to attend the day. They all paid $35 and they made 8 projects each and got served lunch and morning and afternoon tea. It was held at my church hall in Armadale which was the perfect venue. Everyone that attended recieved a pink gift bag that had all the materials prepared to make the 8 projects, as well as a roll of double sided tape, a new mini catalog, an order form and a great brochure about Breast Cancer. I made everyone name badges too.

I set up a huge demo board full of projects and new ideas with the stamps from the mini catalog. I have heaps of photos so I would love to share them with you!

Firstly, I would definitly wouldn’t have been able to have all the materials ready in time if it wasn’t for my wonderful helpers, Ngaire, Sandra and Irene who came to my place for a day to help me cut all the materials. It took quite a few hours, but we managed to get there by 4:30pm! Yes……50 people x 8 projects….That is 400 envelopes of materials to prepare!

Ngaire getting great use of her cutter!!!

Darling daughter Tiarne filling all the bags with Chocolate Eclairs

Sandra packing all the gift bags for the participants….

Irene doing a great job laoding all the packets with materials!

Stressed, but still smiling!!!

Darling daughter Janaya, who consistently tried her best to climb atop of the table to get all the STUFF!

 ON THE DAY!

The night before hubby and I spent a few ours getting the hall all set up and ready for everyone, making it all pretty etc! Here are the pictures……..

This is the final putlook of the hall all prepared and ready to go.

This is the entry to the big hall

This is the table to check everyone in and give them their name badges and card pack.

This is the demo board that I set up for everyone to see and take photos of.

Here is a close up of one of the tables with the little gift packs that I made for everyone.

ENJOYING THE DAY!

We had such a wonderful day and by the smiles on everyone’s faces, I am sure that you will see that they were all having a ball. Here are some of the very happy participants!

Everyone with heads down working on their projects!

Here I am behind the triple demo table.

Monique and Sarah….Sisters, and best friends!

Melanie and Marissa.

Richelle and Belinda (my downline)

Rachel and baby Ian our only male participant on the day!

Baby Kaitlyn who was such a little angel all day and who came with mum Shauna.

Shauna and Kerry.

Henny in her “standing card making mode”!

Pat and Lynda enjoying soup and Subway for lunch!

Joyce and Jen (sisters-in-law) enjoying each others company.

Kylie and Charmaine.

Catherine and Rachel (sisters)

Esther and Lynne.

Me with Natasha, who came even though it was her birthday!

My special friend Louise, who managed to come which really made my day!

Well I think I have put lots of pictures on here ( hope I haven’t bored you) but I really wanted to put them all up here, as it was a special day and I didn’t want to miss anything out. I hope to also upload the projects……. off to do that now and see how I go!

 Oh better also mention the outcome…..

The day was very successful and all together we raised $1565 for the National Breast Cancer Foundation so I was really happy with that! Thanks to everyone who in their way contributed towards the day and attended, I am very grateful!

 

Yesterday I had a great day at the Perth Stampin’Up Regionals. It was at the Perth convention centre and we had great demonstrations and got to stamp with the Simply Said stamp set that we were all given. Stampin’Up offered us the opportunity to bring guests along also so I got a great response and had 7 guests as well as some of my downline. I hope they all had fun, well they seemed to as you will see on the photos below.

We had a very early start to the day and since I have the Tarago I was the taxi for the day. We left home at 7:20am and did the rounds through many different suburbs in Perth to pick everyone up. When we arrived in the city is was pouring with rain and we got caught in it on our way walking to the convention centre, which made a bit of a damp start to the day.

Here they all are having fun………

Lee, Belinda and Nellie

And here they are hard at work……

Melanie, Simone and Katherine

Monique, Sarah and Tanya ( a little hard to see)

My upline and friend Ngaire….

We all had a great lunch at the Dome cafe, even though it was hard to get there in the freezing wind and rain, it was a great, friendly and fun time together!

 

 

I am still on cloud nine a week after I have been to Stampin’Up’s very first convention here in Australia. It was held at the the beautiful Darling Harbour Sydney. What an amazing place that is. I flew over with fellow demonstrator Louise and we had a great flight. Then off to the Ibis @ Darling Harbour. My very first impressions of my twin share room was that it was tiny, and almost likened to a Kennel. However it ended up being rather great and I had wonderful company from my roomie Kerry. I tell ya she was the one chatting till the wee hours of the morning. If I am as amazing and as funny (as well as good looking) as she is at 50 I will be amazed!

Kerry and Myself at the Awards dinner

The Next morning we had a look around Sydney and caught the monorail to Paddy’s markets and wandered through some of the amazing shops. Then we all headed to the convention centre for registrations. I was greeted by Stirling Gardner ( hubby of CEO of Stampin’Up) so that was very novel. We all recieved great convention bags with all our goodies and stamp sets inside.

 Then we headed off to mingle and do what all demonstrators love to do SWAPS!!! I had managed to throw together 90 swaps thanks to my wonderful hubby who helped me till 12pm the night before I flew out to Sydney. Who would have thought that Rod would be able to master the double sided tape, tying ribbons and cutting out flowers!!! Well he did a marvelous job! So we all scrambled around to get swaps off each other. I managed to get some absolute darling cards of fsome very talented ladies. I was really happy with the swaps I recieved apart from the ATC’s which I think have no use or value at all.

 We then began the afternoon session with a fantastic intro by no other than Shelli Gardner herself! It was so sureal to see her up there on the stage! Especially when all we see is the glamerous pictures of her and her family on the inside covers of the Idea book and catalogue each year. They then had a couple of amazing stampers from the SU teams do some demonstrations for us. They had us ooooing and ahhhhing all afternoon. Just when you think you know all there is to know about stamping they come and blow us away with fantastic ideas and techniques!

 That evening I had the pleasure of dining with my friend and fellow demonstrator Robyn Lawton from Brisbane and some of her crew. It was so nice to spend time in person with each other when you only communicate via email. That was a great laugh and a delicous curry as well.

Myself and Robyn out for dinner

Saturday was a HUGE day!  Had an early morning breakfast at Gloria Jeans. Met Stephanie Pike and Nicki Tidbold at the food hall eating doughnuts for breakfast which had me agasped ! Not to mention the Coke and Rebull Nicki was pushing down too!

Nicki and Stephanie

We had more sessions in the morning where we actually got to stamp. Then in the afternoon we broke into groups of 4 for different group activities. I got to spend the afternoon with Stephanie Pike, who I am also friends with from Brisbane. It was just so nice to also be with her as we have become good friends via the email and phone. I found the perfect pair of shoes that I have been looking for too….they were on HER feet! She has even offered to send me a pair from Brisbane (how sweet).

 I had one of the most abarrassing moment though that afternoon when I was coming out of the ladies toilets! I said to the person coming into the toilet as I was leaving that I thought they had the wrong toilets….got a dirty look, so I said it again ..”you have the wrong toilets!”… Only then did I finally realise that it WAS a female, not a male, even though she looked just like a bloke. Definitely one of those moments where you want to dig a whole and climb into it!

 Oh back to convention… After the amazing day and learning so much more about the Stampin’Up products and what they can do. I headed back to the hotel. Much to my dismay I had nothing to wear to the Awards Dinner! It was meant to be formal and I had nothing in my suitcase, which I only realised after I had gotten out of the shower with wet hair. So I threw on my jeans and jacket, and borrowed my roomies shoes and ran all the way down the road to the shops. Running blindly through all the dress shops which were very much like Temp and Valley Girl. I was about to give up when I ran down the other end of the mall and found one last shop which was about to close! Tried on a couple of dresses and manage to find one that I thought I could pull off.  So $40 later I had myself a new dress and something to wear to the awards dinner!

By the time I had got back to the hotel I was knackered and everyone else was ready to head to the dinner. So I high tailed it to my room and did the quickest make-up and blow wave of my life. When we got to the dinner we were all amazed at how the room had been decorated with linen tablecloths, chair covers and the gorgeous bouquets of flowers on every table. They even had a brass band playing! It was like a fairy tale.The meals was just delicious also and the company even better, as lots of laughs were to be had around the table.

Then onto the awards later in the evening. Shelly presented all the awards and there were a couple of different categories. One for selling over $30,000 of product, one for Recruiting, one for earning the Incentive trip and then the top 25 demonstrators of the year.

I recieved an award for recruiting 5 demonstrators in the year. And out of the 25 top demonstrators I ranked in at number 15! What a suprise that was! I got to go up on stage twice and be congratulated by Shelli Gardner. Then I also got a pin and a single red rose from Shelli as well. When I went up the second time Shelli said to me on stage that she LOVED my dress……Now can you believe that? The dress that I had bought at a dingy store only half an hour before the dinner Shelli liked. This had me laughing as she is sooooo stylish! SO I had to tell her the funny story about finding it at the very last minute!

All in all the Convention was a truly wonderful experience! I made new friends, learnt new techniques,  and had many laughs. I was so blessed to be able to attend this year and hopefully will be able to go to the next one in April ‘08!