Day 8 & 9 – CHA

This place is enormous! I was warned that it would be overwhelming but still I didn’t realize how big it would be. I’m having a ton of fun though and the days are flying by – there is just so much to see!

Ok, so back to Sunday, the first day of CHA. We ended up walking the mile from our hotel to the convention center, then we had to find the badge registration, and find our way to the National Scrapbooking Association booth. We finally got to meet Scott – the owner of the NSA – he is so cool! I think he and Brent spent the entire morning talking about website stuff. I didn’t start to venture out to explore the rest of the place until the afternoon. KI Memories is really close to the NSA booth so I kept looking over there to see what was going on – and I could see Elsie Flannigan’s cute booth – very well done! Her new line is fabulous – we went over to take a look and Brent talked with the CEO of KI Memories about further promotion stuff.

I also found Heidi Swapp’s booth which was also quite close to us. I did a make n take with some of their new line of products and Heidi was right there showing us how to do it – very cool!

By 5pm, my feet were killing me – wearing heels turned out to be not such a great idea. We took a cab back to the hotel cause we both were too tired to walk. A quick trip back to drop off our stuff, then my good friend Kim met us at the hotel to come out for dinner with us. Kim lives in LA and we have been really good friends for about 5 or 6 years – we met on a message board way back and have been friends e ever since. This was our first time meeting in “real life” and she was everything I expected – fabulous! It was so great to finally meet her. We picked up Scott (from NSA) at his hotel on our way and we all went to Knotts Berry Farm for dinner at TGIF Fridays. Great food, great conversations, we had a blast!

It was an incredibly exhausting day so by the time we got back to our hotel, I was so ready to climb into bed. I think I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, which is unlike me, as I usually have to watch tv for an hour or so until I can fall asleep.

Monday we were up early again, and we did the walk to the Convention Center again. NOT fun – my feet were still killing me from the day before. I thought the Disney trams would be running and we could just hop on one that went over to their lot by the convention center. We walked all the way to the Disney gates, walked through the baggage check area, and to the other lot where the trams are and they weren’t running yet! So we ended up walking the long route to the convention center. Brent was so not impressed – I was not popular for the next while cause I was the one who insisted on going that way and it turned out to be even longer.

Another day at CHA!! I took the camera and went and took lots of pictures of the new stuff at the booths. There are still lots I haven’t even been to yet. I also went and scouted out all the new companies which are in their own section hidden away in the basement. Crappy for them. There are some great new things I found though, unfortunately no pictures were allowed to be taken in that section. I made lots of contacts though that I’ll be following up with when we get back.

Another highlight for me was meeting Trudy Sigurdson – the author of one of my favorite books “Embellished Emotions”. She is from my hometown – Victoria – so when I saw her signing books, I went up to her and introduced myself. We talked for about 15 minutes, she is super nice! She signed a copy of her book and gave it to me. Woohoo!!!! The F & W Publications booth is right across from the NSA booth and they have authors signing books in their booth all day long, on a rotation. Since I can see them from here, I keep walking by seeing who is there and I have gotten a few more signed books! One author even gave me an extra book to give to one of our DT members to do a review on! Awesome!

After the show we went back to the hotel and ended up staying there all evening. I had to download and crop all the photos I took so that took awhile, then we went to bed a bit earlier. I am really missing my dogs. I think about them often and wonder what they are doing. My babies.
Now today – Day 10 – it’s still morning so nothing much has happened yet. Although I did go over to KI Memories, introduced myself to Elsie Flannigan, got her autograph and took her picture. I will post some pictures on here a bit later. Brent and I had a meeting with the Editor from the Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine – stay tuned for some exciting news about what we will be doing with them in the near future! So far the CHA has been very promising for us.

Here’s Elsie and the gals from KI Memories – isn’t the booth cute? : )

Trudy Sigurdson – author of Embellished Emotions. Awesome book! Trudy is super nice too!

A cute display we saw at the Just Jinger booth

I loved these little houses made by Doodlebug

K & Company’s new line “Girl Scout”