i’m home!
what a fun and exhausting weekend! for those who don’t know, I went to the CKC* this weekend in Portland, Oregon. It’s always a fun time, and this was no exception :O)
*CKC=Creating Keepsakes Convention
I went up with Karen, the owner of the lss I work and teach at. It was just the two of us this year. Friday we left around 1 and headed up-it’s a 3 hour drive from us, and traffic only got bad in the last 3 miles or so. We stopped at retail supply store first, to get some plastic bags for the store. Then, a couple blocks down the road, we stopped at a place that sells used store fixtures. It was awesome! They had everything from acrylic magazine holders to mannequins! I’m still kicking myself for not buying the life-sized clear plastic leg used for displaying hosiery…I know I could have done something cool with it, LOL! After a quick dinner at burger king, where we got to listen to two grown men yelling at each other in full volume, we headed over to the convention center. I had a ticket for the crop, and Karen had rented table space to set up a booth full of scrapbooking supplies. It took us two trips with a rolling cart to get all of the goodies into the convention center. Thank goodness there was an elevator from the parking garage or we would have been hating life! As it was, it was difficult to roll the cart once inside the convention center beacuse their carpet is so well padded, the wheels just sunk in. It was like pushing it through sand… Here’s the booth, all set up:
The black display full of color is actually a set of 4 shutters that Karen made into a display for cards of fibers. It’s very clever and people love it :O) Bad news though…no electricity to our booth! So the cash register we lugged in had to be lugged back out, AFTER we found a plug-in so we could get the cash out of it… BAD NEWS #2, Karen’s calculator batteries had died! Luckily she had a pad of paper and a pen, LOL!
We were to the right of the main stage, which was a good location, except every time they had a contest where people lined up, they blocked the booth! The contest this year included a Technique Tuesday American Idol singing competition, a Dance-Off, and a cheerleading competition (on the 2nd night). It was a lot of fun to watch (NO, i did not sing, cheerlead or dance!)
So i sat with some nice ladies from Salem and cropped off and on all evening, getting a whopping 2 layouts done! That’s not too bad considering all of the distractions. It seems like someone was on the microphone making announcements, giving away door prizes, announcing contest, all night long! The highlight of the evening was when Ali Edwards came up to give some door prizes away. Her son Simon ran up on stage and sang us 3 whole songs! It was hilarious, and special, and something I’ll never forget!
You can read more about this extraordinary performance on Ali’s Blog . Really wonderful!
After the crop, we were in a rush to get out of there. The schedule says the crop ends at 11:30…but at 11:15 they tell us we need to be OUT of the building by 11:30! That ticks me off but i won’t get into that…so we decide to put everything on the booth onto the cart at once and just make the one trip back to the car…
As before, things went great until we got to the dreaded CARPET OF DOOM, lol! Lucky for us, we had a security guy help us get it to the elevator. Yes, it fit in the elevator, barely…just for reference, that black grid wall is 5 feet tall. The next night we did it all in four trips…
Once we got out of the convention center (only getting lost once in the parking garage…) we headed for our hotel. The hotel was awesome-right over the border in Washington, our room was directly on the columbia river. It smelled a little fishy at first, but the view was totally worth it :O)
That’s me looking down-river :O)
We were so exhausted friday that we didn’t budge from our beds until 11 am saturday! It was crazy…luckily we had the room for one more night and hadn’t sleep past checkout time :O) Before hitting the vendor fair at the convention, we stopped at the BIGGEST goodwill thrift store I’ve ever seen! It was really really cool! I found a brand new rolodex (to alter of course!) for $2! Sweeeet! Oh, we also hit Target for a calculator, LOL! I got a really beautiful scrapbook album at target for HALF PRICE, yesss! It’s red, and has an “M” monogrammed on the cover, love it! Anyway…we hit the vendor fair for a few hours….unfortunately, I’m out of time and have to get to work. So, I will continue my mega-post later today :O) How’s that for a cliff-hanger?
LOL, good days all!