An amazing day...

We would never have guessed that today would end the way it did. Here's how it started (read on for my longest blog post ever)...

After a little construction as our wakeup call at 5am, and very little sleep, we headed over the the convention center after breakfast. I look forward each show to the informal opening ceremony, which usually consists of the CEO making a brief speach, followed by bagpipes playing. But today, we were in for a treat. Thanks to one of our sales reps, we had a prime spot (parked in front of Basic Grey, no less), to watch the Chicago Police Dept. Pipes & Drums march by several times playing their bagpipes amazingly before the show opened. Of course, we placed quite an order at Basic Grey, then headed over to Advantus. While I worked on placing our orders, Mary and Liz did a cute make & take with Tim (you know who I'm talkin' about). By the way, you will want to check out the Configurations from Tim Holtz... these things rock! And next, Graphic 45's new line, Steampunk Debutante, is truly one of a kind! The group working the booth was in full costume. The Crafty Secrets girls are always so fun... love Vicky's craftiness! We popped by Making Memories' booth for a drawing, and wouldn't you know... we won our first prize of the trip (um... a little machine called the Slice). The 7 Gypsies booth was not as large as it usually is, but what was there was amazing! We spent quite a bit of time at Webster's Pages (soooo beautiful!). KaiserCraft, with their staff from down under, had some beautiful new products (we gave it three thumbs up)! We visited friends from many other booths, like Lily Bee, Jillibean and Jenni B. We got a little carried away buying ribbon from May Arts, so much so that the staff finally came over to us to take back their paperwork (call us impatient).

Ok, so after sitting down for dinner, Mary looked at her watch and we quickly realized we were late for another event! Fortunately, we hadn't placed our order yet, which worked out well because... the event was stellar! ProvoCraft announced the release of a brand spankin' new machine called the Cricut Imagine. We'll tell you all about it later because what we couldn't have imagined is what was in store for us... Not only were there strolling waiters (bringing food and martinis), there was an airbrush tattoo artist and glow sticks. Ok, now this all sounds silly, and is out of the norm for my blog posts, so I'll get to the point. In another ballroom, we were greeted by the PC execs (and many others) to hear about the new products. What we didn't know was that they had arranged for us to witness some amazing art happening... Have you ever heard of David Garibaldi? If not, check out http://www.garibaldiarts.com/. He's a performance painter, who completely blew us away with his talented renditions of John Lennon, MLK, Mick Jagger, Einstein (and of course, the Cricut). In our later conversation with Mark Montano (dressed in Elvis glam), it was so amazing we're still not over it! By the way, if you're ever in the area, check out the bathroom at the Intercontinental Hotel... I've never seen anything like it before! We're off to bed (finally), but will post more tomorrow. Stay tuned!