Flower: Fail

Funny story. I went by (unnamed) store to pick up some flowers for a friend's birthday this afternoon. I bought a dozen roses, got them home and unwrapped and ready to go in a vase. I picked the first rose up, and the whole flower part falls to the ground. (I have the stem in my hand still.) I get slightly frustrated. (Insert: roommate Brittany is in the living room wondering what I'm grumbling about in the kitchen.) Pick up 2nd flower, and it's fine, so I put it in the vase. The next three roses that I pick up all fall to the ground...it was as if the florist had cut the heads of the flowers off and shoved them back in with the rest of the bouquet, hoping no one would notice! Grrrr...so not cool. But then I counted the number of roses...there weren't even a dozen roses! There were only 11! This leads me to believe that there were probably originally five broken flowers in the bouquet, but one escaped. Not only was I gypped by getting flowers that were, you could say, "pre-cut," but there weren't even 12! Oh well :) I should've gotten a pic of the chopped flowers! Dangit.

Short work week this week! Woo-hoo! Headed home on Wednesday morning for a little birthday celebration for mom! #50! I won't be flying solo...I'll have Claire with me! I've flown with just her before, but she wasn't so squirmy, so I'm kind of anxious about this flight and hoping it won't be a packed plane!

Oh, and speaking of work...

This morning at our weekly meeting, we played our traditional get-to-know you game, as we had a new designer recently start on the team. Everyone goes around the table and puts a "get-to-know-you" type question on the board. One of the questions was something like, "If you weren't working here, what would you be doing instead?" (Something not art-related.) I said I'd want to be one of those undercover/secret shoppers that goes to stores and rates stores on their performance. Doesn't that sound fun? I thought so.

Happy Monday :)

2 Down...

...only 11 more to go! These frames just don't want to stay up! These two frames fell on a customer...oops!


After dinner tonight, everyone headed back to downtown Chicago, but I took a car back to the hotel. My trusty GPS took me a different route back to the hotel, and I started getting a little nervous that my GPS wasn't so trusty after all--I somehow ended up on a toll road and in a neighborhood that was totally unfamiliar! As I continued on my way, I saw a gold something-or-other that was glistening in the setting sun, and as I got closer, I realized that I was just down the street from the Chicago Temple! I had heard that our hotel was down the road from the temple, so it was such a relief to find it, knowing that my hotel was just a few more blocks away.

One more day of CHA and then down to St Louis! Woo hoo!

A Little Cover Up...

Oh goodness...what's a tradeshow without at least a little disaster??

Today was setup day for CHA! We got things done pretty quickly and things were going smoothly...until I pulled the pebbles sign out of its box. See the two frames in the upper right corner of the pebbles sign? They're covering up a huge crack. With so few resources and not much time on our hands, we did what we could with what we had! The rest of the booth turned out cute...more pics to follow!


We headed down to Navy Pier after setup and walked around downtown Chicago for a little while. Ate some good food at Bubba Gump's and saw a little of where Transformers 3 is being filmed. Became friends with some of the security guards who were keeping people out of the filming area.

CHA = For The Birds

As I was showing a customer some products in the booth today, another customer yelled, "watch out!" I looked at her completely confused about what I'd be "watching out" for...turns out I almost stepped on this little bird that snuck into the show! I was glad I happened to have my camera with me!

Just My Luck...

...especially after just having my bumper fixed!

Saturday afternoon, I was leaving a store and walked toward my car to find that the back end was completely smashed! I could not believe it--especially because it had only been three days since I had the new bumper put on! I walked closer to inspect the damage and see if there was a note. "Great," I thought. No note. No one around to claim responsibility. No one standing around who might have seen the accident. I got my camera out to take pictures of the scene. (I always carry my camera with me for situations like this!) It seemed crazy that my car would get hit that bad in a parking lot! I was trying to figure out how someone would've hit my car head-on.

Then I looked to the next aisle over and saw my car. Phew.

***

Oh. One more thing. Cutest niece award definitely goes to Ms. Claire:Total Babe. Wanna see more pics? (Of course you do.) Click on over to Katie & Joe's blog!

Sorry, Little Worms

Just got back from a *brief* run outside in the rain...it was nice to run outside sans snow, but with the rain comes bazillions of worms! At first I thought I could dodge them, but it got to the point that for every worm I "dodged," I stepped on two more, so I gave up on the dodging thing. I think a few snails were mixed in with the worms. Oops. R.I.P., little worms.

Leave it to Lindsay...

(Above: Some of our ribbon on display at the show. I love the colors and I love the cute little flower charm that they come with!)

Most Embarrassing and Awkward Moment at CHA (MEAMCHA) award goes to...me! I don't know how I manage to get into these awkward situations. I think awkward should be my middle name.

Situation # Uno: Josh, Ashlee and I were in the hallway waiting for Paris to arrive. One of our manufacturers walked by, so we started talking with them (we'll call them "Graic" and "Yann") about the madness surrounding Paris' appearance. "Yann" told us that she had a gift from one of their friends back in Canada that she needed to give to Paris, but was too embarrassed to carry it around, so she kept it in her bag until she could actually give it to Paris. Hesitantly, "Yann" let us see what the gift was: a bra bag and panty pack from The Brag Company! Curious about what the inside of these gifts looked like, I unzipped the panty pack and to my surprise found a pair of panties! Thinking that was kind of awkward, I said something stupid like, "Oh...they must include a panty to get you started!" "Yann" quickly grabbed the bag from my hands and was so embarrassed because apparently they were her panties! Because the product was manufactured across the border and to avoid any problems at customs, "Yann" had to act as though the bra bag and panty pack were her personal travel products. Imagine if Paris had gotten these "gifts" with a pair of panties in them!

Situation # Dos: At the last three shows I've been to, I always see this guy who is a retailer that looks like Tom Cruise and Clark Kent/Superman and find him to be kind of attractive, but never would do anything about it...he's kind of just my CHA "crush" if you will. Josh spotted him coming towards our booth this afternoon and decided he was going to become friends with him. Josh started talking with him and told him how I've (as he points me out) seen him at the last few shows and have my own nickname for him! Josh also found out that he's married, but doesn't wear his ring... peculiar, right? I think I turned bright red, "nervous neck" took over and I now I have to find a new CHA crush. Unfamiliar with "nervous neck?" Ask me later.

Situation # Tres: Not hugely embarrassing, but still a little. This morning at the show, the fire alarm went off, so everyone had to evacuate the building. We were only outside for about a minute or two and then we were allowed back in the building, so we assumed that maybe the alarm had just been accidentally tripped and not necessarily set off by smoke. We never found out what happened and I had kind of forgotten about the whole situation. Later in the afternoon, there were some ladies that I had made conversation with, and they asked if I had heard what caused the alarm to go off. Not knowing what set it off, I said, "I'm sure glad that it wasn't anything serious and that the sprinklers didn't turn on. That would've put a damper on the show!" The ladies thought I was so funny that I threw that pun in and I kinda felt embarrassed that they had actually caught my little "punny." But can you imagine if the sprinklers would've gone off?? Our booth would be a total loss because it's practically all paper and foam core!

Enough with the stories for now.

I was able to go over and see Chandice and Cam for a little while tonight! It's always fun to catch up with the Wingers! And to Cam, I love when you send me your jokes via text message...keep 'em coming! :)

gathering life's memories moments

Booth setup day at CHA! 12 hours later and we finally left the convention center...what a day! Brenda was convinced that we'd be done with setup by 2 at the very latest, but sure enough we were there til about 7:30. I thought that things were going well, until I started putting up the vinyl that has our Pebbles 'bi-line,' which is supposed to read, "gathering life's moments" but I must've ordered, "gathering life's memories." Oops. Moments, memories...same thing, right?

I am so excited about our booth and this product release! More pictures to come.

And ps...I'm not crying! I was laughing because we just recently changed our bi-line and I could not remember it to save my life. I thought that for sure I had it right on everything, but apparently I had missed one!