hey bloggers! i'm finally home….and very happy to be. what an amazing European adventure it was. we were gone for 2 weeks of trade events, workshops, and education for ranger. i went with alain (from ranger), and mario as well as met up with several others in the industry along the way. it was lots of work, very tiring at times, but always a good time. as you can imagine, Internet access was limited for me and to be honest so was the time… i did however manage to clip a few videos throughout the journey so i put together this little montage to share with all of you. this is my first attempt at imovie with my new macbook so it's far from oscar material. here's a little recap of my travels:
travel day: mario and i set out from prescott to drive to the phoenix airport early in the morning to fly to newark, nj. to meet up with alain from ranger to connect on a flight to london that evening. when we arrived in phoenix we discovered our connecting flight to london was canceled so we had to busily re-book another flight to get there on time since we also had a connecting flight in london to amsterdam which was our final destination. (this is never a good way to start any trip!). nevertheless we all 3 got onto another flight, made our connection, and arrived in amsterdam.
day 1: once we arrived in amsterdam to make our trip even more exciting all of our luggage was lost, yep all 3 pieces were not on our flight so we had to spend 6 hours in amsterdam waiting for the next flight to arrive in the hopes our luggage was on it. so we spent the day (a little tired) walking around amsterdam but me made the best of it. we walked around the shops, ate pancakes, and took in the sights – talk about sights! we headed back to the airport to get our missing luggage (yeah!) and hit the road for our 1 1/2 hour drive to our first stop in holland.
day 2-4: the morning we were happy to meet up with some friends in the industry (margie and gail from making memories) who were attending the same trade event. we carpooled into the trade event where we spent the next 3 days demoing and teaching. i also got to see some other industry friends and the event was great. the last day i taught a mini ranger education day for several of their education specialists.
day 5: we flew out of amsterdam to leeds to meet up with our friend dy from art from the heart. we landed to snowy weather, but by some weird miracle, it stopped and the skies cleared. this was definitely a sign to me to get outside for a while, so what to do??? shopping fo course! we all hit the streets of leeds for 5 hours of the most incredible shopping – talk about retail therapy.
day 6: i got to spend the day with the most creative, kind, and generous people while i demoed at art from the heart. i don't normally do an entire day of demos, but dy is such a great friend and a HUGE supporter of ranger products that she had loads of people waiting to see a demo or two. dy and i each demoed the day away to groups of her customers that drove from far and wide to get there, unfortunately the weather was not as kind this day and it snowed like mad! thanks to all of you who braved the elements to come and watch the demos and shop, shop, shop! looking forward to the next trip there!
day 7-10: we drove about 2 hours down to kettering where i spent the next day teaching a couple of retailer workshops, and then on to meridan where we checked into our favorite pub. it's so cool to stay in pubs in the UK – definitely one of my favorite things about the journey. you'll have to see for yourself just how cool this pub is. there we met up with suze weinberg who had just flown in for the stitches trade event that weekend. the following morning we were up bright and early to go and set up for classes. suze and i taught 3 workshops on melt art and the new alcohol ink products from ranger. the students were great and the day just flew by. the next 2 days were spent demoing at stitches (which is a UK version of CHA) and meeting up with more industry friends – what a blast. of course there were so many fun dinners with friends, a few drinks in the pub, and lots of laughs along the way.
day 11: we headed out early for our 2 hour drive into london to meet up with craft friend and QVC celeb dawn bibby where suze and i each had a spot in her 2 hour craft show on QVC-UK. we had a few hours of prep before we went on air and were busy setting up demo spots and finishing up on-air samples (talk about tv magic!). the segments went great with several sold out kits and heart racing excitement only live television can bring. it's always great to hang out with dawn, and of course we had the BEST host on QVC, catherine, who was simply perfect! after qvc we headed into the center of london to drop suze off to meet up with lbcrafts as suze was staying a while longer in the UK.
day 12: we hit the streets of london to do some sight seeing and last minute shopping before our return flight home to the US. our flight was on-time and we made it out of london no problem. we arrived in newark by 7pm wednesday night we we said our farewells to alain. mario and i stayed at the airport hotel for our 6am flight to phoenix the following morning!
whew! so there you have it – my euro adventures (the condensed version). so now it's back to work and still catching up from CHA. hope you enjoy the video and thanks again for all of the kind "miss you" emails and comments. of course no homecoming would be complete without a giveaway right? i have some welcome home prizes to give away that includes some great idea-ology and ranger products to 3 lucky winners! so all you have to do is post a comment on today's post and i'll draw the names on monday. have a great weekend everyone – off to unpack the suitcases…t!m
