Sunday, July 24, 2011

Goodies & Photos from CHA / Blog Candy Winner

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack and boy did I have a fabulous time in Chicago!!  My friend and fellow stamper Karen Knegten allowed me to stay in her beautiful house for 6 days!  From being picked up from the airport to being dropped off, we talked the entire time (except while sleeping!).  The week went so fast it is a blur! We went to CHA and had a wonderful time meeting other fellow stampers and of course buying stuff! Here are some photos:

Karen's front door with all that beautiful GREEN foliage

Her amazing view from her front of house of all that beautiful water

Not so pretty here -- I so do not like snow (I copied this from Karen's photos to show my DH)











Karen's DH was so nice to take us out for a little boat cruise around the lake - amazing houses!  Is this gorgeous or what??  {sigh} all that pretty water
and the lake view of Karen's gorgeous "beach cottage"


and  the friends from CHA:
My Dirty Dozen Leader and SCS Super Queen;  Lydia

Friends over dinner - (from left - Deb Felts, Debbie, Joy and from right - Karen, Lori, and me.

It was so fun to meet the real persons behind the avatars.  I felt I had been friends with all these ladies forever!
This isn't a friend but he sure is famous~ TIM HOLTZ.  How cool was that to walk up and he didn't have a crowd around him - [the advantage of being there the last 15minutes of the show!]
 Karen, TIM, and me

We never did get to see the entire room of CHA - they shut it down at 4:30pm (we thought it was going till 6:00pm :(. ) Fun stuff is coming -[ from what we saw anyway].  I didn't take photos of stuff except my shopping haul!













We entered CHA about 2:45pm (after shopping over at the Jewerly Show - about 21 stamp vendors in that area) and the FIRST place was running a 50% off sale on EVERYTHING (he didn't want to cart it home) -- can you believe all this fun stuff I got!!  Oh I was in heaven.  I adore great prices.  So, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed CHA and my visit with my friend Karen!!

I didn't forget about my Blog Candy.  I had DH pick a number and the lucky winner is..........
#4 Cheri!!!! 
I need your snail mail to send this to you!  Thanks to everyone for the kind comments on my first published card!  If I ever get time, hopefully this will happen again.... It really is cool to see your name and card in an official magazine! :)

Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing in my fun trip~~






9 comments:

craftieodmae said...

great pictures, thanks for sharing!

Tanya said...

Oh my goodness you lucky, lucky girl! Thanks for sharing.

Wanda Cullen said...

Thanks for sharing your pics, Vicki! That would have been sooo much fun! Glad you could go and glad you had a great time!

Kim said...

Hey Vicki - I'm so glad you got to go to CHA and had so much fun. You deserved a fun trip with all the hard work you do. Thanks so much for sharing with us. The pics look great. :>)

Cheri said...

Woohooo....is that right, am I the WINNER??? I'm so excited! Thank you Vicki.....and would you pleeease autograph your card on it's page for me??? I'm a serious fan/groupie/stalker. Thanks again! I'll email you my addy.

Teresa Kline said...

oh my Vicki, the home you stayed is gorgeous...wow...it looks like you had an amazing trip.....I am sooooo jealous....hehehe.

enjoy *~*

Karen (TLgirl353) said...

First congrats to you for being published and to Cheri, for winning the blog candy! Secondly- it was so much fun having you for a house guest last week, and you're quite the photographer- fab shots of my neck of the woods (or should I say lake). You're right, CHA was a lot of fun and scoring great prices was a super bonus!
So glad you decided to head East!!

Susan Raihala said...

Eaten up with green. EATEN up with it. Oh how I wish I'd been there with you, too..... So glad you had an amazing time!!!!

Mary Marsh said...

how exciting vicki to be able to attend cha-would love to go-great photos of the house where you stayed