Jack's napping so time for Part 2 of my Convention Wrap Up. Saturday night was time to get dolled up and head out for dinner and tons of clapping!
I'm a part of Claire Daly's Art With Heart team. Its a lovely team led by the talented Claire and it was SOOO nice to meet a few more of the girls in real life at Convention. (We regularly 'catch up' in cyberspace.) Here's Claire and I ready to head in to dinner.
Now this is a blurry old shot but I snapped it quickly as we were madly dashing to grab a couple of tables walking with dignity and grace! Looks quite spiffy with the chair covers. Now you may just be able to make out a little quartet on the right playing lovely music to accompany dinner. OK probably not but use your imagination :-)
The tables were all set beautifully with gorgeous floral centre pieces.
It was lovely to chat with other demonstrator friends over our delicious 3 course dinner.
Now being me, I of course took some snaps of all the food. :-)
Here's the entree .....
Main course ....
And dessert ....
Oh and coffee too ...
With a little something for we mad Twilight fans if you look closely ...
YUM!
Lots of eating, chatting and laughter followed .....
Once we'd finished all that it was time to head into the stage area for the Awards part of the night. Here's the table chokkas with bags holding stamp sets for the award recipients.
Now my groovy camera with its big lens still struggled to get good focused shots of the awards fun so we'll have to make do with these blurry ones. :-)
Some of my fellow team mates headed up on stage to get awards and a hug from Shelli. Here's Ros ...
Kathryn ...
.... and I got to do a dash across the stage too for a Sales Award. (Thank you to all my lovely customers!)
That's Shelli saying 'Ooh I love your dress.' She's a sweetie.
Ros, Kathryn, Di and I (along with lots of other girls in this category) received a pin, brooch, badge - a metal thingy and a stamp set 'A Flower For All Seasons.'
In a nice bag with a little tag too.
They put the award and the stamp prizes onto the screen for each category, then called the names. I recognised HEAPS of girls from the wider team I belong to (Angela Sargeant's Elite Stampers group) and I think my hands are still tingly from all that clapping! Here's 3 sets people got for one of the higher categories of recruiting award, for working hard to build their teams.
There were group shots too for some categories. Now I've forgotten which category this one was for (oops - too busy clapping, didn't jot any notes) but there's my upline Claire (congrats Claire) and a fellow demonstrator and friend Yvonne Campbell (congrats Yvonne) and Sarah Klass who I've not met but who did an AWESOME presentation on one of the days. (Congrats Sarah.)
I think this line up of lovely ladies are the girls who will be heading off in August with their partners on the Incentive Trip for a few days of pampering in Qld. Stampin' Up! are a very generous company to be involved with.
As demonstrator, we all get great benefits plus some nice surprises from time to time - a bonus extra discount off some products for example on top of the normal discount. As well, the Stampin' Up! career plan builds in great incentives and rewards for those who want to build a craft business.
And for those who work hard and consistently over the year to build strong businesses and strong teams, there's the opportunity for such great rewards at Convention too. Some of the girls received Tiffany jewellry along with their stamp sets, plus there were cash bonuses too for some categories.
And did I mention TONS OF CLAPPING.
Sock Monkey did quite a few laps across the stage too, and his twin appeared during the night I think too - unless he brought several outfits and was getting changed. :-)
Here he is with the lovely Kerri Hunter.
Once the awards were all presented Shelli finished the evening with some closing words then it was time to head back to the rooms for a quick glass of bubbly with the girls.
I'd like to pass on my congrats to all the girls who received Awards over the course of the evening. Well done ladies!
Sunday was time to cram all our gear back into our bags (ugh - always hard to fit everything back in, or is it just me!) ....
...and do a quick bit of sight seeing in Canberra. Lisa and I bumped into some other friends from the team and checked out a market ....
... and some glass blowing at a glass factory.
And then it was time to head to the airport and fly home again.
I had an absolute ball and can't wait til next year's Stampin' Up Convention.
Its nice to be back though and to tuck the kids in at night (I did miss that bit), and what a great job John did at home. The kids had lots of fun, the house was tidy, dinner was already cooked and the dishes were even done! What a legend!
Cheers, Sue