Hey Neighbors! A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you our day-trip to Mesquite, Texas for the Stamp, Scrap, and Art Tour. My neice, Ashley, and I had a great time, and I bought a few supplies to get ready for some big things coming this February.
First, we have Layout-a-Day, better known as LOAD 219, which started on February 1st(more about that tomorrow!). The other thing coming up is Scrapbook Expo in Irving, Texas. Now you may remember Scrapbook Expo as the big event held at the Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine. I always thought it was poor planning to host a scrapbooking event at that over-priced monstrosity, and it provedto be a bad decision last year when the Gaylord abruptly dumpedthe Expo reservation in favor of a client with deeper pockets who wanted the same date. This forced the Expo to move to the Irving Convention Center (with only 2 weeks notice, btw), which turned out not to be such a bad thing after all.
As a whole, we actually wound up preferring the Irving location to the Gaylord. The concessions were better, the classrooms were better, and everythingwas cheaper. Our only real complaint was the parking and the distance of the hotel. At the Gaylord, we were guests at the hotel and only had to pay one parking fee for each car, which we parked right outside the door, and we could walk to our rooms. In Irving, our hotel was down the street (although it was verynice), and we had to shuttle back and forth. We also had to pay for parking every day if we wanted to have a car with us at the convention center, and it wasn’t as convenient to keep our food/coolers in the car for easy access. But we did like the new venue, so we let the organizers know, and they blessed us with relocation to Irving again for 2019.
I’m super excited about Expo this year. With the addition of two new hotels right across the street, we will again be walking distance from our rooms, and that means we don’t have to pay those stupid parking fees, and we can cross the street to get lunch, assuming we don’t decide to eat at the concession stand or one of the many food trucks that came by last year. We booked the hotel package with the Texican Court, and we’re really excited about trying out this nifty, Texas-themed hotel with a retro vibe. Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to bring, and how I’m going to get it there!
I had already pretty much decided that I wanted to work on some of my travel albums during these crops. I have several “travelers journals” in progress that use the same supplies. That was the easy decision. Now I’ve just got to figure out what supplies I can’t live without, and what is the best way to get them there. I haven’t posted about it much, because I wanted to wait for the big reveal, but I’ve been reorganizing my craft room. The new set up is both more and less portable at the same time, depending on how much stuff I want to bring.
Obviously, for a long weekend retreat like the one I’ll be doing in April, I’ll want to bring more stuff, and that’s okay because I’ve moved a lot of it to bins and totes that I can just throw into my car as they are (or with a bungee cord or two to hold them closed). But for this shorter crop, where I don’t really need allof the supplies in these bins, I have the quandary of deciding whether to unload the needed supplies into another tote, take the bins as they are, or unload things from the bins and fill the space with other things I need. And I haven’t decided if it’s a good or a bad thing that this event is coming up in just 8 days or so. Yes, I am anxious to go, but I really am anxious about getting all my work caught up, getting packed, etc. And oh, did I mention that the day after I come home from this event, I’ll be flying out to California for a weeklong travel agent training? Hmmm…maybe I should get up and start packing!
What do you think? Are you going to Scrapbook Expo? How do you decide what supplies you will take to a long crop? Any other special things you like to do to prepare? Share your ideas in the comments!
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