I just returned home last night from an amazing four days in SLC at our annual SU! Convention!
This year was a quiet year with just MJ and me going this year. The deciding factor for me actually attending this year is that because I promoted to Manager this past SU! year, I had my Convention fee waived this year. Can't pass that up :) Here are our adorable bags we got this. I'll definitely be re-using this bag as a purse!
After visiting Memento Mall, we went and did our Make-and-Takes. Look how clean the table is before we started....
Here's what it looked like about halfway through our projects...
Pictures of the projects will be posted soon :)
We took a few pictures before heading back to our hotel for a few minutes.
We finally ate lunch/dinner at about 3:30 p.m. at the Cheesecake Factory which is new with the new City Creek Mall. (we spent a lot of time at the new mall in our free time :) Thursday began the fun....it's always exciting when you walk into the Convention Center and you see thousands of demonstrators crowding the halls! MJ added the text to this fun picture SU! posted :) Perfect match to our theme.
The stage was so very fun this year.
Our guest speaker was hilarious! He specifically spoke about how to reach out to the GenY generation. Which is kind of funny to me because according to my birth year I actually fit into that generation. He had some great tips...most of them were social media related. We did a social media test where we took pictures of him and then friended him on FB by text all at the same time. It was pretty cool :) BTW, if you haven't friended my demo page on FB, you can do so by texting the number 32665 and then in the message typing Fan stampnscrap.jenn
He had some very specific information that I found that not only applied to my SU! business but also to my personal life. It was fun to be able to use his talk in both worlds :)
The first day of Convention is always a great day to swap. These are my swaps from this year (which you should have seen posts about already :).
After a quick dinner at Chick-Fil-A, we attended the awards night. Of course, we had to take our picture on the red carpet before entering :)
We thought it was kind of funny that the weekend getaway will be held in San Diego. Maybe we'll just catch up with our friends somewhere around town while they are here :)
Then we attended the after party. It's always fun to see how much dancing goes on at these things. MJ and I are definitely are the younger side at this event so it makes it even better to people watch :)
We finally caught up with Vickie and Latisha at the after party...just had to see Latisha dancing :) I love SU! events because even though we only see these ladies once a year, it's SO fun to see each other EVERY year. Vickie celebrated her 15-year anniversary as a demo at convention this year!
These are the fun desserts they serve us :)
When we got in the elevator, we happened to get in the elevator with Megan (one of the Gardner daughter's) and her husband. We also had ridden down the elevator with her that morning. She started up a conversation with us. It was fun that she had remembered us from that morning. Friday we started with another general session. We just happened to get seats behind our new friends. Just in case you haven't been to convention before, we're on the 2nd row...center section just behind the entire Gardner family :) It didn't take long for our new friend, Megan, to wave to us.
We took a picture with here...she was very kind to us and talked us a bit here and there as we saw her the rest of the convention.
The fun part of this picture was after her husband took a picture with MJ's phone, he pulled out his phone and took a picture of us as well with Megan. :)
Of course, we had to take a few pictures on the stage :)
After a few breakout classes and lunch, we had another general session. This time we didn't get very close seating but it worked okay this time around. I did get to walk officially on stage this year for reaching $100,000 in total sales since I began. I reached this back in August (and was so close to it last year when I went to Convention)...so now that it was a official I had to walk on stage :)
Of course, we headed back to the mall, and I happened to snap a quick picture of the temple. It's beautiful! I giggled a little when I noticed that Tiffany's is located on the 2nd floor of the mall and has windows that look out towards the temple. Very SMART on their part :)
That night we attended an amazing class. So many new techniques and ideas to share! Can't wait!
I'll post this project when I finish. We had to take such good notes we didn't have enough time to stamp in between presenters :) On Saturday as we were sitting waiting for the last General Session to start, I realized that we hadn't even taken a picture of the two of today. So a quick snap shot :) Second row from the front again for us! It's much easier to get seats for just 2 of us...although, we would have loved to have our usual crowd with us this year!
Stampin' Up! live streamed the first bit of General Session for the demonstrators that couldn't make it. After paying the Richtar in stamps, we found out that the Grand Vacation is a global event for all of the markets of SU! on a Western Caribbean Cruise! Guess where we have been talking about cruising next?!?!? Hmmm, now how can I sell $40,000 in 12 months?! :)
One of the best parts of SU! is they are so giving! All of the demonstrators received the Ronald McDonald stamp set from the catalog.
We also received a hostess stamp set from the Holiday Catalog. Look at all that excitement.
Convention is ALWAYS a blast! After the session ended, our upline picked us for dinner. It was fun telling Kathy the condensed version of convention. She then took us to the airport to head home.
Who's coming with me to Convention July 18-20, 2013, for the 25th anniversary of Stampin' Up!? You know it will be BIG!!! Watch for more posts about Convention 2012 coming soon! :)
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