Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Meeting up with axe murderer friends!

Yes, another post about my trip!


I thought I'd pop in & talk about all the axe murderers I met up with while I was away. First there was Mel. We had arranged to have dinner on our first night in the US but she had to pull out at the last minute due to illness. But we did catch up as I had a present for her & she had something that I'd ordered on-line. Unfortunately, though...I think she passed on to me whatever lurgy she had which I then had for the rest of the trip!

We did catch up at the end as we spent 2 days in Buena Park which is not far from Mel's place. So we did a quick visit to the beach (I wanted to see the water!!), had some dinner, did some shopping & generally hung out. I managed to meet Brandi, Mel's cat and Mel did my friend a huge favour when we discovered she was in the line at the Apple store. Yes, she bought an Ipad 2 for my friend. A very impulsive buy there!




Also on this trip, I managed to finally meet Michele. I've been to Seattle twice & not met her so I messaged her ages ago & we arranged to meet for dinner. I got her a little present of a Starbucks Australian coffee cup and some Tim Tams. We had a great night & it was fabulous to meet her.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Vera Bradley

I thought I'd pop in with another photo or two from my trip. I managed to suck my friend Sharon into the Vera Bradley void a few months ago and so one of our stops in the trip was a visit to the actual real Vera Bradley store in Roseville, CA. It involved a rather long drive from Oakland airport (thanks to the GPS and me both being off our heads) but we made it there with 15 mins before they closed. But of course, we had big plans to return the next morning. :)


I was so tempted by the Purple Punch rolling carry on bag. But you know what? $200 is A LOT to spend on a bag like that even if it is reduced by 25%. But it was just so gorgeous! And I have no photo of it!

I ended up only spending $100 there (mind you, we had visited a couple of other stores that had Vera & I had purchased in both of the other stores LOL). I got a Night & Day mini hipster, a Purple Punch sunglasses case, a Kiss & Make Up in Purple Punch and a Euro wallet in Lemon Parfait for DD. My previous purchases included a tote in Very Berry Paisley & a Tech Case in Make Me Blush (both for my friend Tracey) plus a slim case (think that's what they're called) also in VB Paisley, a mini zip wallet in Night & Day and a tech case in Blue Lagoon for DD.


This is the store from the outside. That's our funky rental car in the pic....an almost brand new Chevy HHR. It made up for the crappy Kia we had in SLC!


Here's a pic of the inside of the store with my friend browsing. Absolutely gorgeous stuff and I could have bought it all! Loved the stationery too but I would never use it cos it's so beautiful.
LOL.



Saturday, March 19, 2011

I'm back!

So I'm back from my trip! It was fabulous. I managed to visit both Shepherd's Bush & Elegant Stitch. Didn't make it to Needle in a Haystack. I was very restrained with my stash shopping (although my sewing shopping was another story) and didn't spend more than $100 on myself, not counting the Jill Rensel frames I got. I managed to spend some money for Anne....but don't think you'll see any of that cos it's a surprise for her.


It was very exciting going on the new Airbus A380 although a little worrying after Qantas's incident last year. If you don't know, one of the engines blew up over Indonesia & took out part of the wing. People on the ground originally thought the plane had crashed! But all was well and the plane trip was fine. I managed to get some sleep, stitch some & watch some TV.


This is the view you can watch from the seat back TV.


Salt Lake City put on a lovely (not) snow storm for us the night we arrived. Of course, I had arranged to meet a sewing axe murderer for dinner so I had to drive in the dratted snow. This is what our car looked like after 1 hr sitting while we ate.

We managed to scrape the snow from the car and drive an hour up the freeway (well actually it was longer than that) without incident. Well, except for the windscreen wipers stopping. I thought they'd broken but my pal Sharon said it was just the weight of the snow that stopped them. Lucky she was there!! We just pulled over & scraped it off. Phew!

The snow stopped overnight & this was the view from our hotel window the next morning. Much better!
So up to SB we went. We had a lovely time visiting with Tina & Teri & met up with Cathy & had lunch. A perfect day!


We then flew to CA & drove up to Elegant Stitch. Lois was such a doll....she offered to arrange shipping for our excess baggage! Luckily we didn't need to after a little re-arranging and the purchase of a new rolling carry on bag.

So...onto the stash photos. Here is my total stitching stash pic.


And these are the frames I got at Jill Rensel's. They are all for SB shop exclusives. Now I just need to frame them.

Oh & this is the cute little pin that Teri gave us at SB. Another one for my collection!