CHA 2010

What a fantastic time! I had a blast at CHA...even waiting in line for 2 hours to get in was fun! My mom and I ended up getting to the convention center around 10:00. We hadn't planned to get there that early, but we were sitting in the hotel all ready to go and just decided we would head over. After about 15 minutes of sitting in the line, I heard a some commotion and when I looked up Michelle, Dawn & Heather were all standing on the other side of the ribbon!! By the time I grabbed my camera and stood up, Michelle was right next to me! You can tell from these pictures that I was not excited at all to meet them...haha!! All I could do was smile. By the looks of some of the pictures, my mom must have been really excited too. (Just a little blurry!)

After awhile, we weren't in a line anymore. It was more like a mob. The security guards didn't seem to understand what all the excitement was about. It was funny to watch them shake their heads, roll their eyes, and laugh at all of us crazy crafters! (Let me know if you find yourself in this picture.)

I'm pretty sure almost everyone went straight to the PTI booth were Nichole handed us shopping bags. After grabbing all the paper and ribbon I wanted, Jenn handed us a slip with all the dies and Impression Plates that they had. We just had to mark what we wanted, then some fabulous workers picked them all up for us and they were ready when we got to the front of the check out line.

After shopping, we went to work on the make n takes. My mom made her first PTI card and I met Nadine!

After we were finished at the PTI Booth we walked around the rest of the show and made some other fun projects and tried out some new tools. We ended up at the PaperCrafts booth where I met Susan, Cath and Maren. I happened to be the "Mega Fan of the Week" on the PaperCrafts facebook page which made it even more fun to meet them since they also "knew" me!

While at the PaperCrafts booth, I also met Belinda, the 2010 Gallery Idol. We had a great chat.

A little earlier in the day, I was working on a project at a booth and I was sure that I saw

Taheerah, but I didn't feel like I could leave the booth to run down the aisle to catch her in the middle of my project. Then, as we were getting ready to leave the show, I decided to take one last loop around the PTI booth and there was Taheerah!

I wasn't able to make it to the get together that evening because I had family fly in that evening and the rest of the weekend was spent running around Chicago with all 8 of them! I would have loved to meet more of you though!

As you can probably tell from that crazy cheesy smile I have in just about every picture, CHA was awesome! I will definitely try to go again.

~Anika