My Stamping Friends: Stamping' Up! Leadership Conference in San Antonio, TX ~ January 2012

Hi there My Stamping Friends, I'm sorry I haven't been in better touch but as you know I've been in San Antonio, TX for the Stampin' Up! Leadership Conference. It was such a blast. I caught up with some wonderful friends, learned a lot, laughed a lot and saw some amazing paper creations. All in all it was a fantastic trip. Here are some highlights (and this will probably be my longest blog post ever):

Day 1: Wed. Jan 18, 2012 ~ I arrived in San Antonio and had lunch with some friends before heading over to pick up my Leadership bag and work on my Make and Takes. When we sat at our table to start our Make and Takes, we were greeted with this lovely delight. Many Thanks to Mike for working so hard to make these chocolates for all the 1300+ attendees!

When we finished we headed off to the demonstrator resource center to take some photos of the displays and cards created by the employees and demonstrators. Just beautiful, don't you think?

We also met up with some friends there too.

with Sara Douglass

with the fantastic Diana Gibbs

I love, love, love my up-up-up-upline Carol Bartle. Isn't she adorable?

Next we went off to dinner where I met some fantastic 'new to me' friends.

Rose-Ellen, Julie, Blair, Lesley, Julie, Christyne, Cathy and Janet

A quick stroll by the Alamo and back to the hotel to fall into bed. I'd been up for 20+ hours at that point.

a night at the Alamo

Day 2: Thurs. Jan 19, 2012 ~ My roommate Janna and I were up early for breakfast (check out this Texas style waffle)

A Texas sized breakfast

and we made our way over to the convention center for the Opening Session of the conference .....meeting up with friends along the way. I just love My Stamping Friends!

Janna and Rose-Ellen

One of my Stampin' Up! favorites, Shannon West

At opening session we learned the theme of the conference was 'My Way' and were reminded about the qualities of being a leader, we learned that we surpassed our recruiting goal, we saw our friends walk across the stage for promoting within the company by sharing what they love (check out Janna and Michelle),

Janna Unterzuber

Michelle Suit

we found that our demonstrator magazine Stamping' Success is being revamped and modernized (if you're considering becoming a demonstrator and want to get your own trial subscription to this magazine just let me know), we found out about a new product offering called the Simply Scoring Dagonal plate ( which will be available to customers to order on March 1st) and I WON one of the Diagonal Plates so you'll see projects with it very soon, we heard all about the MAJOR changes they are making to the catalog ( the current catalog and Idea Book will end May 30th rather than June 30th as originally planned) and then we went to lunch. YUMMY!!!!!

After lunch we had classes and breakout sessions and another trip to the demo resource center to check out all the additions to the displays. There is some amazing work here.

We headed to the Riverwalk for dinner again but this time we found out that Ty Pennington was in town to film the Christmas 2012 episode of Extreme Home Makeover. He was just a hop, skip and jump away from where we were eating so we went to see if we could get a glimpse. It wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it would be and I took a few great photos.

Dinner on the Riverwalk

Ty Pennington

I ended the day with a quick visit to some friends that were participating in a shoebox swap (LOVE you girls!).

Kristyne, Maddy and Rose-Ellen

Thank goodness it was at my hotel because I had just enough energy to make it upstairs to my room.

Day 3: Fri. Jan 20, 2012 ~ today we started with some opening session entertainment in the form of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Our CFO Scott showed us his latest MDS creation to highlight the financial state of the company (which is fantastic by the way). We finished up with an amazing salsa dance - Scott's Way. Oh, and next time we chat, ask me about Scorin' with Scotty ~ Too funny! Then we were off to lunch.

The highlight of my day happened as I was at lunch! Let me back up and say that I have been Tweeting about Stampin' Up! for a while now (you can find me on twitter at @REEastman) to let people know about the company itself and my busines including my blog updates and classes. Well, during Leadership we were given a challenge that if we were tweeting with the #MyLeadership hashtag we had a chance to win a prize of going ackstage during the closing session. Well let me tell you the power of positive thinking (and tweeting with the right hashtag) because I got up that morning just positive that I was going to go backstage and meet Shelli and even asked my roommate to take photos in the afternoon session since I would be backstage. I chose my outfit, did my hair and makeup all with this in mind......and at lunchtime, I was notified that I was one of the two winners to go backstage. Talk about exciting!!!!!!!

Rose-Ellen getting notified of winning the backstage pass

I'm not sure I remember the classes that afternoon but I know I was there because I have class notes and photos to prove it. I was just so excited to go backstage. At 3:30pm I met Mary Ellen my fellow tweeter and Chad took us backstage. I was armed with my camera and phone (to tweet of course) and off I went. I can't even describe how much fun it was! I hope the photos do it justice! A HUGE Thank You to Chad for the whole backstage tour and all the details that went with it. You really made my trip!

Mary Ellen, Rich, Pam, Shelli and Rose-Ellen

Shelli and Rich watching the line monitor backstage

Shelli, Chad, Rich and Chad

Chad, Rose-Ellen and Rich

Who's dressing room?? Guess this happens when its a convention of women.

Rose-Ellen and Shelli during my backstage visit

Rose-Ellen and Scott

I have a bunch more but for some reason they are not showing up properly. I'll try and post them on my Facebook page at Stampin' Up! with Rose-Ellen .

I had one more dinner with friends left before I got back on the airplane so a if my day could get any better, I met with Janna, Cathy and her husband for cocktails,

Janna, Cathy, Rose-Ellen & Mike

watched Little Joe open up his TWO GRAMMYS (ugh, that photo won't post properly either - check out my business facebook page mentioned above).

I ended the day at dinner with great friends (and learned exactly where your finger should be while taking a photo with someone else camera). Thanks for some wonderful laughs Ladies.