Stamping Around Vermont Recap

I'm back from Vermont!! My apologizes for not posting from the event...seems my computer wanted nothing to do with the hotel's WiFi connection! After my initial frustration, I realized that maybe two days away from a computer, in a beautiful Inn in Vermont, wasn't such a bad thing after all. First, Vermont is a truly beautiful place! Julie knows a lot about Manchester and the surrounding towns so we took a lovely, winding ride up to the Inn and she was able to tell me a lot about landmarks, great places to stay and eat, etc. It made me want to spend a week instead of two days in that beautiful state! We did have a bit of rain, as evidenced by the photo of the foggy mountains, but the weather ended up clearing and being quite nice. We had a wonderful time at our event, met lots of wonderful people and created fantastic projects! I'll have a more detailed post on the Stamping Around web site tomorrow but for now will share a few tidbits with you here. I wish I had taken more photos! Seems I was too busy or having way too much fun to stop for picture taking this time. I missed getting good photos of the instructors and we had wanted a group photo as well...Anyone want to come along to our events to act as our professional photographer? We pay really well in free stamp sets! :-) Here is our brand new banner in our stamping room! We had a building all to ourselves and it came complete with an enormous stone fire place...so quaint and New England like!

A photo of our room...isn't it darling? Our room was huge, and you should have seen the bathroom!, it was amazing! I immediately thought that I needed to come back to this Inn with my husband and kids. The grounds were really nice as well as the main lodge. The staff was a bit laid back in their response time, different than my experience at a chain hotel, but you couldn't beat the charm.

Here are all of our busy stampers working to finish Cindy Lawrence's beautiful project (photos of her project will be on the Stamping Around site tomorrow).

Here's our table hard at work on Erika Martin's project, which was a blast to create! We painted an 8x8 canvas and used scrap paper to make a paper picture. Erika has shared her canvases on her blog before and as soon as we knew we were headed to VT, I knew I wanted Erika to teach a canvas class. So glad she did, everyone really seemed to enjoy the project.

My nearly completed canvas...How fun is that! I still need to add a sentiment to the hill but I am in love with this process and want to try this type of project again!

And speaking of Erika...here she is! Meeting Erika was definitely a highlight of the event for me. Erika's blog was the very first crafty blog I ever visited! I told her that the first week after I found her blog I completed neglected my family as I spent hours reading her posts and clicking through all of the other designer links on her home page. My husband was ready to stage an intervention! LOL! And just as she seems on her blog, Erika is so down-to-earth and genuine...a real treat to talk to and get to know...I wish we had more time to visit! Maybe at another Stamping Around event...or maybe I'll just show up on her doorstep with my luggage and declare that she needs to show me around Vermont for a week! ;-) I'm off to relax and visit with my hubby! I miss my family so much when I'm gone, even when it's just an overnight. Sigh...being a SAHM can be so tiring but it seems I only need a short break before I'm ready to jump back into the chaos again! I love my little monkeys...it was so good to see them again last night. Be sure to check back at the Stamping Around site tomorrow for great shots of our amazing projects!