Congratulations to "Reginna H," the random winner of our October blog contest! Reginna, just stop by Scrapbook Generation and we'll have your $50 prize package all ready for you.

Thanks to all of you who entered the contest, and for the wonderful, warm, enthusiastic, and sweet comments you made about Scrapbook Generation's first five years as Springfield's scrapbooking and card-making destination! We cherish each of those comments!

We're back to "normal" after the first of our two Branson weekend retreats. I slept all day Monday, literally, and now it's time to do the last-minute preparations for the second group!

Looking ahead, I want to share some information about future Scrapbook Generation events, and also to ask for your help. Stacey and Allison and Karin and I are in the talking stages about adding several new events to our 2010 schedule. Based on the huge success of Scrap-a-Palooza at Remington's, and because our Kansas City, St. Louis, and central Missouri customers have requested it, we are considering hosting a similar event in the Lake of the Ozarks area, possibly twice a year. We are also considering adding one or more weekend retreats in the same area.

Finding the "just right" venue is the big issue, and if any of you have any suggestions we'd be happy to hear them. Large hotels have the large meeting spaces, but you also get into their rules, which almost always include not being able to bring in your own food. You must live in their world of $2 brownies and $1.50 cans of pop, which kind of defeats our purpose of actually making money on the event! We'll be making a road trip that way soon to scope out the possibilities, so if you have any personal knowledge of good locations, please leave a comment here, email Stacey (stacey@scrapbookgeneration.com) or me (scrapbookgen@sbcglobal.net). Thanks in advance for any suggestions!