Birthday thanks from all of us at SG!

It's hard to know where to start to tell all of you what special days Friday and Saturday were for us. I decided that the easiest way was to share some photos and thoughts of the birthday celebration in the order they happened.

Friday evening: Fiskateers Reception

We had a reception planned for Lead Fiskateers Rebecca Peck and Angela Daniels, and Unibind Photobook Creator guy Ken Oliver. As customers started arriving to meet our visitors, Christine Rantz, shown above right with her daughter, Amy Roller, brought in this absolutely gorgeous "cake" she had made for us. I can't even imagine how many hours she spent on this personalized creation which even has battery-operated "candles!" And that wasn't our only gift...Joanie Cutbirth, below, brought us this lovely floral arrangement she had made herself. We already knew it, but these two acts of friendship just confirm that we have the nicest, sweetest, most considerate customer/friends in the world!

The Fiskateers arrived and immediately started livening things up. Amy Roller won the first door prize...a huge bag of Fiskars products.

We set up a green screen in the classroom area, and with a few props that Rebecca and Angela had brought with them, people started getting dolled up for some photo fun. Corbi Beshears, right, got a little wild with the giant scissors, but no one was injured!

Deanna Goodwin also won one of the door prizes from Fiskars. I didn't get names of everyone who was a winner on Friday night and Saturday, because it got so crazy, but Kimberly Knapton (not shown) won the drawing for the Unibind Photobook Creator given away Friday evening!

Remember the group above, which includes Dani Buehler at the right. I'll be talking about some of their exploits during Saturday's festivities.

Rebecca. Angela, and Ken do one of the final prize drawings of the evening, plus explain more about the Fiskateers program and how it benefits crafters all over the country.

We gave away 350 tote bags on Saturday! The first 200 were filled with product valued at over $45, and the next 150 each contained almost $25 worth of products. We also had 200 presents just waiting to be unwrapped by the first 200 customers! It's a good thing I took a photo before we opened. Later, I couldn't have made it through the crowd before most of the gifts were gone!

Saturday: Scrapbook Generation's Sixth Birthday Celebration

When my husband Don and I arrived at SG at 6 am, there were already five cars in the parking lot, and we found out later that Dani Buehler's group of four gals had spent the night in a car! And it was a cold night! The line started forming about 6:30, and this is what I saw when I first came out at 7:30! I started giving out numbers so that everyone could go back to their cars or find someplace else warm! Stefanie Hayes, a perennial "first-in-line" at Scrap-a-Palooza, was the first in line at the birthday, too.

As people would come up to the door, I'd pop out and give them numbers so they wouldn't have to stand in line. About 8:30, the line started forming again, in anticipation of our early opening at 9. The line went all the way to the Sprint store, down the sidewalk, around the corner, and down another sidewalk! Some of the gals in the first class of the day are hanging out near the front door! The parking lot was so full that people had to park across the street, and when the Lead Fiskateers arrived, some of the local Fiskateers gathered in the middle of the parking lot and did a few cheers!

The buffet started out with a huge assortment of goodies! With the crowd we had on hand, the 20 dozen mini-cupcakes by Laura Parks of Something Simple didn't last long, and we eventually had to send Don and Jeremy out for more goodies later in the day! The next few photos show what the interior of the store looked like immediately after we opened at 9 am.

For a while, I stood outside and continued to hand out numbers. I think that I gave out #200 shortly after 9 am. I was hoping that the numbers would help alleviate any crowding problems, but everyone seemed to want to shop now! I couldn't believe that I was telling people as they walked up that they might want to consider coming back later in the day to shop! That's how packed SG was!

Ken, Rebecca, and Angela were tireless. They had materials prepared for 200 people, and when those were all used up, they prepared more for all the gals and guys who wanted to make the cute purse mini-books using the Unibind Photobook Creator and the Fiskars border punches and other tools.

Once Stacey, Jeremy, and Karin started checking everyone out at the cash registers, it was hours before they stopped. The wait in line for some people was as much as 45 minutes, but as I walked in and out of the lines, everyone seemed to be enjoying all the craziness, and they were extremely good sports about the wait.

Unibind and Fiskars did drawings for door prizes every hour, and they were all generous prizes!

Don and Allison were in charge of the birthday gift area. The gifts ranged in value from $4 to over $200, and later in the day when things had cleared out a little, Penny Peck gets her chance to pick out a gift.

Throughout the day, Rebecca was also keeping the Fiskateer world up on what we were doing via her laptop. We all waved and screamed and just generally had a great time doing a few Fiska-cheers!

Karin helps a customer decide on which free birthday page kit to choose. We made 150 kits, but ran out in early afternoon. Some chose other page kits we had on hand, and others elected to get a rain check for one of the kits shown above.

Frequent Saturday sketch class gal Ashley Linton won one of the five or six (I lost track!) Unibind Photobook Creator machines that were given away on Saturday! These machines sell for $99.99, and we're currently taking pre-orders!

This photo says it all...lots of orange for Fiskars, red for Scrapbook Generation, some Unibind black. Rebecca, Ken, and Angela share some fun with Reginna Hagemeier and her mom, Joanie Cutbirth.

Gwen Lind won the end-of-the day grand prize from Fiskars, a huge basket of goodies!

This is the combined group of scrapbooking craziness that was Scrapbook Generation's sixth birthday celebration. Front, Rebecca Peck and Angela Daniels; back, Karin Rush, Allison Davis, Stacey Atchley, Debbie Sanders, Don Sanders, Jeremy Atchley, and Ken Oliver.

Stacey, Karin, myself, and Allison. This may be one of our last photos in our original store building!

Again, what do I say about such a glorious day. We had the time of our lives! It was our best single day ever, and we have the empty paper trays to prove it! Entire paper collections were totally wiped out! It's a good thing that we have two stacks of boxes higher than our heads full of new goodies to put out starting Monday morning.

But our birthday celebration was never about having a good profit day. It was about honoring the people who had been instrumental in our success...our faithful, loyal, and fun customers. We estimate the number of people at SG on Saturday to be between 450 and 500, which is a huge number for the size of our building. I was just overwhelmed all day by the cards, compliments, thank you's, smiles, hugs, and wishes for our continued growth.

I'm hoping I don't leave anyone out, but so many of you asked if you could help as you saw how huge the crowd was, and several pitched in to help where they could. My childhood friend Debbie Seitzer called back after she left to see if she could bring us lunch. Donna Cartner helped me set out the class materials several times. Corbi Beshears took over what we call "hook patrol" and helped remove the hundreds of empty hooks off the racks. Laura Parks handed out numbers and replenished the buffet and helped pack tote bags and, at one point, even started answering the phone! And we were pretty much down to our last bit of energy when Kim and Mike Koch walked in at 5 pm with two huge trays of yummy Frosty's!

This is probably the last celebration we'll have in our current building. Next time, we'll be in spacious new surroundings. We don't have to squeeze around each other to get from one spot to the next. We won't have to rush through classes. We won't have to stand in such long lines. But I'll forever remember this day at Scrapbook Generation. Thanks for helping us celebrate our six years with the best customers on the planet!

Additional thanks to manufacturers My Mind's Eye, American Crafts, BoBunny, Creative Imaginations, SEI, SugarTree, Best Creations, and Three Bugs in a Rug for their generous donations of prizes of all shapes and sizes!

Congratulations to our Grand Prize drawing winner! 

Julia Casella of Republic is the winner of the Scrapbook Generation Grand Prize drawing held at the end of our sixth birthday festivities. Julia wins a year's membership in our popular Remember Me Club, volume two, a value of over $200!