Stellar Stamps

What have I been up to? We're moving on Friday!

We are very, very excited to have just bought a house! It's a buyer's market and we were able to find a very good deal on a very solid albeit dated house. Our deed was recorded September 19. I began looking last March so this has been a long time in the works! We move in this Friday night. The last 2 weeks have been 24/7 of packing then running to the new house to do work there.

A painting crew has been there 8 days now and has a few more days to go. He's also doing some random things like closing a wall and eliminating a pocket door, removing paneling, removing wallpaper, lots of stuff. We (Doug mostly) have removed 4 rooms and a hallway of lime and blue carpet to expose gorgeous original hardwood floors. They are in great shape. We're so lucky!

Flooring guys come in tomorrow to redo kitchen from harvest gold vinyl to a faux flagstone (until we can afford to gut the kitchen and put hardwood or travertine in we are just replacing vinyl as we cannot live with yellow vinyl). We are replacing 2 rooms of yellow and brown carpet with an off-white flecked berber.

Back to paint... I chose bold colors and it looks awesome! No more white walls for us. Our bedroom is red (a brick or adobe red) with white trim. Looks super. Moss living room. Taupe dining room... you get the idea. Adding 4 1/4" white baseboards in 100% of the rooms except 2 of the bathrooms (we are not touching those at all right now). Colorful walls with white trim and white baseboards... I hope it looks as good as I'm dreaming it will!

So, though I ordinarily post about stamping, our move is consuming us right now. We sleep there this Friday night!

Here are photos of the front and part of the backyard. What is that mound of ivy you see in the middle of the backyard lawn, you ask? A tree stump the former owner didn't take out and then let ivy grow on it, huh? This Sunday our gardener starts a 2-day job with a crew ripping out about 75% of the greenery. I love gardening (like my Mom) and want to start over. There's a lot of ugly stuff back there and hardly anything flowering. I want gobs of color in the spring so I shall start now and pretty much destroy the back yard as it is and give it Stella's version of an extreme makeover!

World Card Making Day Promotion - October 4-11

Stampin' Up! Celebrates World Card Making Day

Stampin' Up! is excited to celebrate this holiday the week of October 4-11.  During this week, we are offering 20 percent off Simply Sent card kits and Simply Sent Card Elements.

Download WCMD_US.pdf

A swap card from Stampin' Up!'s CEO Shelli Gardner

Shelli indicated that this is the only time she ever swaps! She swapped her card a little later as she was still finishing it up. And, of course, she signed the back with her signature heart :)

Sharing Swap Cards from Founder's Circle

We had a fun swap at Founder's Circle. All in our jammies, 120 demonstrators swapped. Wow, that was a lot of cards to make and to swap! When I got back to my room, I laid them all out on the bed and took some photos. Here they are!

 

Founder's Circle photo

Stampin' Up! took a photo of the whole group of us on the last evening at a country club where we were treated to dinner and a movie under the stars.

See if you can find me. If you are looking directly at the photo, look towards the center then veer a little left. I'm above a blonde gal and on the left of me is a gal in a red top (Debbie). To the right of me a little bit is a gal in a blue top (Patty).

I have no dignity!

I am still working on sorting my Founder's Circle photos. I have about 150 and I have to load them 5 at a time on Picasa. Slow work and I'm moving so I am not at the computer a lot this week. Just noticed this photo and I had to show you that I really have no dignity!

It was the night of the swap between us all and we were to wear pajamas and slippers. Well, I just couldn't leave it alone and I got some curlers at the Dollar Tree store because, hey, can't have pj's without curlers, LOL! Ok, I know that this is a look I might not want to repeat often but it was fun. Shelli seemed to like it!

If you are one of the few people on this planet who does not know who Shelli is... look at the inside front of any Stampin' Up! catalog. She's the co-founder, our CEO and a goddess in my opinion! THE most generous, kind, sweet, sincere and wonderful woman and corporate leader you'd ever want to meet. She treated us like gold at Founder's Circle. She knows most of us by our first name. She knows mine - her granddaughter is named Stella! Classy, classy woman.

A taste of Founder's Circle

Sunday afternoon, I returned from 5 days in St. George, Utah as the guest of Stampin' Up! in recognition of my top demonstrator standing. The top 1% of demonstrators receive awards at convention (sales, recruiting, etc...) and the 140+ of us get a personal invite for this private party with our company's CEO, Shelli Gardner. It was amazing and I felt SO privileged!

Much is going on today. We bought a new house and we took ownership this past Friday. I am spending the morning there today with much to do before we move in in two weeks (painting, flooring, yard work). Meeting all the people we hired to help us there in a couple hours to get started turning our 1970s house (inside) into a 2008 home. It's gonna be fun!!!

Throughout the next few days, I'll share pieces of Founder's. I have photos as well. To start with my story, here's a photo taken by the amazing candy area they set up in a few spots in our "Gathering Place". There was a huge room full of about 6-8 sofas and huge armchairs where we could "hang out". In 2-3 places we had these candy carts full of candy that we could have to our heart's content! There were tiny tin buckets to fill with candy.

Then I was able to go to my hotel room. They hand-made name plaques that were hanging on our respective rooms. Gorgeous! And, yes, we take all the gifts home!

There's MUCH much more to tell... so hang tight and visit me again tomorrow!

Trick-or-treat! Spooky Spider released early!

Stampin' Up! bumped up the release date of the Spooky Spider Decor Elements image. It is SO cute. Here's the flyer showing it plus go to my blog post below dated 8-17-08 and see the one I made just after I returned from convention.

Boo!

Download Spooky_Spider_0908.pdf

Going to Founder's Circle tomorrow

On Wednesday, the 17th, I fly to Las Vegas then we get transported to St. George, Utah for the annual Founder's Circle retreat. There'll be about 130 of us from the US and Canada. I'm joining a group for the Zion National Park Narrows Tour, where we walk the base of the park and actually through a creek (I hear it's breathtaking). We'll be swapping in our jammies and just having a whole lot of fun and good times! Will post gobs of photos upon my return. Ciao!

Stampin' Up! Online Ordering is Here!

Order 24/7... in your jammies.... right now! Go to my website at:

www.StellarStamps.StampinUp.net and click on "Shop Now". That's all there is to it!

Here's a quick link: Order SU products NOW -- here!

Special Subscription Offer with a FREE stamp kit!

Stampin' Up has partnered with Country Living magazine to design the Country Living Holiday Collection Stampin' Kit that will be featured in the December 2008 issue of Country Living. As an added bonus, Country Living is offering Stampin' Up! customers a special magazine subscription rate:

Customers: Subscribe to a year of Country Living for only $12 and get a FREE mini stamp kit! For just $1 per issue, you'll receive great craft projects, articles on collecting, makeover features, recipes and entertaining ideas-all delivered to your home each month. PLUS, Country Living will include the exclusive Stampin' Up! mini stamp kit FREE. Use it to design note cards, menus and anything else that inspires you! Click here to subscribe

Here's the FREE mini kit.

 

 

I subscribed today and I got an extra offer after I finished paying for Country Living to get both 1 yr of House Beautiful and 1 yr of Good Housekeeping for a total of $10! Sheesh, why not? $10 for TWO mags for 1 year. That's 3 latte's at Starbucks or a whole year of two mags to inspire and relax me. Uh, yeah, I'll do that!

One reason I subscribed ASAP is so that I'll receive that December issue where SU is having the promotion.

Welcome to my newest downline, Amy!

Welcome, welcome to Amy from Wisconsin who phoned me earlier tonight and committed to taking the plunge. She dove in and she is now a full-fledged Stampin' Up! demonstrator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As my thanks, Amy will be getting anything in the catalog valued at $25 as my gift :) Hmmm... what will she choose???

Nilda chose Batty for You.

Irene chose the Bella Toile set and some ribbon.

What will YOU choose when you sign up with me?????

An important business request....

Have been having some issues with customers saying they have not received an email from me or that I have not received theirs. Had my email provider dissect my settings and they swear it's not on my end especially when they noted that I had this special setting on it that they put on about 6 months ago that tells other systems that I am not Spam. Nevertheless, they had 2 suggestions that they think will help as they say it's the "other" end in their opinion.

1. Please put me into your Contact list for emails. Just add me into your Address Book as though I were your Aunt Sally or neighbor. You can use Stellar as the first name and Stamps as the last name then input my email as StellarStamps@comcast.net. That will prevent my emails from going into your Spam folder.
2. If you email me and it's rejected, then I've been told that it just may be that the server is not awake at that moment. Try again or adjust your settings. The tech guy said maybe the other side's email had spoofed my email. Huh? What he means is that someone can infiltrate your email and then find my email address on your end and pretend to be me thus making your system think I'm Spam. I know that is not a good explanation and it may not be exactly right but the point is... email does not always connect and it's not perfect.
3. If you think I should have received an email and you have not heard from me, send me a message via my Stampin' Up! website www.StellarStamps.StampinUp.net. There's a Contact Me area there and I seem to get 100% of those messages filtered thru my own website. All my customers seem to know that when you email me, I reply immediately (within hours at most). If it's been a day, you can bet that our emails are circling the globe but not getting into one of our inboxes. Go onto my website and say "hey, are ya there?" and we'll figure out what's disconnecting us.

So, if you can simply add me to your Contacts list then we'll be creating a more open communication between us. Thanks!!!

P.S. A gentle reminder. Please do not send me mass forwarded email. Many of those have viruses. Thank you for that consideration as I do what I can to protect my business email and my business. Lost emails mean lost sales :(

Welcome to two new demonstrators!

I extend a warm welcome to two new Stampin' Up! demonstrators and new members of my first-level downline: Michael in Minnesota and Nilda in California!!! Welcome!!

Stampin' Up!s Big Shot and Exclusive Dies on sale today!

Today's the day... the Big Shot and our exclusive dies are unveiled. Link to the brochure here and order today! I will waive tax and shipping on any order of $150+ plus earn hostess benefits. Email orders only.

Download BigShot_Cust_US.pdf