SEEMS LIKE IT SHOULD BE FRIDAY

The weekend went by so fast...seems like it should still be Friday here. So where to start. The men and I took off on Wednesday of last week to my parents, on our way to Joal's annual company meeting in Dallas. Arrived at the meeting on Thursday. The boys and I dropped him off at the gorgous Richardson Hotel and then we hit ReCollections! Can I just say...WOW! What a loaded store. I've never seen a store with so much old and new stuff. Excellent selection of albums...that always impresses me. Great displays and a superb collection of cardstock. It was easy to spend there. My only complaint is that it's aisles were only 1 person wide, so I was feeling a little crowded, with my guys in tow.

ReCollections was among the first chain scrap stores to be built in Texas. I visited the first one (not this one) a few years back, when it first opened. It was nice then...but nothing like this.

We spent about two hours there, got some lunch and headed back to my parents. On Friday, we hung out with Nana and Pawpaw (my parents). After lunch, I needed to find a Post Office so we went out for a ride. Wouldn't ya know it, there was a scrapbook store right across the street from the little post office in Nash, Texas.

Scrapbooker's Emporium was a very nice store and is (I think) the only free-standing, non-house scrapbook store I've ever seen. Neat place. Not many samples but a great sale on my favorite adhesive tape, an overflowing discount bin of stickers to bribe certain boys with and the newest Technique Tuesday stamps! As I later told my honey, when one finds her favorite adhesive on sale, one must indulge, ya know. :) Needless to say, I'm good on adhesive for a while.

On Friday evening we grilled hamburgers with my parents and grandmother and had a lovely time. The boys gave my dad a workout when they discovered he could and would push them around my grandmother's h-u-g-e backyard in the wheelbarrow.

On Saturday, I left early and went to Dallas alone for some shopping and resting. For the longest time I have wanted to visit IKEA, and Saturday morning, I did. I have to say, I was a little underwhelmed. Now that I have seen it, I can easily shop online. I don't know...it just seemed like a Pier One on steroids. My love of graphic and sleek does not extend to furniture. I'm more of a handmade, antiquities kinda girl than I thought, apparently. I enjoyed seeing it and found a great deal on small glass pitchers and some finger puppets for my Sunday School class.

After IKEA (which only took an hour), I managed to find (with the genius of Karen) three more scrapbook stores. The Scrap Bucket is a cool place where I found some wonderful samples displayed. The Scrap Bucket features hundreds of little tin buckets in the middle of the store, filled with items that are usually sold in packages, unpackaged so they can be purchased individually. So instead of buying an entire alphabet in the KI HeartFelt Letters, you can pick thru and buy only the letters you want, at a slightly higher piece price. In theory, this is a good idea but I don't go into a scrapbook store with layouts in mind...so I have no idea what letters I will need. I only spent three dollars there. The buckets were a little overwhelming and I am not one to dig. I did, however, ask to take a photo of this layout, that I thought was totally excellent:

Note the Scenic Route!

I did notice that The Scrap Bucket logo seems a little close, design-wise to the logo of another famous bucket store. Odd.

Next I ventured to The Scrap Spot, a small store near the hotel. I have visited The Scrap Spot in years past. It's very crowded and all the racking and shelves sit right on the floor--a pet peeve of mine. It's divided by theme and has a "bucket" section too. The woman who works there is very friendly. I did notice that not much had changed since I was there back in November. The sign always throws me off. I looks like it ought to be the sign of an ice cream parlor.

If you go to Dallas looking for a store called Scrapbook University...don't bother. Apparently it has closed. Or moved.

After all my shopping, I got some Chinese food and headed back to the hotel. I'm not sure if I ordered wrong of if the Chinese place goofed up my order but I ended up with what I think was Shrimp in Lobster Sauce when I thought I ordered Sweet and Sour Shrimp, but by the time I discovered it I was back at the hotel in my jammies, so I just picked the shrimp out and ate some of the broth and the rice. I spent the rest of the afternoon piled up in the hotel room napping and taking a nice long shower before getting ready for the evening.

Stay tuned for part two later on tonight!