Country Store Christmas 2015

After our event ended tonight, while the store was quiet, lights were all twinkling, and carols playing I took a periscope video of a quick tour of the store all decorated for Christmas. Our Open House officially begins tomorrow until Saturday with Santa Photos, Hot Chocolate Bar in the cafe and #homeroutes concert Saturday night. So come explore GSIB in person this Christmas. 🎄 My favorite time is at the store during Christmas and before I turn out all the lights. I love the feelings it emenates and adds that true Christmas magic into the season. Enjoy the tour! 

https://katch.me/gonescrapnbloom/v/ede743d6-1a50-3b14-bca1-95857728e16b 

Halloween Open House Highlights

So I am a self professed shutter bug! I love taking pictures. (Like 8,000/year) For as long as I can rember I have carted a camera where ever I go. I have some hilarious old 4-H conference photos ;-) - hee hee. Over the years I have been asked if I do portraits or professional. No, I do not. It's always been a passion - but never thought of professionally. I love taking pictures but also enjoy not having the stress of trying to get that perfect shot for a customer or the time it takes to edit! I like being in the background capturing the candids without the stress and worry! LOL Professionally, I enjoy landscape photography & creating digital art. I also prefer to design with photos for customers (scrapbooks, canvases, digital art, cards, photo gifts etc.) As once you have a great photo - the rest is natural to me- which is why I love scrapbooking (traditional & digital) and chose to turn that hobby into a business, as I can do it 24/7! If someone loves one of my photos or art enough to purchase as art for their home - I am honored - but I more take the photo because it captured my eye!

For amazing portraits I always recommend my dear friend Kendra from KITKO Photography & Dezine! She is awesome and fantastic at what she does and loves what she does. She can take photos and edit 24/7! LOL. For this very reason (and because she is one of my best friends) I leave the pro pictures in her very capable hands, while I provide the space, photo printing capabilities, scrapbooking, gift & art options - thus we have partnered for years doing Halloween Costume Portraits & Santa Photos or anything else we can dream up.

However, this Halloween event she was away with her hubby (darn her LOL), so I had a rare opportunity to "get out of my box" for a day and capture the cute little spooks GSIB Halloween Costume Portraits.

Halloween is a favorite of mine and seeing all the children dressed up, is so much fun and so easy to capture great photos! I took over 650 pictures - it was crazy. By Tuesday, I was all done editing and all orders processed and they should be arriving by the end of this week! I had so many favorite shots and I hope the parents enjoy them!

I had two of the most adorable little monkey's (literally) make me work my socks off to capture a good photo! I was sweating!!

Of course the hardest to capture was my own three. First, the girls showed up in NOT their costumes (they changed their mind on Dad), Noelle wouldn't let anyone touch her hair. And getting all 3 to look & smile at the same time has always been a challenge. But I think I got one good one of each! LOL

All in all the day went really well. The store was hopping in the cafe, kids crafts and more. I had so much fun being the photographer for the day. Editing the photos was tons of work (reminder to self - I really should take the time to edit a few of my own regularly from now on as they look sooo much better). I am very excited (& relieved) that Kendra will be back in house for our annual Santa Photos on Nov. 26th!! I can be back in the background capturing the "scrapbooking" moments again.

Thank you to everyone who came out for our Halloween open house and to the parents for letting me have some fun out of my comfort zone!! Also, a big thank you to my GSIB Girls for getting everything put together, great food, decorating and now packing everything up to switch over to Christmas next week!!

Overdue Blog Update!!

It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over. With taking on our first season of running the Clubhouse it has been a hectic summer to say the least. We loved the opportunity to try new thing’s and without my fantastic staff we never would have pulled it off (at both places). I wanted something fun to showcase our favorite fresh recipes and a tester to expand GSIB. It has been a great experience, and we still have almost 2 months left before we close for the season. So… of course we aren’t through with planning events for the remainder of the season - and even though it seems ages away, we are madly gearing up for Fall & Christmas. Many people often ask, how do I manage with 3 little kids, a jam packed business, and life. It’s a lot of juggling (great grandparents and friends) but the store is a dream. It was designed to provide a balance with things that I love and it is home to us. Friends can usually hunt me down there. Being an escape isn’t just for me - our friends like to meet up there too. If you haven’t noticed I love all things that are creative and soul uplifting. The events I organize and the products we sell, are all items either I love (I use at home or gift giving) or have inspired me in some form and fashion. From locally made products (we have over 20 local suppliers) to Canadian made, environmentally friendly to pure and healthy to food for the soul. With a business as diverse as our selection, and my love of all good things (music, wine, food, scrapbooking, flowers, books, art, travel, bath stuff… the list is miles long) we will continue to grow the business in avenues that “Speak to our Inner Soul”. My goal is that everyone lives their “Dream Life” everyday and cherishes every moment. So watch our newsletter and mark your calendars. You do not want to miss out on any of our events. Take some time for yourself, a date with your spouse or gathering of friends, and stop saying …

“We have to set a date sometime”… and turn it into an actual date!

Some of our events only happen once… so life is too short to catch it the next time… it might not happen again. - Kel

PJ Princess Weekend Crop

Wow... it has been ages since my last blog post!! I really need to start updating more!! Now with Spring finally showing it's face and GSIB taking on the challenge and exciting opportunity to run the Rossman Lake Clubhouse this year I should definitely have more exciting comments to post more regularly! We have soooo many ideas to implement this summer - so this will be the place to watch!

This past week was a crazy week or musical chairs at the store! Wednesday we hosted our final Home Routes concert and fit 47 people into the event area!! Then .... set up tables on Thursday for our weekend crop to begin! So, we just wrapped up our annual PJ Princess Crop this past weekend at the store! We had an awesome time! I can't believe even I was able to start and finish 17 layouts!! The overall goal of the weekend retreats is now to make sure everyone gets plenty of goodies (over $100 to each person was in the deluxe goodie bag), eat tons of delicious food and non-stop scrapbooking to get lots done over a weekend. For some - this weekend is their only chance to scrapbook so I am so pleased when I hear how many layouts were completed and they can't wait for the next weekend crop and all of my goals are met!

My suppliers graciously donated lots of great items that became prizes for the Bingo, Most Pages Completed Award and Te Hide & Seek Hunt! Over 19 products (Stickers to cardstock packs) were hidden in the store for people to find. If you found it - you got to keep it!!

Patti won the draw to attend the next GSIB Weekend Crop Retreat (over $150 value). Thank you to all who attended and continue to provide feedback and ideas to making each weekend crop even better and more productive then the last! It's amazing how we seem to be improving at adding more tables and creating more space for people scrapbook and still plenty of room to move around!! The store is the perfect place proving way less interruptions to work flow and still maintaining a relaxing environment for all to have fun!

Plus wearing your PJ's and slippers all weekend is always a great bonus!

Watch for a summer scrapbooking event and our annual October Crop for the Cure registration forms to be posted on www.gonescrappin.ca !