My friend Patty Bennett graciously invited me to her downline meeting today as her guest even though we don't share any part of the Stampin' Up! family tree. Patty's area is about 80 miles from me so the family will drop me off, spend the day in San Francisco then rejoin me as we have dinner with Patty, her family and some downline. I have been looking forward to seeing Patty again for weeks! Though Patty and I live relatively close to one another, we always laugh at the fact that we've never been together in California though we've been in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New York and even Bermuda together! Finally, we get to see one another in our home state.

Patty invites all her downline and guests to swap. I chose the upcoming Elements of Style which will be in the Summer mini catalog along with Well Scripted which is in the current Occasions mini catalog. The early stamp set was a surprise gift from our generous CEO Shelli Gardner at our Leadership Conference in January (yet another perk to being a demonstrator!). The new set is gorgeous and so elegant. I also used demonstrations by Shelli to inspire me to buy a yellowed dictionary for $1 from the thrift store and I used pieces of it as my background paper. That was fun & a great way to re-purpose a book that had so much life left in it. I'm an avid reader so books are sacred to me. Ripping one up felt weird!