Breaking up is hard to do

Or not, in this case.

Last night some of us scrappers went to Archiver's in Novi. I'd been to Archivers in St. Louis and loved it, so it was no surprise that I loved their crop.

We were totally pampered. The crop was $15 and it included a yummy Chicken Pita dinner from a local restaurant and a little scrap kit. We had our own 'hostess' and she was super nice and helpful. She let us try out some products we had questions about, she kept the fridge filled with pop and the counter filled with snacks. When we went on break, she even let us know and told us who was "covering" for her. How awesome is that? It was like our very own scrapbook waitress!

The store was amazing, which is probably the main reason we all loved it. We felt like deprived little scrappers- oohing and aahing at all this "new" product we'd never seen.

See, the scrapbook store in Chelsea is nice and all, mostly because its large and nearby. However, the staff isn't all that friendly or ambitious to help you out with new product. They actually crop during that time themselves. And they rarely have new product. While the lack of new product does keep our checkout bills in check, it'd be nice to have new product to spark some new ideas rather than seeing the same stuff on the shelves month after month.

So... I think its time to break up with Scrapbook Memories. Or at least add more visits to Novi into our montly scrapping rotation. I wish there was a nice way to inform SM how they could "step it up" and stay competitive and keep their customers happy.

*** ETA... I do have pictures... but I forgot my card reader at my mom's house (we're staying at Ry's parents until we close on our house on Monday- they're out of town for the weekend). I'll add those later, I promise. We took a picture with the Archiver's sign! For now... Kristin posted a few pics.

And... I forgot the BIG excitement of the night. Oh boy. Oh boy!

Here we go.... now, we're getting ready to leave. We pile in Jane's Mariner and Leslie (who parked her new van behind Jane in the driveway) asked if she should move her van so Adam (Jane's husband) could park in the driveway. Jane said no and after we all piled in and got buckled, she began to back out of the driveway.

I started to think "Hey.... did Leslie move her van?" (I had been chatting with Maria about my frazzled day) and then I thought... 'No, she didn't move her van... hmm... maybe Jane is backing up so she can pull forward and back up around the van' I turned around to look behind us, and just as I was able to crane my neck around our piled up bags of scrapbook stuff we heard it. CRUNCH! Jane had backed into Leslie's new van!

We were all shocked and couldn't believe it. Maria and I were laughing (not at either of them) because we've done the same thing or similar a time or two ourselves. So, needless to say, we didn't get out of Jackson quite as early as we thought we would! Luckily, though, neither the van or Jane's car was hurt all that bad... just a little scratched/cracked bumpers.