Meeting Jin from Under a Cherry Tree... :)

Here is the post everyone has been waiting for!!!

In case you haven't heard of Jin (Under a Cherry Tree), she is one of the most incredible person you'll ever meet!  She's awesomely talented, super friendly and a fantastic host! Yes, I was the LUCKY one and I got to meet her on my trip down to Seattle last week.  Yes, that's right!  I MET HER!!!

I thought that I would share my outing with all of you... it's not fair that I got to enjoy her company, right?  I want everyone to feel like they were part of my experience!

Just a background - I found her blog last May and I just fell in love with her writing style, her projects and her clean and fresh look of her blog.   Who knew that I would get to meet this person!  I started corresponding with her a little bit and became better friends over time.  Then a month ago, I told her that my family was taking a vacation down to Seattle and she was sooo excited to meet me!  Yes, we were so excited for this past month!

Okay, so the Thursday of the week I was in Seattle,  she had her hubby put her kids to bed, and I had asked my hubby to do the same so we can go out.  She picked me up at the hotel, and she had moustache props made for us to take some silly photos.  Here are the pics:





Can't you tell that we already got along just fine the first minute we met?

She took me to check out Big Lot (we don't have this in Canada, so she thought that I should at least go check it out) and to Joann's.  In the past few months, I have been on a shopping spree, so I didn't feel the need to crazy like my last trip.  Nonetheless, Jin, my enabler, helped me pick out some paper packs and Hallowe'en stamps.



She then took me to a bubble tea place (it's an Asian drink where you can order pretty much any tea, coffee or juice that you can ever think of and in it, is tapioca bubbles - if you haven't tried one of these, try them next time you see it - they are absolutely YUMMY!)  Then we sat and talked and talked about crafting, online friends, families.. until the night was done.

This was not it!  I got to meet her again - 2 days later!!!  This time with her hubby and her 3 kids!  They took us (my whole family including my parents) out for delicious dim sum.  I think that this was one of the best ever dim sum I had in my whole life!  Her hubby was so genuine, supportive for Jin's crafting, and totally got along with my husband.  Jin's kids are so cute - and very well behaved.



After that, she took me to Impress Rubber Stamps store in Tukwila.  I initially told her that we can't go - I can't possibly take my whole family there, when we were supposed to be going to the zoo.  This stamp store, is not that close to the zoo either.  There were two other Impress stores which was closer, but she INSISTED that I'd go to this one.  She told me that she's not being a great host if I don't end up going to this store while I'm here.  So, we went....

Here's a pic of us in front of the store.



Okay, I walked in and fell in love with this place right away.  I immediately forgot that I had refused to come here initially, I forgot that my hubby and my kids were waiting in the car.. and just fell in love with this place.  Yes, this was probably the quickest hour that I've ever spent.  AND, I could've been there all day!



The store is very posh and modern and just stocked with all sorts of goodies to capture my heart.  It was sooo fun to look at each shelf and see cute demo cards layed out.  I was very inspired.

I got a little basket and in no time, it was full.  I really wanted to pick up some stamps, but there were sooo much selection, I could not narrow it down.  So here are the goodies I picked up (Really, this is not that much... it just looks like A LOT cause I broke it down in to several pics):



I love the colors of the felts they carried, and they were only $2.50 for a pretty big piece. The white one is glitter, and thought it would be cute to use it as a snow.



Love paper straws!



I was so inspired by this honeycomb paper. You can cut half of the image out using your scissors (making sure one side is straight) and when you open up, ta-da! You can see some wonders you can create on the back of the packaging! I picked up light blue and white.



Odds and ends of things... I was intrigued by the Quickie glue pen! I've ofen wondered how people put glitters on one spot so cleanly! This was it! I'm so excited to use it! I picked up some card stands, little calendars to use on my New Year's projects (Jin told me about these how she picks them up every year) and party flag dies for straws!

...and lastly, but not least, I fell in love with their pigment ink colors and had to pick some up. When I came home, I realized that I forgot to pick up my favorite color - muted pink.. :(



Just to let you know - Jin, on her blog, is having a giveaway for these stamps! All 24 of them! Click here to enter!

After all that shopping (which turned out to be my highlight of my trip in the shopping category), our families headed to the zoo.  It was a beautiful day, and was a nice stroll to take the kids out to where they enjoy.  The Seattle Woodland Zoo was just gorgeous - full of mature trees everywhere and any path you take, you feel like you're in a secluded place.  Even though it was sooo hot, these trees created a perfect shade for us.

Here's the last pic of Jin and I:



Here, we were lucky enought to see this elephant go to the bathroom...  Yikes!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post, as much as I had fun recapping my moments with Jin.  She's a sweetheart and I'm still so overwhelmed that she wanted to spend some time with me!  Thanks so much Jin for wonderful memories!