Cut 'n Paste

L'altana Bed and Breakfast Review | Lucca

Over the past weeks I have slowly been writing a review of our our family trip to Italy in May. Here, I continue sharing our adventure:

After our family's time in Turin, Italy we picked up a rental car and drove south to Lucca. Surrounded by an ancient wall, Lucca is a wonderfully preserved old town which we decided to visit in large part because of its popularity on the slow travel website and because it hosts the second largest antique market in the region.

After doing a lot of research, we decided to book L'altana Bed & Breakfast. It is a little unique in that while it is a bed and breakfast, it is actually a separate apartment - the owner does not live on site. The accommodation has 2 suites. One, with an en-suite bathroom, living area and small kitchenette. And one with a bathroom down the hall and a minuscule sitting area. Because it was just Rick and I and my parents, we had the entire structure to ourselves, so the minor lack of privacy for the room without the en-suite bathroom was not an issue.


L'altana bed and breakfast is located inside the walls of the old town, which is a restricted driving zone for residents and permit holders. As we had previously arranged, we called our host once we arrived in Lucca so that they could direct us to a free parking lot where we could leave our car and they would meet us with their car to take our luggage to the rental. This was a much appreciated service as I shudder to think how long it would have taken us to schlep everything in from the parking lot ourselves. Another super kind thing our host did was to grant us a late check out on Saturday as I wanted to visit the antique market, but did not want to leave our luggage/camera gear in the car unattended while we shopped. She didn't have to agree, so I appreciate so much that she did.

One final note, the apartment is on the fourth or fifth floor of a building with no lift. Once again, not a huge issue for Rick and I, but not so great for my Dad who has very bad legs due to a motorcycle accident when he was young. However, we knew this in advance and just made sure that we did not plan too many stops where Dad would have to do a ton of stairs.

All in all, we found L'altana to be a really nice base to see the city and I would recommend it as a solid, though not spectacular, accommodation choice.

Check it out!

One of my favorite publishers, Stampington, have put together a special issue with some of their favorite projects. The best part is that it's a free online issue. Check it out here.

CHA recap

Melissa and I ready and waiting a few minutes before the show opens on the first day.

Last week I was in Chicago for the Summer Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) trade show. CHA has two trade shows each year, one typically in January and one in July. The company I work with, Melissa Frances, exhibits at both of them. I wanted to share a little bit about our CHA process here as I often get asked what the shows are like.

Typically, Melissa, Brian and I fly in 2-3 days before the show starts in order to put our booth together. When we get to the show, our space is nothing but an empty shell with a concrete floor and fabric curtains partitioning one booth from the next. First, we unpack our containers and find our foam floor pieces and Melissa and I lay them down while Brian gets the walls unpacked, then he and I erect our slat walls. We have a method, and we can usually get it done in 2 hours or less.

Once the walls are up we attach our lights to them and connect everything to make sure that the electric works. Next, it's time for our signs, products and samples to go up on the walls. It's always a difficult balance as you don't want the product too low, or too high as it can affect sales, yet you also only have a limited amount of wall and a large product line to fit! While I work on the walls, Melissa typically works on staging a vignette or two for the front of the booth. This part of set-up typically takes us hours - longer of course in the winter show when we display nearly our entire product line.

Finally, we check to make sure that all product is priced and has a barcode as we use hand scanners when we take the orders.If items are missing their price stickers, we print them out so that we can slap them onto the products.

Once the show itself starts it is time to talk, talk, talk! We walk purchasers through the product lines, write up orders and take appointments with sales reps, distributors, editors, and event hosts. If we're lucky, we also try to take a brief walk about to meet friends who work in the industry and see what's new. This will typically only happen on the last day of the show, once most of the buyers have headed home.

As the clock winds down on the show, all that's left is tear-down. It takes us about 2-4 hours to carefully dismantle everything that took us 1-2 days to put together a few days before. Then, it's one last dinner to debrief before heading home the following morning.

So that's CHA for you. Short, intense and hard work. But I love it.

Here's a quick peek at our booth for the show I just attended last week:

What a beautiful world

Do you ever stop and think about what a beautiful world we live in?

Every time I look through the photos from a trip we've taken I realize anew what a gift travel is. While I like to think that I live an observant life, new vistas illuminate to me the truth that our planet is a wondrous place.

Over the weekend, as I was looking through some photos from an '07 trip Rick and I took to Italy, this photo stood out to me and I thought I'd share it with you here. Aren't you just itching to discover what's behind the gate?

I hope that each of you has a great day.

Home

Today I am travelling home from Chicago where I have been at a trade show for the past few days. I love shows so much. It is always a treat to visit with friends and customers while getting to see what's new in the paper crafting industry.

As we head into the weekend, please enjoy this lavender bouquet - I picked it just for you!

Meet Pearl

First, if you haven't already done so, head on over to the Melissa Frances blog right now and leave a comment to be entered for your chance to win the entire new "Countdown to Christmas" Collection.

Today I am so stinkin' excited to share the second new release from Melissa at the CHA Summer trade show. Meet Pearl. She is a darling new rubber stamp designed by Melissa and manufactured by Hampton Arts. We have been talking about launching an illustrated character stamp for years, and we finally did it!!

Here is a card I made. I stamped Pearl in red to lend the feel of old red-work to the card.

There are 6 designs in the launch of the line with many more to come ☺



And here is one more sample made by Sherrie Siemens, a design team member at Melissa Frances:

Christmas in July

My employer, Melissa Frances is pleased to introduce her new Christmas collection, called "Countdown to Christmas". Head on over to the Melissa Frances blog to see the 6 papers in the collection, view more samples and leave a comment in order to be entered in a giveaway to win the entire line!

Here's a sample I made using papers from the "Countdown to Christmas" 6" x 6" paper pad:

What do you think? Cute papers, eh?

Here's to Friday!

Happy Friday! The weekend is almost here my friends, and I am busy, busy working on samples for the CHA trade show. So I was really happy when I found this image on my hard drive and realized that I had not shared it here yet, because it meant that I could share it today instead of having nothing new to post ☺

I made this card for the Melissa Frances newsletter back in 2008, and even though the collection is now discontinued, I still love the project.

I hope that whatever your plans, you have a lovely weekend.

We ❤ Turin

Since we first visited Turin in Spring of 2010, it has captured our hearts as an 'off the beaten path' slice of Italy. While it seems highly hypocritical for this tourist to say that she prefers to visit places that don't have a ton of tourists in them, it's true. There is so often a direct correlation between the amount of tourists and the preponderance of souvenir junk and lack of accessibility to authentic local culture.

There is so much to love about Turin. It is the founding city of the slow food movement, which results in a myriad of great restaurant choices and some fascinating gourmet food shops. It also has a good transportation system and is a very walkable city, with many of the 'must-see' attractions in the old city center.





If people watching is your thing, there are many piazzas where you can take your gelato, find a bench or a set of stairs and while away the hours watching locals go about their daily lives.



If, like Rick and I you love to visit churches, Turin is nirvana. There are so, so many of them. All beautiful and almost all empty of visitors. If Catholic religious pilgrimage sites interests you, the Shroud of Turin Museum is located in the city. (The shroud itself is not scheduled to be on display again until 2025.)

Here, is a quick reference to our recommendations for Turin:

TO SLEEP:

• Antica Villa del Nobile - Our home away from home in Turin.

TO EAT:

• Dai Saletta - Listed in the Slow Food Italy guide, this restaurant serves traditional Piedmonte cuisine and is reasonably priced.
• Ristorante La Via del Sale - Recommended to us by a friend, this restaurant served one of our favorite meals on our trip. Their Pork medallions with apple main course was scrumptious, and don't even get me started on the chocolate lava cake - I think I died and went to heaven.
• Grom - With many locations throughout Italy, this shop sells consistently good gelato.
• + Di Un Gelato - This gelato store (which has a location across the street from the antique store listed below - how convenient) makes a superb, artisanal gelato. Yummy.

TO SHOP:

• Eataly - with a flagship store in the Lingotto district, and a satellite store in the old town, this store is heaven for foodies. They also serve meals in the store. When we were there in 2010, our entire party ate at the Lingotto location and had good meals. My parents ate there again on this trip, and their opinion was that both the meal and service were sub-par in comparison to the previous visit. This time Rick and I did not eat there, however we did shop at the satalite location and were pleased.
• Piccolo Mondo Antico. It is where I bought my Italian chandelier last year and this year, both my parents and I found more treasures. (Poor Rick patiently hung around the store, had a gelato (see above), and shot me lots of forlorn looks while he endured the four hours it took the rest of us to visit with the shop owner and shop in the store - he must really love me!) While the owner does not speak English and I do not speak Italian, we both speak French, so we found a way to make it work!

I hope these tips help, and feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions about Turin.

A Star is Born

(Supply List: Patterned Paper - Madonna Collage (PA393) by Melissa Frances, Pink Dotted paper is very old Anna Griffin • Scalloped Chipboard is a strip cut, painted and then sanded from a Scalloped Backdrop (GN322) by Melissa Frances • "A star is born" stamp is from Stampin' Up! • The rolled rose die is by My Favorite Things Stamps • The Butterfly Stamp is by Pink Paislee from the London Market Collection Stamp set • Fabric: Burlap, Pink Felt • Sewing Machine and White thread • Pink Seam Binding)

Happy Monday friends! Summer has finally arrived in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia! Believe it or not, last week I was in jeans and a sweater - in July - crazy! But after a sunny week, we are now beginning to feel like summer is here.

Like many in the scrapbooking industry I am hard at work getting ready for the CHA Summer trade show which I will leave for in a six days. I love our customers and look forward to touching base with many of them at the show.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a card I whipped up for a wee girl who should be arriving to her parents any day now.

I hope that you have a lovely week.