Day One of Ranger U...

...has come to a successful completion and I loved every single moment!!! I still have my lanyard on even...

My day started at 6am. Both my roomie and I woke at nearly the exact same time so she turned on the tv and what do we see but Kate walking down the aisle..literally. I watched a bit of the ceremony but decided that so far things were going so well without my direct supervision so I decided to have my shower. When I got out, they had said their vows so all was well. Weren't those hats a trip? Some of them were still moving weren't they?

Anyways...so we got ourselves put together and went for the breakfast (which was v. good) and I met the other Aussie that came to take the Ranger U, by the name of Chad. Yes a boy! One of 2 attending the weekend actually and just as charming as could be. Then Melissa pulls out a tube of this...

...and convinces me to try a small bite of it on toast.

Gaaaahck. It was awful. However this did not deter them (on both sides of me) trying to convince me of it's nutritional value and stellar taste. All I can say is that I was completely awake by that point.

 As the Ranger facility was fairly close to the hotel, we hoofed it down there in plenty of time and took our first picture.

Yes I am taking a picture of Melissa taking a picture of the Ranger mailbox. I thought it was funny at the time...=)

After some settle in time, we went around and introduced ourselves with our "who we are", and "what we are" spiels (much like the Scrapbox tradition of intro's at the beginning of class) and then we were taken on a fascinating tour of the Ranger facility. LOVED IT! (little known fact that while I was growing up my parents owned their own manufacturing business of plastic injection moulds so the tour was filled with very familiar smells and sounds of machinery and plastics and goodness knows what else.)  As they were kind enough to trust us with showing their inner workings, I will keep this part to a minimum. I will say that I got to see some brand new product that is going to be released this summer so how exciting is that?!??! Back to the classroom.

Tim started us off with perfect pearls for the first half of the day. I am more than passing familiar with this product but we still ended up doing things that I hadn't done, or didn't think of doing before. Part of the techniques included stamping so here is Chad (afore mentioned Aussie) with some 'bloke' stamps.

Right then...

It begins!

One of my favorite techniques...makes the paper look metalic...

And here is all the tags with Perfect Pearls techniques on them. Oh yeah!

Then we had a break for lunch and I took a bit of a stroll outside in the lovely spring weather. Wouldn't have guessed that 24 hours previous there were tornado warnings. Sheesh!

After lunch Tim lead a session on the Melting pot and UTEE as Suze Weinburg retired last January after the CHA show. As I had never done any melting pot/UTEE techniques before this is fascinating stuff for me. I had to talk to myself rather firmly and remind myself that I am doing these techniques for the first time so they aren't going to look as good as what Tim was doing, but I am reasonably proud of about half of the samples, and the other half I am just going to have to practice alot more.

See I can take my own advice! But it wasn't easy. Apparently I am closet perfectionist....who knew?

My Apron, My Binkie and My Ranger U Manual...

What...? Everyone needs a Binkie...

So at the end of the day, at about 5pm, we were pretty much done in so many ways. Ranger, in their thoughtfulness and generosity, held a delish BBQ and we got to mix & mingle with staff and attendees. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was one of the last to leave.

So here we are folks. I know I haven't talked overly much about the details of the techniques that I am learning, and quite frankly it would take me forever to do so. I also want to encourage you to come visit me on May 10th (tues night after next) to see and hear all about it for yourselves. Needless to say that I have gotten a TONNE of ideas and cannot wait to share them. I forsee a class set of melting pots for The Scrapbox in the future...

Thanks for checking out the blog. I plan to give another recap with some pics tomorrow night. Gnight!

Jenn