CHA is always amazing fun but its also a lot of work and wondering if the ideas you had are actually going to be able to be pulled off. Since I run Some Odd Girl from our home, I don’t have that huge area to test out displays or set the entire booth up for a test run. 

We plan carefully, or I plan carefully ha, but you never know until you put it into place.

When you arrive at the Convention Center its a bit daunting, even after doing it 3 times now, to walk in to your empty booth and know you have two days to set up to make an impression on a couple thousand people. Coupled with the lack of test run and I may be happy that I didn’t eat breakfast that first morning of set up.

I thought it might be kind of cool to show you some as we go pics from set up.

First thing after carrying in all of our boxes and bags, we had to since we drove this time and not shipped, we started working on the floor. We had a woodgrain printed foam square floor which was actually pretty comfy! We put it down right over the carpeting that came with the booth for some extra padding.

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After that we were waiting on show staff to move a panel for us so we set up our custom made (fancy talk for homemade) side tables, which with all the parts is no mean feat, and Lenny touched up the paint from moving them.

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After those big jobs were done we went to lunch. 

I was frickin starvin by then 😉

In the afternoon it was put up the pop up backwalls, set up our display wall, which was some DIY magic if I might say so, put together our Make-n-Take table, another piece of custom designed awesome, and the big signage. This is what it looked like by the end of the first day of set up.

Katie, Lenny, Mr. SomeOddGirl and myself were POOPED. All the big stuff was done but, believe it or not, all the little stuff the second day took more time. 

Makin it pretty isn’t a small job!

For the second day we had Miss Orange herself helping out. Leah and Katie sorted the projects for display, Mr. Some Odd Girl got all our catalogs, fliers and handouts in order by folding and stuffing 300 of them, and I arranged the stamp sets for display on the big back wall.

a TON of small jobs but we made it! 

We have a lot of fun at the show, and not everything worked out to plan, though all the important stuff did, but doing the show is exhausting. But in the best way. 

I did a really quick Instagram video walk along the back wall of the booth too. 15 seconds is a quick moving video!

If you ever get a chance to come to the show, definitely do! Its pretty amazing everything that goes into it. Seeing all the other booths get constructed has been my favorite part everytime. Watching big wooden crates turn into amazing displays is a large scale DIY frenzy!

But like I said on my last post, the people are the best part of the show. Getting to meet Lenny & Suzanne in person was just amazing! CHA wouldn’t be the same without Katie Perry, as long as she’s had her morning cuppa. Then getting to spend over a week with my literal best friend Leah is a treat I wish happened WAY more often. I love all these girls to bits and appreciate all the time they spent in the booth and the FABULOUS job they did!!! 

We dressed like Hipsters for the show and had a lot of fun! It was sad to say goodbye to booth #2401 but had to eventually. It was a crazy fast tear down with the best improptu tear down crew! We were done tearing everything that took 2 days to build in less than 2 hours! Not even joking! Big thanks to Thanh, Renate, Aimee & everyone for jumping in without even being asked! I was so amazed and grateful!