Inaugural blog!

Hello, everyone! This is so exciting! This is our first ever blog post for the Duluth, MN Crop For A Cure! We are new to this whole blogging thing, but we are going to do our best to make it work. We want to make this a great place for everyone to stay up to date with the plans for this year's event, share information, and hopefully get some *sneak peeks* of what we have in store!!! We are already busy planning the 2nd Annual Crop For A Cure! But more on that later...first we have to take a moment and say a HUGE
THANK YOU
to all of our sponsors and participants for making the inaugural Crop For A Cure such a big success! Thanks to all of you we raised over $8,000 for the Young Survival Coalition - Duluth Community Volunteer Group! We think that is absolutely outstanding!!! (Especially since we're kinda new to this whole fundraising thing!) Most importantly, we are so grateful to Elena Etcheverry and her team at Scrapbook Royalty. We absolutely, positively could not have done this without them. They are a non-profit charity that helps other non-profits raise money. I contacted Elena last year to pick her brain about how to do a scrapping fundraiser and she was so incredibly generous! She offered to have us work as an Affiliate of Scrapbook Royalty and held our hand all the way through the process. But the absolute, most mindblowing part of all was thet she fulfilled a dream and sent us all to CHA!!! It was awesome!!! We had so much FUN organizing, planning, and executing the Crop last year that we couldn't wait to get started on this year's!
The MOST exciting thing is that we will be traveling again (thank you, Elena!) to CHA in Chicago (the Craft and Hobby Association trade show) in just a few weeks! We went to CHA last year and met representatives from all of your FAVORITE scrapbooking companies (Doodlebug, anyone? American Crafts?) We are going to ask them for donations again this year. Last year they donated over $20,000 worth of merchandise to our event! Yes, I said $20,000!!!! We had the most AWESOME goodie bags, prizes, giveaways and auction items you have EVER seen! Seriously, the generosity of these companies was overwhelming and we expect nothing more but the same this year! So, get ready, get set...GO mark your calendar for Saturday, October 25th!, 2008!! That's the date for the Crop For A Cure and this year we are CAPPING REGISTRATION! So be sure and register early by visiting http://www.scrapbookroyalty.com/ . Registration opens on 8/8/08! (How's that for easy to remember?) Check back often! We'll post some pics of some of our donations. (But not enough to ruin the surprise!) And just wait till you hear more about the FUN we have in store!