What a day!

Things are still not fixed with the blog, so be patient with us. The Advertiser is working on it, and hopefully I’ll be able to hear from you soon. But argh! I wish that were the worst of it.

Our big RSVPstyle Invitation to Design workshop is coming up in a month. This is a huge production for a small company—we teach hundreds of people how to use color and texture and style to decorate, with activities for everybody and sophisticated PowerPoint presentations thrown up on jumbo screens around the room. And as anyone knows who’s ever done an event like this or built or remodeled a home, the devil is in the details! After doing it a number of times, it should get easier, right? But IT DOESN’T! There’s always a new set of challenges.

Here’s what I’m dealing with. We’ll be at a new venue, Dole Cannery ballrooms. The people are absolutely great. However, we didn’t realize when we booked the ballroom that the built-in stage and large columns would pose such a problem. We thought we could work around them.

Recently we took our team on an onsite visit to plan the logistics and surprise, surprise! While this ballroom can ordinarily accommodate well over 400 people, with our need for three jumbo screens that can be clearly and comfortably seen from every seat and a stage capable of rear projection—which we initially understood was going to be possible—it now looks like we’re not going to be able to get as many tables in there as we’d hoped.

Bottom line: we’ve got to rent our own stage, reconfigure the three jumbo screens and redo the table layout. We always try to put on a great show and make sure everyone has a great seat. We do not want to sacrifice the quality level that people are accustomed to.

Just as any good contractor or professional would, you’ve got to roll with the punches. No expletive here, life happens. Or as Tim Gunn would say on Project Runway, make it work. So that’s what we’re going to do. But before we do that, let me vent this one time: AAARGGHHH!!!!!