Happy St David’s Day.

I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s a movement started by Stampin’ Up! training manager, Shannon West, to encourage the sending of real birthday cards. Shannon had been bemoaning the fact for years that Facebook reminds people about birthdays on the day which leads to a post wishing the celebrator a happy birthday but no real card. This year she noticed that this practice had extended to Christmas cards and she decided to post an offer. On Facebook! Anyone who wanted a birthday card from her was to let her know and she’d send one. She carved a stamp with #Imbringingbirthdaysback – she said that she wants people to join in and it’s not just hers but we’rebringingbirthdaysback doesn’t work as a hashtag and becomes werebringingbirthdaysback!

What an awesome idea. Which has grown larger than she ever expected and I believe she has close to 1500 people in her spreadsheet now. Stampin’ Up! asked how they could help and between SU and Shannon it was decided that they would manufacture her stamp and yesterday my sister alerted me to a post on Facebook saying that it would be available at midnight MT which is 2:00am here. I wanted one but I was not planning to stay up until 2. For one thing, I’d baked a batch of Mel’s Chocolate Chip Cookies and feared that if the cookies and I stayed up that late, only one of us would survive and the people in the office would not be happy! Yes, the cookies are that good.

Apparently this was very important to me – it does fit with my plan to send more cards this year, or perhaps I knew what was going to happen. But I happened to wake up at 2:00am on the dot. And figured – why not place an order. So I did and then went back to sleep. This morning I see that Facebook is full of people saying that they ordered their stamp and then that it was on backorder. Yes. In one night. I don’t know how many they manufactured but clearly it was an experiment since Stampin’ Up! had never done anything like this before. As of this morning, the inventory report shows that 120 are on backorder. I say, get your order in asap (item #143573) so that you get one from the next batch. And get your birthday cards ready to send!

See you tomorrow,

Liz