Meeting the Neighbors!

Last Wednesday was a bluebird kinda day!

A few of the hundreds of flowers on my walk to work.

I was invited to attend the Grand Avenue Business Association (GABA) Annual Meeting with the Grand Avenue store Manager, Mary and our Marketing gal, Sarah.  The meeting was held at the William Mitchell College of Law.

The evening began as a mixer.  We met a couple of the owners of the Lexington Restaurant and chatted with them a while- they were very friendly!  We also met the manager of Creative Kidstuff, Grand Ave...

Neighboring Managers (the Bibelot Grand Manager is on the left, Creative Kidstuff on the right)!

There was a long table of prizes for a raffle... pizzas, Twins tickets, Wild tickets, jewelry, spa days, the list goes on and on of what you could win!

Prizes from business up and down Grand Ave!

We donated a beautiful dragonfly necklace!

At this point, the Mayor of St Paul, Chris Coleman spoke about small business and how unique and great Grand Avenue is (like we didn't know already)!

He sure likes St Paul!

We then had a glass of wine and sat down at our table.  The Executive Director of GABA spoke, we had dinner which was fab, and then came the desserts, lots and lots of desserts.  Think about seeing all those great treats at Cafe Latte, Wuollet Bakery, Dixie's on Grand, Green Mill, and Grand Ol' Creamery and then getting to choose whatever you want from an entire table FILLED with them!  Talk about lucky!

After filling our bellies with these wonderful sweets, we listened to Sue Evens, GABA's executive director speak.  Then Chad Skally, the GABA president gave us the run down on the annual report...

One of the neatest things they did was read a list of companies that are celebrating big birthdays on the avenue and our store was named!  The Bibelot has been on Grand Ave for 25 years!  But then, a quite a few others got up and blew me away.  A. Johnson floral, for instance, has been here for 76 years!  Now they know how to run a business and keep their customers happy!  Congrats to them!

Before the night was over, we were told to look under our chairs for a couple last minute prizes... and I won, I got to take this gorgeous flower arrangement home!  Thanks, A. Johnson!

It was a whirlwind of a night.  I met so many nice people and am looking forward to greeting them out and about this summer on the Avenue!