Suzanne Carillo

Off to the Big Apple!

Any orders placed after

noon

EST March 15^th will not be shipped out until Monday, March 20^th as we’re off to

New York City

.  We leave on Thursday morning and won’t be back until late Sunday night. It’s really a business trip and I will be working for about a day and a half, but after that it’s all fun! I just hope the weather is going to cooperate as a couple of times when we went it was FREEZING cold.  Okay, before you write saying, “hey you’re in

Canada

it’s freezing all the time!” let me tell you that normally we do have the same weather as New York, we’re only 40 minutes north by plane. Last year when we went in February it was gorgeous here and we got down there and I was shakin’ in my boots the whole time not wanting to leave the hotel for fear of hypothermia since I hadn’t taken any winter coat. So far it only seems like it should be okay, we might get a bit of rain.

Since I’ve studied to be a chef I’m a HUGE foodie and we have about 6 or 7 different restaurants we’ll be hitting. We’re staying in Murray Hill this time for something different.  Last time we stayed at the

Hudson

(so cool!) and every time before that was the W (different ones each time) but it’s cool to stay in a different area and get to know that neighborhood a bit better.

A little breakdown of some of my NY hot spots –

The best soup I’ve ever had is at Dishes not far from

Times Square

.  Curried pumpkin I think.

Best crème caramel was at Blue Ribbon Café in the village.

Amazing scallops can be had at the Black Duck, in Murray Hill which is right where we’re staying this time. Man…this is making me hungry! 

As you can tell, I’m getting pumped! We’ll have to do a few martinis at the W still. A little bit of a tradition with us, even if they are totally overpriced. I go for the “atmosphere” of the place, but I think Robert likes it because all of the waitresses are very cute and young in teeny tiny low cut outfits with tall black boots.  I was impressed with the bar at the

Hudson

last time too so we might go back there as well.  It’s hard to fit it all in! 

To really do NY right you need to see a show so we’re going to try to catch Wicked.

Since the art scene is one of the best in the world we’ll be taking in several new exhibits, Goya’s Last Works at the Frick and then the Guggenheim which we tried to get into before but was closed for some renovations. I just know that after visiting these galleries I will be so inspired to create more.  Of course after visiting such works of art I feel very inadequate as an artist, but it helps with composition and colors.

A while back we saw one of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen called “Ashes & Snow” at pier 54 in a bunch of shipping containers called the

Nomadic

Museum

.  It was by a guy from

Quebec

called Gregory Colbert. Stunning. Just stunning. Truly it is etched in my mind. I think the installation has now moved to

Japan

or something now.  If you ever get the chance to see it, I think it was in

San Francisco

, go.  You won’t be disappointed.

Anyhow…may write more from NYC.

So here I am…giving in to the new trend of web blogging.  After a little push from some other manufacturers I know I figure this might be worthwile after all. 

For all those who don’t know me…my name is Suzanne Carillo and I am the owner, operator and artist of my own company called Bisous (pronounced b-zoo)  which creates and manufactures scrapbooking papers and supplies.

My main purpose here is to let you know a little more about myself, my life and family and Bisous, my company.

My company’s mission is to make scrapbooking more accessible and less time consuming for all of us out there who actually want to spend more time creating memories to scrapbook that actually scrapbooking them.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE scrapbooking…I enjoy the whole creative process…but ask me about the tons of trips, vacations, special moments and loads of photos and stories that are either on discs, or in old albums that I haven’t scrapbooked yet or even looked at in years and I’ll tell you…it stresses me out.  I wanted a way of scrapbooking that wasn’t going to cost me $100 every time I went into the craft store to purchase some products for a few layouts and that was still going to look like I’d spent $100 and days making it.

I’ve been painting, drawing, crafting, creating floral designs, cake decorating, you name it pretty much all of my life.  As a creative person sometimes it’s hard to get your brain to "turn off". That is how one day, maybe two and a half months ago I was taking a shower and came up with this brilliant idea to create amazing prefinished scrapbooking pages.  Heck, I was already designing most of my layouts like this in the computer after I’d created the paper designs to test to make sure that the paper designs would work well together to create good layouts…why not just sell the actual layouts?  It seemed too good and too obvious.  Someone must already be doing it and I just don’t know about it.  After I’d towelled off and did a little research though it seemed no one was doing it quite like I wanted to, and their designs seemed to be very dated. I wanted something that was current, modern, stylish, chic, hip, classic.  That day I started to produce what I now call PDQ.   A brand new line of scrapbooking products that I believe will be the future of scrapbooking and most importantly, give me the opportunity to get all my precious memories scrapbooked before I’m in the old folks home.

I’ll post some more later…but for now, that gives you a little idea of me and what’s goin’ on with Bisous.