All the stockings were hung on display with care . . . .  We had a wonderful time at our annual Salutations Holiday Open House last Thursday!  Everyone got into the Season of Giving spirit, as we collected some great donations for the Second Harvest Food Bank and for the Salvation Army Christmas Angel programs, and we gave away some amazing SWAG bags and lots of special holiday discounts.

Our vendors and neighboring merchants were so generous in providing us with fabulous treats for our SWAG bags.  Smock Paper providing gorgeous letterpressed holiday card & gift tag sets; Dauphine Press sent sets of wonderful letterpressed correspondence cards; Crane & Co. donated copies of their hardcover Blue Book of Stationery; Midori Ribbon sent gift boxes of green organdy ribbon; Inviting Company provided some very fun notepads; Wiley Valentine provided sets of letterpress offcuts assembled into notepads; Modern Salon and Spa provided samples and 20% off coupons; JesseBrown’s contributed $10 coupons; Kilwin’s provided “Buy One Get One Free” ice cream coupons; Her Therapy shared 20% off coupons; and I.C. London provided $10 coupons.  We love our vendors and neighboring merchants, who are so supportive of Salutations.

I’m playing Show and Tell today and inviting you to check out the new photos of our store, including window displays, in-store displays, and dresses made of tissue paper.  {Yes, really.} You can see the new images on the About Us page of our website.  Even more images are posted on our Facebook page.  {While you’re there, why not become a fan?}

Many of the images of our Chapel Hill store are courtesy of Nancy Ray Photography.  Nancy happened upon our store one day and was so inspired that she asked if she could start snapping some photos.  Her work is fantastic and she is a real pleasure.  See more shots of the store in her blog post about Salutations.

I have been meaning for quite some time now to post about this amazing watercolor sketch of a paper wedding dress in our Chapel Hill store window.   Laura Frankstone is an infinitely talented artist who happens to live in Chapel Hill.  While walking by our boutique one day, she was so inspired by our wedding dress made of paper that she felt compelled to sketch it.

Laura has a wonderful blog called Laurelines that showcases her work beautifully.  See her blog post about our paper wedding dress, entitled What the Bride Wore.  So much talent!

There are only a few more weeks left to vote for Salutations in the Leading Moms in Business Competition held by StartUp Nation and Ladies Who Launch.  The top 200 companies are awarded the honor.  You can even vote daily if you’d like.  It just takes one click ~ nothing to sign up for and you don’t need to enter your email address.  A big thank you to all of you who have been voting for us ~ we really appreciate it!

No matter your preference for keeping up with the latest updates, we’ve got you covered! You can now become a fan of Salutations’ profile on Facebook, you can follow Salutations on Twitter, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed of our blog posts.   Or, if you are an information junkie like me, you can do all three!

Facebook recently updated their page style and we love the new design of our page.  We recently uploaded some images of our window displays, fabulous paper dresses and other creations to our Salutations page on Facebook.  We also updated the About Us page of the website with new images. Check it out!

We are so excited and proud to unveil the makeover of our Salutations website!  Since the launch of our online store, we have been hard at work with our crack web design team at Yellow House Design to better integrate our original website with our web store.  You can now toggle back and forth seamlessly between the department overview pages (Baby, Wedding, Party, etc.) and the online shopping pages.

The department overview pages provide a description of the services we offer and the products and manufacturers that we carry.  From each of these pages, you can click to go to that department’s section of the online store, see the most popular categories within the department, and click to go to the department’s photo gallery.  The photo galleries showcase products that are not yet offered through our online store, but which can be ordered by calling or sending us an email.  We would be happy to provide you with a quote for anything that you see in the photo galleries.

You can also easily access our cobranded websites from the department overview pages.  For example, from the Baby page, you can shop our Sweet Pea Designs online store.  From the Stationery page, you can access our Embossed Graphics store - the Annex at Salutations.  And, from the Wedding page, you can access our Envelopments online gallery.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Please join us for our annual Holiday Open House on Thursday, October 23, 2008 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.  This event is being held at both our Ballantyne Village (Charlotte) and Meadowmont Village (Chapel Hill) locations.  You will receive 20% off all holiday cards, holiday party invitations, and other holiday items purchased during the event.

What a great way to kick off the holiday season and get a jump-start on that list!