Should I Say Bend Over?

I recently took a class at Scrapbook Safari in Woodland Hills called “Let’s be Christmas MERRY” 8 x 8 chipboard album and box. The cost of the class was $47.00 a little pricey I might add although it did include all of the papers, paint, and embellishments. I enrolled in the class because the accordion album in a box is absolutely adorable! (I think it will make a great Christmas gift!) When you take these types of classes you normally bring your own 12x12 trimmer, detail (fine point) scissors, glue stick, glue dots, Corner Rounder, Scrappy glue, foam mounting tape, foam brushes, a pencil, and ruler. These items are pretty much staples if you do scrapbooking. Unfortunately, as part of this class,there are many items that are recommended for you to purchase...some that are necessary and some not so necessary. I was asked to purchase a square glue stick because it is so much easier to get the glue to the corners...not true! The ordinary round glue stick will work just fine! Then there was the foam mounting tape...also not necessary if you have "pop dots" and/or "3D foam squares". I was also encouraged to buy 2 distress ink pads (one wouldn't do because I was taking my daughter along and we would both need one). As it turned out we didn't even get to the point where either one of us used it because there wasn't enough time during the class to actually finish the project! So, my point is that one distress ink would have been just fine. As I have come to learn this retail store is a "Mom & Pop" type store. I'm sure it must be very difficult for it to compete with stores such as Michael's and JoAnn's because of the high sales volumes of these stores. I know that ScrapbookSafari can only survive by making sales but they shouldn't try to make up the difference by encouraging sales of unnecessary items...this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth! It gives me pause as to whether I will continue to do business there. And after paying the steep $47 price tag for the class which I assumed was such because the instructor also needs to get paid, we were offered the opportunity to buy kits. These kits were of the very book we were making in class and much to my chagrin and amazement they too were $47.00 How can that be? I think that is just a bit too greedy! Oh, I should mention that we would receive a 20% discount on anything that we purchased that night, so that we could buy the kits for $37.60...wow! what a savings! (That was sarcasm, by the way.) Lest I forget to mention, the best part of the class was having my daughter take the class with me...you know, bonding and all that. After all my ranting...the class was great!