On Saturday night, the St. Louis group of collectors got together at my apartment for cocktails, dinner, and a gift exchange. Everyone showed up and we visited and munched on appetizers and made margaritas. John helped me in the kitchen and with preparing the meal. We had a great dinner and even Bruce, who is an attorney here in St. Louis and a collector came and joined us and saw my collection. This was an interesting party as Patrick D., John P., and I both got Mieles for Christmas. Tom brought his Miele Champagne and Patrick D. brought his Miele Blue Moon and Silver Moon and got his new Miele Universal upright from Tom. What a cool machine the Universal upright is... it has the same Miele 1200 watt Vortex motor that the canisters have.. AND you can use it with any of the Miele powernozzles. After dinner and the cleanup we had a little gift exchange and all got some very nice gifts. Here are some pictures of our event.. enjoy!!

This first picture is of my living room all cleaned up before everyone arrived.

This is the line up of all of our Mieles.

John Pease's Miele Champagne and my Red Velvet, with my vintage Airways and Compact in the background.

All of our Mieles with all three of the available Miele powerheads.

Patrick Dawson with his fullsize Blue Moon, mid size Silver Moon and Universal upright.

John Pease and Tom Gasko with their Miele Champagnes.

Me with my Miele Red Velvet .. and my Dog Maizey too !!

All of us behind our respective Mieles.

Some of the other vacuums we played with .. the new Hoover Constellation and the Rainbow E2.

Patrick preparing to unwrap his first gift.

Wonder what it is !!

Ahh.. a Hersheys cookbook from John Pease.

And here is John Pease with his vintage Lady Kenmore blender that I gave him.

Tom unwrapping a gift.

Me with my new Sunbeam Vista mixer given to me by John Pease.

Tom G. unwrapping his present from me... hmmm.. wonder what that is.. looks like an Electrolux...

Tom G. with his Electrolux Ultralux classic that I gave him. This was the one last Electrolux that he has been wanting.. enjoy it Tom ;)

Patrick unwrapping another gift..

A very nice Kitchen Aid hand mixer from John Pease.

Tom G. with his Sunbean mixmaster from John Pease.

John Pease with his Miele attachments given to him by Patrick.

More Miele attachments.

And last but not least.. Patrick with his Rainbow Rainmate that I got for him.

There are some other pictures that I will post later once pictures are developed from other cameras. Since I was taking most of the pictures with my digital, some of the things that I got aren't pictured yet, but once we get Johns film developed we will have some more to add. Patrick gave me a black North Face jacket .. it is SOOOO pretty.. I will post a picture later. I also got a Cuisinart handy chopper from John Pease which will come in very handy in the kitchen. We had a lot of fun, great food, and an excellent time. I always look forward to getting together with these guys!!!

Derreck

Stay tuned for more pictures

What a wonderful party! I always enjoy your pictures. You all know how to have fun.

Great pictures Derreck, looks like another fun gathering. Those new Miele canisters sure are beautiful, but DAMN, that Universal upright is NICE! I have to say it's very enticing, especially seeing as how the S168 can use a powerhead, which I'm assuming this one is. There's a good chance it will be my next purchase after the DC17.

Yes, I'll admit, the Club is slowly but successfully turning my "old-school" self on to more modern machines...

It wasn't that long ago that I didn't know what a Miele was. I really like my Solaris. I thought about getting the universal upright and putting the SEB 226 power head on it for a little while, but decided on a canister instead. But I am still getting the SEB 226 for my Solaris.

It looks like everyone had fun, and definately got some nice presents.

Such a beautiful sight. I'm glad you all had a good time. I ordered a Universal upright last week to try out and see if I wanted to keep it as a regular item in the store. I sold it within ONE HOUR of it being dropped off by UPS. The customers came in looking for a canister to clean their hard floors and supplement their current upright. I started out showing them the Carina, and they were walking out to think it over, when the husband pointed to the Universal and said "What's this?". I showed them the demo, and pointed out that if anything ever happened to their upright, they could always buy a powernozzle to put on the Universal and they would have all their bases covered. That drove it home and they purchased on the spot.