Scrapbooking Retreat

This past weekend I headed out to Columbia Valley up above Cultus Lake for our bi-annual Scrapbooking retreat. My good friend Jan has been organizing these weekends for more than 10 years and we all look forward to them. We rent the Dogwood Lodge at Stillwood Camp and Conference Centre where we have a large room with lots of tables and light. Upstairs there are dorm rooms for sleeping and we are royally fed by the camp staff in their lovely dining room overlooking Cultus Lake. We can't carpool up to the camp because we all take so much with us that we each need our own vehicle to accomodate all the equipment necessary (?!) for scrapbooking.

Once we've unpacked all our gear, we get right down to work.

When a page is completed, it is held up for all to enjoy. Some gals are making albums featuring their grandkids.

Others are building memory books for their grown up children.

Me - I'm still making travel albums. I haven't gotten organized enough yet to start on the albums I'd like to do - there are years of negatives to go through. So I go back to chronicling our road trip to Newfoundland several years ago. It is almost finished now after this weekend ( I completed 28 pages!). Hopefully when the next retreat rolls around in October, I'll have the pictures sorted and ready to start on my kid's albums.

So here's a sampling of the pages I did.

Saturday afternoon, I had visitors! Harv came up bringing our kids and grandkids from Seattle with him. We made fun cards for them using my new "Cricut" machine,

and then headed up the trail for a hike. We found treehouses with ladders to climb and rope bridges

and the children had lots of fun in the playground before heading back home. It was fun to have them come a visit.

It is a real gift to have friends with similar passions, and to be able to get to know new friends as well. We compared notes, asked for and gave advice, checked out each other's tools and paper, caught up on each others' lives, laughed, ate chocolate, and even cried once or twice.

Thanks Jan for all the planning and organizing that made our weekend so fun and productive. We can hardly wait for the next one.

Stillwood Crop 08

So, what do 29 women aged 20 to 75; (I'm guessing here), career girls, moms with young families, farmer's wives, business women, and grandmothers all have in common? How can such a varied group spend 4 days and nights together and all get along? Welcome to the world of dedicated scrapbookers!

This past weekend Dogwood Lodge at Stillwood Camp and Conference Centre was filled to capacity with above-mentioned 29 women and all the things their scrapbooking hearts hold dear. Boxes and totes full of paper of every shade and pattern, brads, ribbons, stickers, cutters, pens, stamps, ink pads and rub-ons, and for the techincally savvy - even a computerized cutting system called a Crikcut. As you can see from the pictures, we came with alot of stuff. One participant, who shall remain nameless, brings her whole craft room and after hastily mounting one or two portraits in her grandkids album, spends the rest of the weekend turning out beautiful cards and hand decorated calendars. Lucky people who are on her greeting card list!

Scrapbookers are a fun and generous group. There's lots of laughing (it reaches a hysterical level after midnight) sharing of stories and tips on getting just the right look for your page. If you find yourself needing something you don't have or didn't bring, someone else will supply it. Not quite sure what embelishment will highlight your photos? There will be two or three girls leaning over your page to offer their advice. Of course our resident expert is always willing to leave her projects to come and help.

My project this time was to work on ABC books for my 2 four year old grandsons. Here are a couple of the pages I did as well as some of the cards I made.

The food at the camp is terrific and plentiful with snacks provided for the evening (they are famous for their butterhorns!) and we can put aside our everyday responsibilites and spend time doing what we love.

On the way home the sun was shining and the leaves so colourful that I found myself stopping several times to take more pictures!

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I love to make cards. Here are a few I've made in the past week or so.














Now that I have a craft room to work in, I've got room to invite a friend or two to "play" with me. Harv usually has a guys night out on Thursdays so I've made that my night with the girls. We cut and paste to our hearts delight and end up with lovely cards to send to friends and family.

We'll be gone this coming week but I'm open Thursday nights after that. If you enjoy card making too or would like to give it a try, call me - I'd love to have you join me.