Retreat part I

Finally I have time to sit down and tell you all about our Retreat.  It's been a crazy couple of weeks leading up to it and a busy past couple of days catching up somewhat on all the things around the house that were let go while I was getting ready for retreat.  I have a lot to tell you so I'm going to have to do this in several posts or I'll scare all of you away!

Mary Ann, Connie, Carole and I left Papillion last Thursday in three separate cars...all loaded to the top with luggage, food, retreat goodie bags and projects.  Calvin Crest is only an hour away so we timed our arrival in Fremont to coincide with a stop for lunch at Arby's.  Arriving at the retreat center sometime around 12:30, we quickly set to work unloading our cars, setting up the greeting area, assigning rooms and putting chocolates on everyone's pillows.

Chocolates

There were only 9 of us attending Thursday and 4 of those were "staff" so once we had everything set up we sat down to catch our breath and cool off a bit as it was very hot and humid outside.

Connie waiting to scare greet the stitcher's.

 As each attendee arrived, they were greeted by one of us at the curb with a cart to help bring in the massive (some more than others) amounts of stuff each stitcher brought with them.  I'm not going to name names but some of these ladies do not travel light.  Of course I have no room to talk, I had enough stuff with me to last at least a month!

 Linda was the first to arrive.

She was followed by Mary, Pam, Doreen, Stacy and Laurie.    Upon entering the retreat center, they were surrounded by the sound of Frog song in keeping with our theme of Fear the Frog. At this time they were asked to sign up for a massage and the beaded fob class if they were interested.

Then they were given their goodie bag, their Fear the Frog tote if they purchased one and the retreat project.  Each attendee was also given a raffle ticket for the door prizes.  They had to put one half of the ticket into the frog on the desk.  When you opened it's mouth it croaked at you.  Surprised a couple of them!  Fear the Frog!!

Paulette Stewart of Plum Street Samplers once again designed our shop exclusive chart and I must say she did an outstanding job of tying in the theme.  Paulette...you rock!  Thank you so much for helping to make our retreat a success!

Notice the little frog stealing a stitch in the lower right hand corner?  And the lady with the cage trying to catch him?  Too stinking cute!  Some of you might have noticed that there is something missing in this picture.  I didn't notice until I was viewing it on my computer screen that I had completely left out one flower!  Don't worry, I corrected my mistake but by then I had already stitched the ends together and didn't want to take the time to "ripit" so I wasn't able to take another full picture of the piece.

Once stitched the piece would then be placed if the stitcher so desires, around the "spool" that was provided for each person attending retreat.  Like this:

 The lid of the spool lifts off  to store orts or whatever else one might wish to keep in there.  When they received it the floss and fabric were inside along with a thread holder that included fun frog facts

Once the business of retreat was taken care of we showed each person to their room and helped them take their stitching paraphernalia  to the stitching area where they lost no time in getting down to the important business of stitching.  Before we knew it,  it was time for supper.  As it was such a small group Thursday, it was pretty laid back and easy going and after eating we spent the rest of the evening stitching and visiting.  For Connie, Mary Ann and I, it was a nice break from the craziness that would be the rest of the weekend.    Friday morning we had breakfast at 8:00 followed by more stitching until lunch at noon.  After lunch we set everything up to greet the rest of the stitcher's that were scheduled to arrive after 3:00 that afternoon.  Then we all chose our beads for the fob class to be held later that night.  As the rest of the stitcher's arrived and got settled in Carole and Connie helped them choose their beads so that by supper at 6:30 everyone had their beads chosen for their fobs and we were able start class as soon as we got back.

I believe everyone had a good time making their fobs and it was amazing how pretty and unique each persons fobs were.

Here's a close up of mine:

After class there was more stitching until one by one the stitcher's drifted off to their beds.

I hope you are enjoying part one of our retreat recap.  I'll try to post part 2 this weekend if not before.

Take care till next time!!

Julie