Some 16 years ago (I only remember this because my daughter was a newborn when "The Scrapbook Store" opened within walking distance of my house. One day I ventured in and was mesmerized by endless racks of color coordinated paper, albums, rolls of stickers, six foot tables covered in butcher paper with works in progress. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to Creative Memories by my friend and fellow blogger NickiWoo. For those of you who are not familiar, Creative Memories is to scrapbookistas what Pampered Chef is to kitchen gadget gurus...fun stuff that comes right to your home for demonstrations and sales. You tell two friends and then they tell two friends and then they tell two friends, and so on and so on....
Some years later (my kids were now preschoolers on my timeline) Robin, my friend and coworker at Parent's Day Out, mentioned a scrapbook retreat...a weekend getaway at a bed and breakfast in the country where everyone gets there own six-foot table for workspace, you bunk in different themed rooms in the various houses on the property, breakfast and dinner are served in the dining room of the main house and lunch comes to the "workspace" kitchen in the form of something delicious in a crockpot and sandwich fixins. There's also a counter full of snacks to share. Essentially, we eat and scrap and sleep all weekend long. We share ideas and supplies and ooh and aah over each other's creations and new gadgets and watch chick flicks and laugh until we cry or cry until we laugh or whatever. What a weekend!
The first time I went, I rode with Robin. The two of use loaded down her suburban with boxes, bins and bags of photos and scrapbook supplies. You would have thought we were moving away from home we had so much stuff. The B&B provides wheeled carts & dollies for unloading cars. I hit every half-price paper and sticker sale for a month before the event. Success was measured in the number of pages one managed to complete throughout the course of the weekend. I think my high was 60-something pages.
Nowadays, I gather what I can find (I usually don't do much scrapping between retreats) and toss it in the car. I'm just so glad to get away from the "daily grind' that I don't even mind if I only get 20 pages done. It's the food I don't have to prepare myself or serve to others who sometimes complain and don't appreciate it. It's the snuggling under a ceiling fan and down comforter in a bed all to myself with a "noise machine" to drown out the train that passes through town in the wee hours of the morning. It's the comradery (comaraderie? both give me the dotted underline, but you get the idea, right?) and creativity and freedom to do whatever...scrap, sleep, eat, sit and stare into space...Did I mention a massage therapist visits the B&B and you can treat yourself to 30-minute increments of massage therapy for a very reasonable fee?
I should be organized like Robin. She has her pics for her three kids all organized in zip lock bags and already has the pages/paper and coordinating accessories at the ready-birthday, school field trip, family vacation, sports events, Christmas, etc. She cranks out page after page and brings her kids' volumes of albums all up to date in the course of the weekend. I just stick pics of events on pages and decorate them and then store them in pizza boxes (my favorite pizza joints haven't gone so far as to charge me for the 12x12 inch pizza boxes that so nicely store completed pages awaiting placement in an album). The good thing is I get pages done. The downside is I never had a "completed album" to show for it...
Anyway, this was supposed to be brief, and I have a table to declutter so that I can find my camera so that I can get to pictures to download, so that I can organize my stuff for the retreat all within the next 48 hours. And if you give a Pig a pancake, then she'll probably want some syrup...yadda, yadda, yadda!
Until next time, friends!
