Close to My Heart Scrapbook Retreat

Several months ago, Janel announced she was going to host a scrapbook retreat at Hidden Springs in February.  I was the first name on the list. I figured Josh would be home, but by that point I might be tired of him being underfoot all the time, so I would feel fine to leave him on his own for a weekend while I went and scrapbooked for a weekend. Plus, in January he went to Ohio for two weeks to hunt. (If he'll ever bring his camera home from work, I'll blog about that.)

Then the wedding stuff hit. About 3 weeks before the wedding, we were in bed almost asleep when I realized that I couldn't remember the exact date of the retreat, but with the wedding stuff taking three weeks, I would most likely have to miss it. I was heartbroken. I got out of bed and fired up the laptop. I couldn't find an email about the retreat so I emailed Janel to find out for sure when it was, but I was sure that I would have to miss it. So the next morning when I got her email saying it was the last weekend of February I was relieved that I wouldn't miss it after all.

The Hidden Springs Lodge was booked Friday through Sunday with a late check out at 2 PM. It was only about 12 minutes from home, so I could've gone home at night to sleep. But because I was one of the first to sign up, I was allowed to choose one of the bigger bathrooms. And I knew I would stay up late, so I might as well just sleep there too.

I got there Friday morning about 10 and didn't leave until Sunday afternoon around 1:30. Scrapbooking is like the one thing my best friends don't do, so I was worried I might be lonely. Luckily for me, in the end, one of my friends from work came with me. I was so glad she did. I knew a few people there, but not well enough to have been comfortable. I told Karen that if she hadn't of come, I might have just set all my stuff up in my room and stayed there the entire time, except to eat. We had a blast and I'm glad she could go.

When I got there, there were several tables set up already, but since I had brought so much stuff, I also brought my own table. I found a corner where I could have plenty of room, but still be a part of everything. It ended up working perfectly because I could also use the space under the staircase. Each time I went under there to get something, it felt like my own den.

Here is what the area looked like when I got there.

After that, it was always a mess, but I took a picture at what I thought was the messiest moment. Once it got dark, the lighting wasn't very good, so we borrowed the lamp from our room. Then on Saturday my feet were killing me from the hard floor. So on Saturday we also borrowed a rug from the hall in front of our room.

Getting packed up and ready to head home. It doesn't look like a lot, but that is 12 trips to the car (including the food that was in the fridge). I think I took over half of my craft room. Just about the only thing I didn't take was about half of my paper packs and my ribbons. I was worried I would take too much, but in the end I did end up using everything. Well, kind of. I didn't use all of my stamps, but when I used a few, I was glad I had them there.

 I don't know how many people stayed the night and how many went home. I think the the busiest time was Saturday afternoon, there was probably around 35 people there.

My area is on the left of this picture.

Janel provided all of the meals for us. I'm a picky eater, so I was a little nervous. But everything was DELISH! I seriously wanted seconds after each and every meal. But I didn't want to look like a pig or take someone else's food before they could eat. And I was always anxious to get back to my scrapbooking.

Friday night, Karen and I stayed up until about 2 AM Saturday morning. When we went to bed, we set the alarm for 8 AM so we wouldn't miss breakfast. At about 7:30 we woke up because the sun was shining right in our eyes. We tried to fight it for a minute, but then admitted defeat and went down stairs. Saturday night, I went to bed around 3:00 AM and Karen was about 30 minutes behind me. At 7:00 AM we were woken up by someone playing the piano. I sure wished they would have waited a few hours for everyone to wake up. I know some people didn't go to bed until 5 AM, so for those poor people, they had only been asleep for 2 hours. But since the sun was about to peek through our window, we decided to get up. By this point, I had had about 6-7 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. I ended up only doing a few pages Sunday morning, but I was so drained. I finally cleaned everything up and then went and soaked in the hot tub outside for a few hours before heading home.

I wasn't planning on buying many kits (but I still did in the end), so I brought everything I would need to create on my own. I also brought all of the blank pages I have made over the years as part of the monthly group.

Each time I started a new page, I would first take my pictures and go through my premade pages. I have like 50 and in the end I was pleased to use a few of them.  If I couldn't find a premade page, then I took my pictures over to Janel's precut kits. If I could find one that worked, I added it to my ever growing list of stuff I was purchasing. Even after that, I still ended up making a few pages from scratch. You can spot them easily, they are the plainest ones. I plan to add embellishments later when my craft room is all put back together.

I ended up making like 25 pages. I was only going to post a few pics of my favorite ones. But they all ended up being my favorite ones. I had thought about working on pages for Christmas presents, but instead decided to make the weekend all about catching up on my stuff.

Case in point, the below pictures are from like 3 years ago! I had scrapbooked them for Melanie and Barb, but didn't do one for myself. I promised myself I would do them later. I really never meant to wait SOOO long.  

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was something I made when I still went to Andrea's group a few years ago.

It worked perfectly for some of my favorite fishing pictures from 3 years ago.

This was a page I made from scratch.

On Friday, Janel did a session where we made three Christmas pages, including an interactive one with flip flaps.

The Christmas tree is 6 flip flaps. It was a bit of work, but it turned out so cute! I don't have very many pictures from last Christmas. But I plan to take lots of pictures next year so I can use these fun pages. The above picture shows just the tree. The below picture, I flipped the first two flaps so you can see where the pictures will go.

This page was one of the monthly pages I've made in Janel's group.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. It also had the words "American Boy" cut out, but I just wanted to use to use it for our horse riding pics from this summer. Janel also had a girl version of this page, which I bought, even though I currently have no pictures to go on it. I also bought 2 other kits that I thought were super cute and will find a place to use them. With one kit, I bought 3 so I can use it for family.

This page was from a previous retreat Janel did.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. I didn't have any pictures for it, but since its made from my favorite past paper packet, I HAD to have it. I'll find some great pictures for it someday.

The first 25 people to sign up got a bonus kits. Janel had "FAMILY" stamped on hers, but I decided to leave my blank until I'm ready to use it.

On Saturday, Janel did another workshop. This time she showed us how to make 6 pages from one paper pack, with a few extra pieces of card stock. She had let us know before hand what we would need to buy so we could follow along. The paper pack she used wasn't one of my favorites, so I decided to use different paper. First, is a picture of what hers looked like, then below it is what mine looked like. While I was working on mine, I had a few people tell me how beautiful they were. That made my day. One lady wanted to take pictures, but I wanted to finish them with embellishments first. By the time I was done, she had left for the weekend. But she made sure to tell Janel to get pictures for her. When Janel saw them, she showed them to everyone so they could see how different mine turned out.

Janel's version.

My version, including a few more spots for extra pictures.

Janel's version.

My version.

Janel's version.

My version. My half circle says "Wild Wild West" with buttons between the words.

Janel's version.

My version. Its pure coincidence that my version is on blue paper too.

Janel's version.

My version. On the right page, the bottom left corner was a "oops". So I had to stamp another image, cut it out and then glue it over the first one so it looked like it belonged from the start.

Janel's version.

My version.

This was a page I made from scratch.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. The white boxes could also be pictures, but since I didn't have any more pictures from cake class, I decided to put the embellishments there instead of where they were in the sample kit.

This one, I had a premade one that would work, but the colors were all off for what I had in mind. So I copies it but, with these colors. I'm glad I did, it looked so much better then if I had just gone with the original page I had.

This was a page I made in one of Janel's past monthly groups. That day she had cutouts for friends, family, and I think sisters. So glad I went with friends, it made it perfect for the cooking classes I took with Jessica last fall.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

Like I said above, I was only going to post my favorite pages, but they all ended up being my favorite. I think its because I like how each page turned out. But also, because when I look at each page I remember all the happy memories and that makes it my favorite too.

I think Janel plans to do something like this again next year. I can't wait!

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