My Poor Neglected Little Blog & A Creative Escape

Hello friends!

I bet you thought you’d never hear from me again.  But alas, I’ve wandered back into Blog Land again. I haven’t really been very far away, though. I walk past this computer day in and day out, but I just haven’t sat down to write anything in aaaages.   I don’t even know where to start again. SOOOO much has been going on here at our house since I last left you with the pics of the start of the kitchen remodel. We’ve been remodeling, had family, went to  a fun card making class with Sue Neal, had more family (2 weeks worth), had friends come visit, did more projects, built a gazillion InkStaks, discovered a rather scary health issue, and I even had a mini retreat with some friends at my home at the first of August, with the help of my sweetie pie husband AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND we’re almost done with the kitchen. LOL! No time for blogging, but I have been alive on Facebook (cuz I can do it from my phone on the go).

 

A Creative Escape

I think  since it’s the freshest in my mind I will share with you some snapshots of our little mini retreat I did at my home with a few friends at the first of this month.  Many of us met at Creative University and a couple are local friends here in town.  We have been talking about getting together here in Utah for a fun little retreat getaway for some time now.  This summer went completely crazy on me and we decided not to a full blown “go away to a hotel for a few nights” craft retreat and instead I moved some furniture around at my house, set up some spare beds and we did an overnight retreat at my place.  We had so much fun!  A few of us put together some projects to teach the group and we also worked on some personal projects.  We even had delicious meals prepared especially for us by our personal chef, Chef Brent! He sure spoiled us!

Here’s the gang… well, most of us… Amanda and Jen had some crazy things going on that weekend so they were in and out.  Amanda missed our group shot.

Never fear,  the magic of Photoshop Elements can sneak her back in.  HA.. I’m a lousy extractor/editor, but this works….

That’s all of us.  Left to Right: Kim Garrett, Lisa Tafoya (pink shirt), Tahne Timmons (batik shirt), Jenalee Graves, Bobie Glassett, Amanda Bartholomew, and mE.

When I say we crammed in my front room, I mean we crammed…

Next time I will take the couch out and stash it somewhere.. {HAHA.. good luck with that, Erin.. it might have to go on the porch!}

 

Friday night dinner and treats were “FFY” – Fend For Yourself… we went to dinner at Mi Rancherito here in town and enjoyed some lovely Mexican treats.  We came home and had fun playing and creating for the evening.  I taught the group how to make altered domino pendants.  They all turned out just gorgeous!  Here are our pendants (and my art charms) on a tray just after being resin’d.  The no name pendants are some extras I made while playing around and practicing this technique the day before.  I like the technique so much that I just kept playing.  It’s addictive!

                         

       

Here’s my finished charm that I glued a bail onto and strung on a chain.

Once we all had our pendants covered in resin and placed out in the warm garage to cure we crafted some more and giggled and giggled until the wee hours of the morning.  The night is a blur to me. LOL!

Saturday morning-ish we slowly hauled our tired bootays out of bed and enjoyed a delightful breakfast that Brent prepared for us… on of my favorites, Overnight French Toast with an orange maple syrup, fruit, breakfast sausages, yogurt, and juice. YUM!

 

Saturday was filled with lots of crafting and more yummy food prepared by Chef Brent.   Tahne taught us how to make an “inverted round chain maille” bracelet that surrounded a string of Swarovski crystals.  I chose a really pretty green crystal called Erinite.  For real. Not kidding. I love it.

Tahne created little kits for us in these darling little personalized tins!

For the most part, this bracelet wasn’t that hard to do.  The part that was most troublesome was getting the first set of rings started properly.

Somewhere in here we took a break and enjoyed a yummy lunch – my famous chicken salad sandwiches. I made salsa the night before and it was almost perfect the next day.  I think it could have used the other half of the jalapeno…

 

Sleep deprived chicas making funny faces at the photographer…

 

Bobie taught us a really darling post it note holder that you can make with a couple of scraps of paper, some ribbon, and a daaarling little teeny tiny pen from Staples.  Complete directions can be found in August 2010 on her blog-www.scrappyandcrafty.blogspot.com 

 

 

Amanda put together kits for a 2 page layout for us using CTMH’s retired Cocoa Cafe paper and loads of buttons and chipboard goodies.  Here’s her layout.  I haven’t finished mine, still need to stitch around the edges and add photos, but I will share it soon.

Saturday night we enjoyed a delightful dinner that Chef Brent cooked for us in the dutch ovens outside.  He’s a seriously good chef and makes the best Italian food, too!   He made homemade garlic bread, a big green salad, and dutch oven Chicken Parmesan.   For dessert I made an ooey gooey yummilicious apple crisp.  I totally spaced vanilla ice cream so we just drizzled some fresh cream over it.  YUM!

 

 

We also did a charm swap with an Oldies Rock N Roll theme.  Kim turned her charms into a jumble/junklace necklace charm and I loved her idea so I blatantly copied her.  Here’s my jumble:

Lots of loveliness and sparkles! I love it!  I didn’t take pics of all the charms, but you can see most of them in these pics. Guitar pics, records, music notes, Elvis, guitars, all sorts of beads n baubles.  I made a couple of extras out of shrinky dink material – a jukebox and a diner girl. My art charms were scrabble tiles with an image of Elvis crooning into the microphone to which I attached a fun guitar charm and a bead charm.  Each girl got one with her first initial on the back.

I hope you enjoyed a peek at a recent fun weekend here at my place.  We had so much fun and I can not wait until we get together next time!

Thanks for sticking with me – I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much this past month.  We’re working on finishing up house projects and I will try (but not promise) to be more active on my blog. 

Inky Smiles!