#pillowgifts – Super Awesome Stamper

We had a fabulous time during our weekend getaway at Cattail Retreat. We split the room with half working on paper crafts and half working on quilting and gifts. Creativity was flowing in all directions!

First up was piling kits for upcoming Christmas card making sessions. I took advantage of the free table space until other guests arrived. That’s about 100 kits pictured. I did another 100 after these were stuffed in their envelopes.

The design for these kits uses retired designer series paper and ribbon…gingerbread punch is in our annual catalog!

Since Halloween is next week, I designed a spooky pillow gift. Dawn sewed a fun pouch to share as a pillow gift too. Thanks Dawn!

After my kit piling was done, I worked on reducing my whisper white paper scrap pile by punching bows from the Candy Cane builder punch. I used all my scraps and created about 150 bows. I stamped the hohoho words using real red ink from the coordinating Candy Cane Season stamp set. They are attached to glue dots strips for easy assembly.

We had lots of great food including taco dip, chili, southwest black bean soup and chicken chili in tomato sauce. Treats were an apple pie from #NorskeNook, gluten free brownies from #chocolatecoveredkatie and mango turmeric #Nessallakombucha. All delicious!

I set aside my paper crafts to hook a few loops on my pear centerpiece. The photo on the left is progress from the August retreat, the first 2 pears hooked. The photo on the right is progress made this weekend. I completed 3 pears! #patience and #goals learned while rug hooking for sure! It takes me a couple of hours to hook 1 pear.

Group photo right before packing up with some of the quilts worked on while at retreat in the background. We missed a few people that departed early.

The original retreaters…Tiffany on left, me in the center and Jeanette on the right. They are scrapbooking super stars! They design layouts and print photos prior to the weekend. During retreat, they match photos with layouts. They stay on task and usually meet their goal and matching all the photos with layouts. Pretty impressive since they have littles and take advantage of life experiences so have lots of memories to keep!

Thanks for a great weekend! Catch you next time at Cattail Retreat!

Super Awesome Weekend Getawayer Shirley

P.S. Future retreats are February 8-10, 2019, August 9-11, 2019 and October 18-20, 2019. Message me if you are interested in attending these dates. Thanks!

This should really have been the prologue but I missed taking a photo of my pillow gifts at retreat. So I recreated what I gifted when I was back at my house. This photo is a similar design to what I shared for pillow gifts. I used the pumpkins in place of the “owleween” image and spooky moon paper.

Dawn also presented us with a purple and wine themed bowl warmer while we were settling in. She said it can be placed in the microwave with the bowl while heating so that fingers are protected from the hot bowl. The purple is on the opposite side of the print side.

I think it is too nice (partly because it is purple!) to use in the kitchen. I will instead use it as a bow bowl. I pre-tie bows so I’ll use the bowl to corral them before I place them on glue dot strips. Stampers pull a bow from the strip and attach it to their card. In between bow tying sessions, I will use it to corral my snippets of wool while I rug hook similar to how Dawn and Pam were using their bowls, to corral snippets of fabric while making straight edges. Thank you Dawn for the thoughtful and multi-purpose gift.

This concludes my posts about our weekend retreat at Cattail Retreats. I hope you enjoyed reading along. I enjoyed my time at retreat and sharing it with you.

Can you picture yourself on retreat with us next time? Remember that the focus of the weekend is working on your own projects. You can make as little or as large of a dent on your list as you would like to. Breakfast is on your own. The rest of the meals are split up so we are only preparing and cleaning up one meal per stay. If you would like to join us next time, use the Contact Me button above for more details and dates. I have weekends reserved for February, August and October.

Have a nice rest of your weekend!

Super Awesome Weekend Retreater Shirley

P.S. I almost forget to share the visit to Nancy’s Notions in Beaver Dam. Pam’s trip is complete!