2013 Scrapbooking Retreat

Every year my mom and I try to get away and spend a weekend scrapbooking together.  It's a great opportunity for us to catch up, get some work down, and just have a fun girls' weekend.  We always have a great time together.  It's a wonderful break from the kids andjust a whole lot of fun.

This past January we spent a weekend in Napa, scrapping our time away.  It was a weekend full of laughter, good food, great memories, and scrapping months of photos.  We arrived on Friday afternoon and settled in.  It was hosted at a nice hotel and we had a large table to work at and spread all our photos out.

I'm such a night person that it didn't take much to keep me up most of the night, despite being tired from taking care of three kids.  I got in the zone right away and spread out my photos.  I was on a mission!

It's so much fun for me to work on photos of our family.  It's one of those acts of love that I do for my loved ones.  And for me, it's just a chance to create something beautiful.

My mom and I had two tables together.  That's always fun 'cause it gives us a lot of time to talk and we use each other's ideas.  It's not uncommon for us to be scrapbooking photos from the same family event and come up with completely different layouts.  Plus, if I get stuck, I have someone to bounce ideas off of.  Or go on a coffee run with.

When my in-laws found out what we were doing, they signed up too and were in a room next to us.  It was fun to take a break, stretch my legs, and go see what they were working on too.

One of the mornings we were there, we drug ourselves out of bed after a long night to go get manicures and pedicures.  It was so relaxing to sit down without someone asking for a snack.  :-)

This is my mom and I taking a break to have our pedicures.  We were so relaxed; we almost went back to bed.

While we were there, we ate a lot of good food too.  There was a restauarant in the hotel that served some yummy lunches.  This was the house chopped salad that was refreshing and so yummy.

And these Lettuce Wraps were incredible.  I've had it on my list to try and recreate them soon.  So good!

 

There was games and prizes all throughout the weekend, including a layout contest.

This is the page I entered of my sweet baby girl, Lydia.

And I got second place!

All in all, we had so much fun.  I look forward to this weekend all year long and it was fantastic.  We have a lot of fun just being together and doing something we enjoy.  Packing up on Sunday was bitter sweet.  I missed my babies, but had such a great time.  I can't wait till our weekend away next year.