Stamp With Peggy

Yesterday I shared the card swapping pictures.  We collect one of each card and put them all on a display board with a number.  Everyone received a voting sheet — they were to choose the top three cards that they liked.  We tallied the number one votes (we use two and three for a tie breaker).  The winners of this year's card contest was Colleen, Sue and Pam.
It's so fun to see what they do for cards each year.  Checking out the winning cards.

Colleen took first place with this beauty.  The dragonfly was beautiful stamped on the Window Sheet and then layered over another cut out dragonfly — so pretty.

This is Sue's second place card.  I love the pull out garden fence.

Pam's card is gorgeous.  Again, the dragonfly is cut out twice.  I love the shabby chic look and oh so much texture — so cute.

One of the great things I love about our Stampin' Sisters Retreat is all of the friendships that are made.  We have a couple of mother/daughter duos who have so much fun having this special time together.
Here is Jacki & Erika (Erika flew all the way from Maine to join the fun).

Isn't this the cutest!!
But I can beat this.  Our retreat is called Stampin' Sisters Retreat because my sister Tina and I host this event together.  This year we added more attendees so we had to recruit a little help with cutting and prepping the projects after we had them designed.  My daughter, Katie, who is a member of my stamping team and Tina's team member Amanda helped up prep.
Here's a great picture of Tina, Katie and I getting ready to head to the stampin' room.

One of these years we will get Tina's daughter Nicole here too.

Come back tomorrow for project 2 and a few other fun surprises.

Stampin' Sisters Retreat Day 2 — Everyone returned Saturday morning refreshed and ready to go.  They were greeted with fresh stamping mats and this adorable bag at their table.

What could be inside?

It's the Cupcakes & Carousels Embellishment Kit!!
They used some of this for their second stamping project.
We'll come back to that later.

They stamped two projects and we continued to play "Go Fishing" so everyone could win a prize.  Here's Tammy giving it her best shot.

We let them stand as close as they wanted and they had to get a ping pong ball in a fish bowl.  Then they got to choose a bag of fish (heehee — loved this).

Each bag of fish had a number on it — that told us what prize they won.

After the two projects we provided them with a fabulous lunch.
Here is the manager, Mark, making sure everything was just right.

They had salad, antipasto, two kinds of pasta (they even made gluten free pasta for three of us — that was so nice), garlic bread, meatballs, grilled chicken strips.

AND of course we couldn't forget dessert — chocolate anyone.

After lunch they swapped cards they had made.
Trying to get 70 ladies divided into groups was quite the task but they managed it well.

Sandi didn't make a card for her swap — she made a tag for a cute striped box.

And she filled the box with a GIANT homemade, beautifully decorated cupcake.
And she didn't make just for her swap group — she made a cupcake for all 80 people.
Needless to say — everyone was thrilled!!!

She even made me some gluten free desserts — she is so sweet.

That's enough for now — come back tomorrow and I'll share the afternoon with you.