Gift From the Sea Retreat at the Center

Saturday morning a few of us hiked in the woods and were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day! Lois, who led the retreat, pointed out some animal tracks on the way...racoon, deer, and maybe a tiny mouse's little tracks on top of the snow. We heard birds high up in the trees and spotted two Red-headed Woodpeckers. We followed the path through the many kinds of Oaks and maple trees and ended up at a creek and a lake. Then we returned to the Lodge where the retreat was held.

During the day and previous eveing, Lois led the readings from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book and I led the book project with colorful pages cut and all ready to use. We worked on decorating the pages, with very subtle pastels. It's nice to prepare the pages with some color or decoration before writing anything...it just helps not to be intimidated by the blank page! Lois also had some shell rubber stamps and some brought things from home to use. After some of the "regular" attendees started writing some of the inspirational quotes and coming up with some creative ideas to add to the pages, it helped encourage others to find new things to put into their books. I also had a sheet of creative lettering for them to experiment with.

At the end, we drilled holes through the cover and pages of the book and did the stab binding with decorative threads and added various colored threads to finish them off. Shells and other embellishments were added too. We all sat together and shared our pages with the group which is so interesting as they were all unique with the different colors used, the way the pages were decorated, and the writing and the embellishments that were added inside.