Chaucer was credited with the idiom ‘all good things (must) come to an end.’ It was an adaptation of ‘There is an end to everything, to good things as well’. Nowadays, we seem to use this phrase as a way of signalling that something great has finished, but we hope that something better will come along. However, I know that I have really enjoyed my visits to the Autumn Escape Retreat at Wairakei Resort, and while I didn’t get to make it to every event, I was not ready for it to finish and think the format will be hard to improve on.
Sadly, with around half the numbers attending this year, it is no longer viable in its current form and Jodi has made the hard decision to call it a day. There was some talk of a ‘different form’ of retreat for next year, and I hope this gets off the ground, as it is an important part of my calendar to attend these types of events to catch up with people that I don’t see often.
This year I chose not to attend classes, mainly as I wanted to complete layouts I had started at the Pretty Botanicals weekend, and also, I enjoy coming up with my own layouts as part of the creative process.
What I did at AE this year:
I worked on a mini album from a class the original Autumn Escape I attended at least 5 or 6 years ago. It was a class with Rachel Tucker (from New Zealand) and although I made it a lot more grungy than the original I am very happy with it. Rachel was there this year as a participant, and I kind of hoped that she wouldn’t see me there working on her project all these years later. But she did, and I bet I’m not the first scrapbooker to have an unfinished project from years before!
Plus, I created a couple of layouts from scratch, a page about the Lion King Junior Production from 2016, where Holly played Shenzi, a Hyena and also a page of Holly at Opononi from our holiday up North last year. The rest of the time I mostly worked on trying to complete a couple more pages from the Morrinsville weekend.
Our last dinner was held over at the Fairways Restaurant, and instead of the usual buffet, we had a sit down meal which included slow cooked beef cheeks, chicken casserole, veges and mashed potatoes. Our group enjoyed the meal, and I really enjoyed the chocolate mousse.
The theme this year was Steampunk and if you know me you will know this is not really my thing, however, we did get our pic taken in the photo booth. We had been given a challenge to make a centrepiece for our table, and unfortunately my good intentions didn’t come to fruition, so I didn’t make anything. There was some pretty amazing efforts as always, and a couple of the projects are here.
Rona, Jeni and I
All in all, apart from Carol being MIA due to an elbow reconstruction after falling off her bike – it was a pretty good weekend.
Cheers Cherie
Yellow Azalea 