Bull River Guest Ranch and Scrapbooking Retreat

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might recall me rhapsodizing about the Bull River retreat in past years.  It is an amazing weekend at a guest ranch nestled in the mountains nears Cranbrook, BC and totally worth the drive, which from my house is a good seven hours under ideal road conditions.  But once you get there, you forget those hours on the highway, which go quickly when driving with a friend!  I am headed there again this weekend.  Unfortunately, today there is a winter storm through southern Alberta, so I can only hope the weather warms quickly and melts all that nasty white stuff so that the roads are bare and dry. 

The Bull River retreat is coordinated by Oasis Scrapbooking in Cranbrook and features amazing five star meals, wonderful log cabins and a great group of ladies.  I still dream about some of the meals that I have eaten there. :-)

If you want to check out the Bull River Guest Ranch, click here.  There is only a few scrapbooking weekends booked every year, but they do a lot of weddings, family reunions, photography workshops, all sorts of things.  Someday I would like to spend a week at the Hummingbird Photography Workshop.  I can only imagine how wonderful that would be.  I always manage to be at Bull River the week before the hummingbirds arrive!

The amazing CJ, the chef

Some of the wonderful ladies that were at the retreat last year!

The lodge where we eat (and sometimes scrapbook).

A Few Layouts

I was just thinking longingly of Vancouver Island this week.  We try to go for at least a few days every year to visit family and smell the ocean.  One of our last trips was in June, and the broom, that yellow invasive shrub detested by many islanders, was in full flower.  To a prairie girl, it looked beautiful, especially from the air.  I used Technique Tuesday alphabet stamps for the title, some machine sewing and a few buttons to make a quick layout.

A layout inspired by paper clips!  Fancy Pants paper, rub-ons and stickers, and the birdies are printed out from Stampin Up Design Studio software.  I'm not much of a digital scrapbooker, I like to get away from my computer during my non-work time, but I find the SU software lovely for printing out stamped images in various colours and sizes.  Then I just cut them out with scissors and stuck them on to my layout with a jewel for an eye.

Using some SEI boy themed stuff here.....  we love frogs at my house and are always looking for (and rarely catch) them.  Hard to tell, but the small circular picture is mounted in one of this big bottle caps that Maya Road used to sell (I smashed it with a hammer before I stuck the picture inside)

A Few Signs of Spring

Saw these guys on my way to work this morning.  Canada Geese have been here for a while though.  I remember seeing them sitting on the ice in frozen sloughs a few weeks back.  Won't be long until baby geese are wandering around.

This was about 10 days ago;  poor fella was trying to keep warm in the bitter wind.

Puschkinia - at my place, the earliest bulb to come out and flower.  When I see these guys stick their heads above ground, I know it's spring.  If you have room in your garden or flowerbeds, you should buy some of these bulbs and plant them in the fall.  They are very hardy and reliable!

Rhubarb, just sticking it's first shoots and leaves out.  Hopefully I will be eating rhubarb crisp soon!  And I am eagerly waiting for the asparagus to come up.  Once the asparagus starts, we pig out on it like crazy for a few weeks!  Asparagus season is short but delicious!

Scrapfest in Kitchener, Ontario

Wow, just got back from a whirlwind trip!  Zipped down to Kitchener one day, represented Canadian Scrapbooker at Scrapfest, came home the next day as soon as Scrapfest ended!  Fun, fun, fun but it went by so fast it is almost a blur!!!  Scrapfest is an amazing event;  go if you ever get a chance.  The shopping looked amazing and the crop looked like so much fun!   I am always so excited to attend these events;  I see old friends, meet new friends and just generally absorb all the energy and creativity that is floating through the air.

I have to say that air travel is not what it used to be.  I didn't get a single book read!  Westjet had live satellite TV on the way down, and Air Canada had some great movies on the way back.  I watched The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock and half of The Lovely Bones.  If it wasn't for my swollen feet, I could have flown to Hawaii and back just so I could watch all the new movies that Air Canada had on their system.

Here is my most amazing travelling companion and roommate, Cathie Allan.  She is the bestest!!!!!!  If you ever get a chance to take a class from Cathie, grab it.  She has been stamping for thirty years, and has probably forgotten more than most of us ever know.  Her classes are tons of fun, and you will learn so much!

This is Lara Brooks who worked with me in the Canadian Scrapbooker booth.   We had a great time selling magazines, subscriptions and just chatting with people as they came by!!!  This photo was taken early Saturday morning;  most of Saturday was extremely busy and the two of us were hopping!

Here are my friends Barb and Rebecca from Scraptivity/BizzyB's;  they were just down the aisle of the marketplace from the Canadian Scrapbooker booth.  It was lovely to see them again and do a little shopping in their booth.  If you are interested in monthly scrapbooking kits, check out Scraptivity.  They are based in Toronto.  I have been getting their kits for years, I just love them.  They are excellent value and the thrill of getting a pizza box of fun new products and an introduction to a different technique every month just never wears off.

Something to look forward to...

Hard to believe, but in a few weeks I will be haunting all my favourite greenhouses.  For the first time in a dozen years, I did not start any bedding plants or tomato seedlings in my basement, so I will have to buy everything.   My mom and I always make a trip to Beaumont early in May;  J&C Gardens always has a huge selection and reasonable prices.   Marty, my youngest, also loves greenhouse shopping.  This is a bit unfortunate in that he has very expensive tastes and adds a lot of plants to the shopping cart.  ;-)

I've bought a few herbs - catnip, basil and sage - from Salisbury Greenhouse in Sherwood Park.  They smell amazing!!!  I had to transplant these because they were such big plants, and the smell of catnip was so enticing that my cat Charlie charged right over to check it out.

Estate Gardens, the greenhouse across the road from my house, opens Mother's Day.  Can't wait!!!  The wonderful colours, the scents, the promise of young growing plants..........  can you tell I've got spring fever?  I can almost feel that warm moist soil between my fingers! 

The View from the Kitchen Window

I am very fortunate to have a kitchen that faces south.  It's beautifully sunny, and I take advantage of the wonderful light and fill the windows with plants.  Right now, I've got an assortment of cacti, a blooming Christmas cactus, rosemary, catnip, sage and a few philodendrons and spider plants.   It really lifts a person's spirits up during the long days of winter.  As you can see, it's still pretty brown outside, even though it's a relatively early spring for the area.  My cats, Rusty and Charlie, also take advantage of the sunny window.  During the winter and spring, there is often a feline basking in the sun.  Must feel good!

Cheap Books

I don't read as much as I used to, but I still cherish books and try to read at least a bit every day.  And more importantly, my children cherish books and love to read.  Usually, we go to the library, but I do love to buy books that we will read over and over again.  The cats love to sit and read too.  ;-)

Many years ago I stumbled across this website which has saved me a lot of money over the years:  Book Close Outs   

Book CloseOuts is a large seller of bargain books, and they are cheap - usually 50 to 70% off the normal retail price and they have sales and promotions which bring down the prices even more.  The books are new, unread books that the publisher sells-off in volume to reduce excess inventory. Sometimes the publisher printed too many copies, in other cases bookstores purchased too many copies and have returned them to the publisher for credit.


The selection changes quickly - book titles come and go, but if you are looking for a specific title, they will email you if they get it in stock.   I put in an order last night - I've been meaning to read The Lottery by Patricia Wood for a while.  It was $1.99.    Patricia Wood writes about a man with an IQ of 76 who has had more than his fair share of hard knocks. He is not retarded, as he'll have you know: his IQ would need to be less than 75 for that, and he knows the difference even if others may not. Perry, the 32-year-old narrator of Wood's warm-fuzzy debut, has worked at the same marine supply store for half his life and lives with his wisecracking grandmother Gram, whose gems of folk wisdom help him along. But when Gram dies, Perry's selfish, money-grubbing family members swoop in and swindle him out of the proceeds from the sale of her house—and then come a-knocking again when Perry wins $12 million in the Washington State Lottery.  He attempts to forge his own path as he navigates through relationships with money-grubbing family members bent on taking advantage of him, friends who treat him the same whether he has money or not, and the townspeople who develop a new respect for him because of his newly acquired millionaire status.


I also ordered The Birth House by Ami Mckay for $3.99, or there is a hard cover available for $5.99.  It comes highly recommended.   It is the story of Dora Rare, growing up in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, who becomes a midwife's apprentice.  Together they help women through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. Filled with details as compelling as they are surprising, The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.


And for my kids, among other things, I ordered The DemiGod Files, Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  It was $3.49, and I think I saw it for $16.95 the other day in a book store.  We are reading this series outloud together, and it's nice to have some supplemental information on the characters! 

Just Spritz It!

There's a new webisode that's just been posted on the Canadian Scrapbooker website.  Go check it out, it features one of my favourite products, Smooch Spritz.  So fun to use (and say)!  Some great ideas on the webisode, and I love how Jackie uses the Prima flowers at the end of the video.  ;-)  And if you missed it, the second websode features Harmonie Peel-Offs, iridescent powder and mosaic tiles. Fun stuff!

While you're on the Canadian Scrapbooker website, be sure to enter the monthly trivia contest to win a Spellbinders Prize Package! 

An Easter Tradition

When I was growing up, I never got a chance to do an outdoor egg hunt.  So, when my kids came along, I started hiding things outside so they would have the thrill of the hunt and it is something they very much forward to!  The details have evolved a little over the last few years, but I always use those plastic eggs that snap together because most years, the Easter Bunny is hiding things in snowdrifts.  :-)

The boys get enough sweets in their Easter baskets and from relatives, so in the last few years, I have just put money in the plastic eggs.   Rather than buying a bunch of extra candy,  I clean out my change jar, divide up the coins equally and put them into specific colours.   This year Marty collected pink and green eggs, and Ben was assigned yellow and purple.  This prevents fighting and each child gets the same amount of money if they find all their eggs.  I sneak out with a flashlight on Saturday night, and scatter eggs around the yard.  I don't really 'hide' them very well because I want them all found before everyone gets cold. 

It works for us.  The boys are thrilled to get extra money (I usually throw in enough bigger coins so it adds up to $10 or $12 bucks per kid),  saves me shopping for a bunch of sugary overpriced junk,  it's easier on the teeth and adding up the coins was excellent math practice when they were smaller.