Girls Annual Retreat - Kansas City

I recently returned from my annual girls scrapping retreat. Although we don't do too much scrapbooking, we still call it a scrapping retreat.

I had a great time! Our hostesses, Lori, Brenda, and Amanda had a busy schedule planned out for us. Since I got there a day early I was able to do a little sightseeing. Went to a cute town - Lees Summit, visited a local wine bar and scrapbook store. The next day we visited a very cute cupcake bar Sugar Mamma's. The lunch there was awesome, the decor of the place was really cute. Loved the bathroom! We then went and visited the shops within the strip center - Briarcliff Village. I found out through one of the shop vendors that all the shops in the shopping center are exculsive to Kansas City. I loved Urban Arts and Crafts! The shop was like a very down-scaled Michaels with classes for different crafts. From there we went to the airport to pick up two more girls arriving for the retreat -Michelle and Misty. Then onto the gorgeous house offered to us by Lori's brother for the weekend. We did a little scrapping that evening, but mostly just enjoyed each other's company. Saturday was packed - visited a local scrapbook store, toured the Plaza in Kansas City, and then on to dinner at GoJo's Japanese Steak House. We spent most of Sunday catching up on scrapbooking we had not done - afterall we have to account for the fact it was a SCRAPBOOK RETREAT! Then in the evening did fireworks at Lori's house. Our California girls do not get a chance to experience the 4th of July bonfire of fireworks like the rest of us because they are outlawed in Cali.

Monday came and it was time to go back home :(. The trip was a great taste of Kansas City flavor, shopping fun and great friendship reunions! Can't wait to see the girls again next year!

Free scrapbook generated with Smilebox

Update on old news

I got a little behind on my blogging in June. Probably because I was engrossed with Samantha's swim practice and meets and preparing for my girls retreat in Kansas City.

Although, today's report is old news, I felt it was blog worthy.

Since cupcakes, have become the great rave of the sweet/baking industry, we had a cupcake bake-off at work. Food Network even has a new food show titled Cupcake Wars. I haven't had a chance to see it, but hoping to look at some of the creations and try them out.

Well I didn't do to well on the cupcake bake-off. I actually came in third. There were only two participants, but the other participant made 3 kinds of cupcakes. I made a Rocky Road Brownie version. I'll admit right out of the oven it was awesome, but somewhere in transition it lost the moist factor. In other words....it was dry! The winner was a Lemon Zest cupcake with pistachio nuts on top. I'll admit it was very good.

Crafty Creations
My girls weekend was awesome! We packed a lot in four days. I really enjoyed Kansas City, I told my husband we definitely need to go visit. BTW...we even visited a cupcake store there and it was good, but not as good as Oh La La.

Within our group we do swaps that we hold for possible gifts. Although, some of us do hold onto them and keep them for ourselves. This swap was a calendar block swap. The theme was to keep the colors, black, cream, and red. 6 of us girls created 6 blocks a piece and we swapped the blocks amongst each other. I created the numbers, which are magnetic and cling to two blocks that are also magnetic. The months are missing from the picture, but will be also magnetic. The girls at the retreat loved them and have decided to make more for gifts for the holiday season.


Me and the girls came up with some other ideas that will be featured in later post!