{"id":149,"date":"2005-10-24T09:34:44","date_gmt":"2005-10-24T14:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jayandcarissa.com\/carissa\/blog\/?p=149"},"modified":"2005-10-24T09:34:44","modified_gmt":"2005-10-24T14:34:44","slug":"annual-womens-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"annual women&#8217;s retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ah, the women&#8217;s retreat.  my favorite church retreat of the year and the envy of all of the mennonite men.  it starts on saturday morning, ends sunday by noon and it&#8217;s a time to relax (we pay camp staff to cook and clean for us and everyone leaves the kids at home) and chat and do whatever you want to do&#8211;and all of the choices of things to do are tempting!  sometimes the hardest parts of women&#8217;s retreat are choosing what activity you want to do and then remembering to go to bed.  i got to bed by 1:00&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>this year, i took the supplies for the art project (in year&#8217;s past, we&#8217;ve had wheat weaving, sewing box making, ukranian egg decoration&#8230;) and i chose to do collage.  i&#8217;d been inspired by the collage books by claudine hellmuth and so i brought those books and some other inspiring books and tons of bits and pieces for collaging (mostly gathered from the dig-n-save&#8211;have i told you about this store yet?) and those who were brave enough to try it really had fun!  i sure had fun.  i used oil pastels for the first time (fun!) and i made a few cute things.  at this point, my stuff is sort of straight copies (or as close as i can come to copying collage) of pieces that i liked that inspired me, but i figure that once i&#8217;m familiar with the technique, then i can branch out and do my own creative stuff.  this was the activity that kept me up until 1:00.<\/p>\n<p>women&#8217;s retreat is also a wonderful time of reflection.  i often need to be reminded to just stop and sit and think and breathe and this retreat is a wonderful place to do that.<\/p>\n<p>my soul feels refreshed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ah, the women&#8217;s retreat. my favorite church retreat of the year and the envy of all of the mennonite men. it starts on saturday morning, ends sunday by noon and it&#8217;s a time to relax (we pay camp staff to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=149\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autumn","category-stuff-that-sparks-the-glow-inside-my-soul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}