Pre-retreat day!

What a fun day! We didn't officially start til 6 pm, but gals came as early as 10 am! What fun!!! The basement is absolutely brimming with swaps, free stuff, and items for sale. I've already spent $40!!! Go figure! In my own house! There ought to be a law against that!!!

We had pizza and started a game that I just found today called "The Girls Night Box of Questions" - cards to create fab conversations. Oh - you really need this for a true girls weekend - we've only had 3 rounds and have just laughed ourselves silly!!! We sat out on the back deck til nearly 9 pm and have just now started the first movie - "What Happens in Vegas".

So, to get you started, in case you want to party along, here's the premise for the complete id makeover we're doing this weekend. Since I've already done myself, I'll be doing my 5 pound chihuahua "Men" this week. His full name is Menimum Barkley Skeeter Dee. Now you know why we call him "Men". We used to have a "Maximum", so it was Max & Men. But now we have Katie.

You start with a photo and crop it close to the face:



You cut that photo into quadrants and then get each quadrant blown up to 1/4th the size of your full canvas. You can see from this next photo that is skews the photo (look at his left eye) - but that's ok. It's what makes the whole project so much fun. You can either do this in photoshop and print on color laser printer on regular printer paper, or go to Kinkos and have them blow each quadrant up for you. Don't bother with photo paper, just a color copy is all you need.



So in a couple of days I'll give you the next steps as we will be doing ours here on Sunday. Just wanted you to get your prep work done. I'm using 9x12 canvases, but you can also use a 16x20 like I did with my own photo.

About half of the girls came by today and the basement is already almost full of stuff to swap, trade, sell or give away!



It's so much fun to go shopping in your own house...but there really should be a law against that!



And I'm really not sure where the other 10 gals are going to put all their stuff! LOL!



Lucy's little store is stocked to the brim as well - and the shoppers are already reducing inventory!!!



Decisions! Decisions!!! What to buy? What to pass on? Who owes who how much? It's just so much fun and the retreat doesn't really start until 9 am tomorrow!

So I'm off tonight to watch the rest of the movie, down a couple of margueritas, eat some Lucy McGoo cookies (yep, Colleen created a recipe just for us!) and laugh and giggle for a few more hours! Hope you all are having fun, too!