Reenie Rose Retreat 2011

This past weekend I indulged in a rare opportunity.  I participated in the first ever Reenie Rose Retreat.  Ok, so this sounds much fancier than what it really was.  Basically, I went up to my family's cottage in Wisconsin and spent the entire weekend plus a couple extra days by myself working.  Sounds like any typical day at home, right?  "What makes this so special?" you may be asking yourself.  Well, for one thing, whether or not anyone else in the family is up, my dad usually is here soaking up every morsel of time that he can before we close it up for winter.  Thanks to a wedding this weekend, cottage was minus dad.  Secondly, my cottage is located among a plethora of other cottages making this a very social atmosphere (impossible to work in).  The docks came out Saturday morning and everyone bolted.  Ghost town.  It's never been so quiet here.  Thus I am in the middle of ruralish Wisconsin on a lake enjoying being close to nature and being pretty productive.

Besides working on my monster of a painting, I had another project to work on....
 
My little cottage is blessed with a huge dining room table perfect for feeding large amounts of people and "craft" projects that would be ten times trickier in my 800 square foot condo.  Knowing my talents with a brush, a friend of mine asked if I would paint an aisle runner for her wedding this coming weekend.  Having access to this table space and being without a kitty that would find yards of fabric a fantastic playground, I took on this generous task.

75 feet of golden swirls.  I'll be sure to post the more professional looking pictures after the photographer captures this masterpiece.  Looks like I just added another line to my wedding resume...bouquet painter, day of coordinator and aisle runner visionary.  Who knew!?

Reenie Rose Retreat 2011 = success.  I kind of don't want to go home and back to reality.  Like the screen porch I am working on, this place has a way of filtering out the bugs.  Life just seems more simple here.  It could possibly be because I am choosing to ignore a bunch of things and stay focused on the task at hand...painting.  I somehow have to transition back without going stir crazy.
I was always good at playing pretend as a kid.  Maybe I can adapt that into my real city life by pretending that the street traffic and sirens are crickets and piles of "to do" lists are the piles of leaves that will soon be ready to play in.  Think this will work?