the details....

Ok well I am not overly sure how to start so I guess the thing that would make the most sense would be to start at the beginning. Sorry if it is too detailed – you don’t have to read it but I wanted to remember EVERYTHING!

On Thursday night I knew that I should get to bed early – but I couldn’t! I kept checking and re checking my bag, weighing it (ouch the 15kg bag limit was doing my head in!) and making sure that I had all my photos right. By the time I got to bed it was about 1am. Knowing that Meredith was coming to pick me up at 5.30am and my alarm was set for 4.30am wasn’t overly reassuring and I lay there for at least another hour before I finally dozed off. Maybe my body had some sense of ESP of what the weekend had in store and was trying to get me used to functioning on limited sleep!

Anyway before I knew it my alarm was beeping. I lay there for a minute too excited to move but then received a text from Tiff (boy oh boy was she excited for us or what!!) Up had a shower, dressed, a quick two spoonfuls of cereal and a sip of coffee before I saw Meredith’s headlights coming up the driveway. I ran in and kissed all the kids and gave Greg a smooch goodbye too.

As we drove along the windy Tumby road I was so excited!! I know we were talking a lot about what the weekend would have in store for us, wether it would snow and what the people would be like that we were about to meet.

You see I have been a part of a scrapbooking group online for about 3 years. In that time I have made some wonderful online friends – which sounds kinda weird but they are truly the best bunch of girls. So we had all decided to go to this Scraptacular retreat and have a big meetup. Online there are over 50 in our group – probably about 20 or so are some of the ‘old timers’ that were there right from the beginning. I think there were about 15 girls who were able to come to the retreat. Two from Tassie, one from WA, one from Qld, some others from NSW and myself (and Meredith) from SA. It was such a thrill to think that we would all be meeting for the first time in real life very very soon!!

After holding our breath while they weighed our bags at the Pt Lincoln terminal (can you even call it that!??) we boarded our little plane. Now I am not the greatest flier – I get really nervous on take off and landing, but I tried to be brave so Meredith didn’t have to console me LOL! No in actual fact all the plane trips were quite good with one exception which I will get to directly.

In Adelaide we grabbed our bags, checked in for our Melbourne flight (again more breath holding) and then went to find the bar. By this time it was about 8.30am and while we felt a little strange ordering a champagne at that time of the morning, it had been a long standing plan and I am very glad we went through with the little celebration! Another man came in and ordered a beer so we didn’t feel quite so strange after that!

Our next flight started weirdly when shortly after we had all gotten into our seats the pilot announced that there was a problem with the front door – it wasn’t shutting properly and would need a technician to look at it. Meredith and I laughed and had visions of it opening mid flight and people being sucked out left right and center! Luckily we were in seats a bit towards the back so we felt as if we would have a bit of warning if the sucking thing happened LOL.
It didn’t seem long and we arrived in Melbourne. Coming through the gate I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to find Clair straight away but I did. Clair is Clair Bremner, one of my online mates who I had met once before and a local Melbourne girl who had very kindly offered to pick us up from the airport and take us to the Scraptacular shop and then onto the retreat.

We loaded all our crap into her car and headed off to the Scraptac shop. OMG Melbourne is sooooooooooooooo big. After lots of driving and chatting we arrived at the store. Meredith was so keen to get inside she almost opened the door before the car had even pulled up – LOL – we had been joking about her elbowing people out the way (ala shop sale type behaviour) but she managed to contain her elbows. J

In we go and I saw Rach straight away. She is standing up in the classroom/crop room part of the shop. Meredith and I start to shop and she yells out at me to get my butt up there to say hello (whoopsie!) I go up and there are so many of the EB scrap girls I can’t believe it! I recognized them all straight away and immediately felt very overwhelmed by the whole situation. We chat for a little while and I notice Meredith sighing and doing a little dance from foot to foot – I can tell she wants to get shopping….and I have to admit I was getting antsy too. We excuse ourself and spend the next – gawd I don’t know how long – shopping till we are dropping!!! Quite a lot of money later *ahem* it is time to leave for the retreat.

We go and get some lunch and drinks and then head to the bottle-o to grab some booze. Meredith thought that 4 bottles would do us, I thought 6 so we compromised and went up to pay for 5. The man said that we should get the 6th one and then get 10% discount on all the bottles…………so we did!! After hopping back in the car I was panicking that I had wildly over-estimated how much alcohol we would drink. Fear not Amanda!!!!!!!!!

We drive on, getting higher and higher, colder and colder until we reach ‘The Country Place’ which is located at Kalorma in the Dandenong Ranges. It was fantastic and we lugged (well some of us did and some of us had male help!!) our crap up the stairs. No welcoming party from Scraptac so we weren’t sure what we were doing so basically we just walked around looking for everyone else!

We finally found everyone, had a few drinks and then the Scraptac girls came in and gave everyone their passports. We went and had an early dinner in the dining room which was scrumptious and we were all split up so we could get to know other people who were on the retreat rather than all the online friends sticking together. At the time I was nervous about this but in hindsight it was great as I wouldn’t have met anyone else otherwise! There were 70 attending the retreat in total!!

After tea we were able to go up to our rooms and bring back all our scrap stash into the crop room. The doors opened and although the room wasn’t huge (maybe half the size of the shed on our retreat) there were a LOT of people in there. Each person had a little goodie bag full with lots of yummy new product – it really was fantastic and I thought that it was very generous indeed! I was sitting next to Meredith (thank God) and Jody (a fantastic scrapper who I admire and LOVE LOVE LOVE her style – unfortunately poor Jody had to put up with my mess and me squishing her up all the weekend…………..sorry Jody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Not long after we had set up and Kim Nutley kicked off her class. I really enjoyed attending my first class…it felt a bit strange as I had only ever attended classes that I had taught so it was reassuring to know that what I do is basically what others do as well!

After Kim’s class (15x30 page!) it was free scrap time. Meredith and I hooked into the wine and decided to do a 24 hour-y so we stayed up until 4.30am.
(berocca start to each day)

I woke up to hear Meredith in the shower at about 8.30am. Feeling a bit crappy I got ready for the day and after a strong coffee headed into the scrap room. Rach was beginning her class at 11am so after a little bit of free scrap time we started that. It was two pages using splatting paint which I felt so nervous about as paint and myself usually don’t get along, but I was so pleased with the end result. Amazing what you can achieve with a plastic cup, some bottle tops and some watered down MM paint!

After a late ‘make your own cold meat and salad sandwich’ lunch it was back into free scrap time. I can’t quite remember how the rest of that afternoon passed – I know I chatted a lot to the girls, scrapped a bit and decided that I desperately needed some munchies on the table so was able to hitch a ride down the mountain to grab some chocolate and nuts. Nibbles were BYO and that is the norm on retreats so we were a bit under=prepared in that sense.

At about 5.30pm we headed up the the room to get ready for out themed dinner ‘Xmas in July’. Meredith and I had bought fairy wings (oopsie I think I still need to pay you for those Meredith!!!) and had tinsel so we were going as angels. Not a lot of prep time needed for that so we settled in with a pre-dinner drink in the room and had a little mini-debrief on the day!

Dinner was nice – I am not a huge Christmas dinner fan but it was nice. We were lucky enough to be visited by Mrs Claus, Santa and his three Ho’s. Very funny and the plastic boobs from the Ho’s were a big hit in more ways than one!

After dinner it was back into free scrap time so Meredith and I settled in with our wine and scrapped, scrapped and scrapped until it was time to go up and get a refill bottle from our room. We had these swanky key card thingos to get into the room, which is great when they are working but not so wonderful when there is a problem! Meredith went up to try first – no luck. Then myself – nope. It was 2am and in the end we had to call the after hours bloke to come in to rescue us as there was NO WAY I was sleeping on the pool table as was suggested! He came in and told us that he could let us in but we would have to have a dicky door until the morning….eeeek! We didn’t tell him that we weren’t planning on going to bed yet…so we devised a cunning plan with a towel as a door stop. Problem solved, wines filled and we were back into it.

We finally hit the sack at 5.30am.

Again I woke up to hear Meredith getting ready for the day at about 8.30am (thank god I had brought her as I would have slept till lunch and missed the whole thing!) I felt sad that this was our last day but I knew that all good things must come to an end L

After a quick bite for breakfast we settled in for Kim Ogden’s mini book class. Wow wow wow is all I can say. It was VERY fast paced, which made it difficult for slower scrappers. We managed to keep up as we weren’t obsessing over cm placement of things and at one stage we were even asking to be shown the next few pages. I think the things I got from that class was totally mind blowing in that the way she used products. I am not a huge fan of chipboard words – but the one she used looked totally awesome inked on the front cover. Also the Kaiser bling swirls – which I have thought totally crappy in the past as I am soooooooooooooooooo not a bling person – looked amazing how she used them in this mini album. I am yet to finish mine but here it is 90% done. The front cover is supposed to say 'ten things about you'

This class went for a very long time (4 hours I think) so by the end it was almost time to pack up. I sat there for a while not wanting to believe it was all over but then realized it was L

Packed everything up and tried so hard to squoosh everything into my suitcase. Repacked several times and in the end gave a parcel to Rach to send back in the mail (I received this today and it was so exciting going through it!!!)

Clair took us back to find our motel which was very nice in the end (we were so worried after listening to everyone saying it was the ‘quickie hotel’ and looked very scungy from the outside - where in fact it wasn’t that one at all and was quite flash from the outside!) We had a quick drop off of bags and then went back to Tracey’s place to kill time before tea. We had a great chat about books – Tracey loves the same books as me – and our eyes glazed over talking about the Diana Gabaldon book ‘Cross Stitch’ and the subsequent books in the series. LOL it was nice talking to someone who spoke with the most beautiful Scottish accent about these books and sharing our love of Jaime the main character. The other girls there thought we were mad but I managed to convince some of them to buy the book the next day!

We then went out for Chinese dinner which was a fantastic experience! I know some of the girls really wanted a quiet dinner at Tracey’s home but for two country girls, going out to the Chinese restaurant was so much fun!

After dinner and a LOT of laughs we went back to our room where we contemplated having a bottle of wine out of the mini bar (we had depleted our stash) but decided not to and had an early night instead (well just after midnight I think!)

Woke up Monday morning (again Meredith is my alarm clock!) and got ready to shop! Clair was picking us up again to go shopping in a ‘small’ shopping centre. OMG at this! Small is big!! We met the other online girls at Gloria Jeans coffee and after a quick drink we headed off. I managed to get quite a bit of stuff for the kids (I was only planning on one thing each but Pumpkin Patch had a sale on and since I only get to go there once a year thought ‘what the hell’) Piper loves her ‘Clair’ top that I got at cotton on kids, and Tracey…Georgia absolutely ADORES that white top with the little grey/yellow belt – thankyou for showing that to me! Kelsey the apprentice Goth loved all her things – particularly her red scarf – go figure!!

After shopping we hitched a ride with Felicity and went back to her home to kill a bit more time before leaving for the airport. We met Brodie who was a very cute and gentle little boy and said hello to Felicity’s husband!

We left for the airport and wowsers - again Melbourne is sooooooooooooooooooo big! We arrived and Felicity dropped us off and a few more teary goodbyes. It is always hard to say goodbye to friends when you don’t really know if you will ever see them again in real life. L

We checked our bags in – major panic attacks waiting in the queue for that. Meredith’s case was 21.1 kg and then they popped mine on – and the scales read out 39.8 kg and we both fell about laughing thinking that it was the weight of my bag. We then realized that it was the combined weight and mine was only 18.7 kg YAY! Big sighs of relief then!

Mind you for someone who was worried about luggage weight, I am not sure why on earth I bought Greg a HUGE big hardcover book that weighed over 3 kg!! I had to lug that around and omg my hand luggage was soooooooo heavy!

Our flight back to Adelaide was great – we had a wine to celebrate the end and had a fantastic flight attendant – Marsha – who giggled and laughed the whole way through her safety spiel. It was nice after all the stiff and starchy performances you usually get.

We had a bite to eat in Adelaide airport after checking our bags in and noting that our medical expertise (or lack of) may well be needed inflight on the way home. Thank Christ Mrs C didn’t collapse although Meredith said that she was monitoring her closely from the aisle seat! (OMG just realized I had the window seat AGAIN!! Sorry chook!)

We arrive in Pt Lincoln, grab our bags and load the ute. About 8.30pm at this time. In stark difference to our trip to the airport, there is a bit of quiet silence as we think about all the stuff that has happened, ideas we have brought back for our retreat and wondering how everyone has coped at home.

I walk in at about 9.30 and the kids have stayed up to greet me. The looks on their faces are priceless! Piper just hugs and hugs me!

Meredith was a pure delight to be with for the whole weekend. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to be with – just a fantastic friend. I enjoyed every minute, so thankyou for coming with me and for being perfect J