Brave Girls Camp Feb 2011

Let me start by saying I hope you had a nice Valentines Day! Doug spoiled me as usual - I'm one lucky girl!
Okay - on to Brave Girls Camp. This year our camp was at a different cabin and it was much larger than last years cabin. We walked into the main gathering area and this is what we saw:

Beautiful, right!?! Once again we had the greeting line with everyone hugging us and telling us they were waiting for our arrival and so happy to have us here. After our long trip up the mountain they served us a fabulous meal. Ahhhhh....
We received these beautifully decorated journals and also a beautifully sewn envelope which held our "curriculum". (When I say curriculum I mean journal prompts, exercises for self reflection and clip art that we are free to use in our art if we wanted to) Not pictured here, we also received a Brave Girls sweatshirt and apron.

One night we had a little visitor at the back door. How cute!

I tend to be kind of shy and don't always take part in all the fun. I tend to watch the fun from the sidelines - it's just more comfortable for me that way but this time I joined in on the fun and made a snow angel on the frozen lake.

We all made them - isn't that awesome!?!

This is a picture of me with my crafting table mates: Rachel, Rachel, Annie, Erin and Michelle. Michelle was also my roomie at Camp.

Here are Lori and Meghan doing the "Pageant Wave" (inside joke)

After busy days of creating and reflecting, Brave Girls get together to share and sing. Sorry the picture is so dark - it's hard to get a good picture at night.

I totally enjoyed my time returning to Camp this year. I had a feeling that it would be different for me because I am definitely in a different place this year - and it was. There wasn't anything I was purposely going to focus on, I figured I would just let it unfold as it may. And it did.
I just want to say here that Brave Girls is not the "fix" for all your problems. To me, what Brave Girls Camp is is a chance to stop all the noise and all the distractions for a few days. It's an opportunity to be around other supportive women who are looking for friendship, a chance to explore thoughts, feelings and dreams and to express all those without being judged. Oh, and of course to have some fun!
For me, not only is it fun to spend hours creating with other women but also to see what comes out in everyone's art. It's also a chance to use all kinds of embellishments (yay!) and try new techniques that otherwise I might never have tried.
Our final night we had a "gallery" and got a chance to see what everyone was making all week. Just beautiful! My favorite project was embellishing my apron. I'll see if I can get a good picture of it and post it next time.