Mermaids and Mamas and More

I can’t believe it’s been a week since I’ve posted! We’ve been on Spring Break this past week week, so the girls and I have been staying busy. We spent Monday being totally lazy, lounging around in our pj’s all day…we needed that after Easter Day down at the lake! Tuesday, we spent the day up in Fernandina browsing the galleries and shops and going to the beach, and then Wednesday we went to the Zoo with friends. Thursday and Friday, the girls had Daddy time since I had to travel over to Tallahassee for some legislative meetings.

This weekend, I've gotten back to work! Yesterday I created new pillow covers for my back porch swing and had a genius moment I'll share with you later this week. I still need to photograph them! I’ve also been working on my Picture Spring assignments, so I’ll share more of those with you soon. I’ve started getting caught up on jewelry photography as well as some custom orders, so all in all, we’ve been hopping around here. I'll share some new jewelry with you later this week too.

Lastly, I’ve been working on my latest retreat project, and that's what I wanted to share with you today. Carmen and I set an April 1 make or break date for Art and Dreams Bound. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the amount of registrations we needed to make the retreat a go for this time around, but we aren’t giving up! Carmen is a very talented artist and, having experienced one of her online classes, I know she's an excellent instructor. I fully believe we had a great offering; I guess the timing just wasn't right, and we probably need to invest a little more into advertising. Lessons learned! We’ll try again another time!

Since I already had the retreat center reserved, I decided to implement my Plan B. I mentioned a while back that I’ve been taking an online course with McCabe Russell called Mermaid Warriors. It’s been a great course, and we've had some awesome discussions centered around working with young girls and all that comes with that...confidence issues, self-esteem issues, mean girls at school, etc. I’m adding some great ideas to my skill set and quickly seeing how I can take what I’ve already been doing for years—experiential education retreat planning and facilitation—and working in art. To that end, Mermaids and Mamas Artful Adventure is ready to roll! I’m very excited about this project and I hope it will be the first of many more to come. Please hop on over and read more about it here. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you have four-to-nine-year-old girls in your lives, just the first age group I'll be working with, I hope you’ll consider joining us!