Category: coffee

My part is to make the weekend special. To make it beautiful. To make each lady feel like they’ve truly stepped into a retreat space!

This past weekend was our church’s annual women’s retreat (thus less posting last week as we were getting things ready and this week because I’m catching up around here.)

Our theme was “Come to the Garden”… basically, a garden theme women’s retreat! I came up with the idea last year as we were setting up for that retreat. The weather was gloomy and I really wanted to be putting flowers everywhere. Poof, the garden theme women’s retreat was born!

This actually turned into a budget friendly theme for us, decoration wise anyway. I expected to have to buy a lot of flowers to get the feel I was looking for, and that was going to be expensive. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Then I visited the decorations closet at the church (if you’re church doesn’t have one of these, it really should! I use ours all the time for party planning, retreats and other events at the church.) If you don’t have one of these rooms, ask around for ladies in the church who may have flowers or other details they don’t use anymore or are willing to share.

Many of the flowers in these pictures are from the decoration storage closet, others are mine from home. I made some signs, like the “let us grow” sign here. The wood beads are also mine, but so easy to make in any color.

This is the downstairs space that we used mostly for gathering in the evenings. I asked a wonderful group of helpers to just sort through the totes and make it all pretty! They did a great job. I literally couldn’t have done it without them. I had just under 2 hours from the time we could get into the facility to when our program started.

I picked up some free pillows someone was getting rid of and my mom made cases for them out of the green check print. Then we covered my couch pillows with a yard or so of fabric each from my stash, and tied them on so they would be temporary.

In the middle picture you can kind of see two other signs I made. One says “herbs” and the other says “prune and grow”. I also snagged my daughter’s summer hat to add to the mix.

The bunting is something I helped my oldest daughter make several years ago for her Little House birthday. I’ve used them so many time. I think they are made from some Figtree and Co. fabric. I use them all the time for baby showers, bridal showers, etc. This year I am going to hang them in the kitchen for spring.

There is a kitchenette downstairs in the lodge we used for the retreat this year. I love to turn it into a pretty coffee/tea/cocoa bar with pretty cups and plates and such. I always stow the coffee organizers they have out on the counter and bring my own pretty ones. This space is simple, but effective!

Behind it is this little cafe like seating area. It was so easy to place cute cloth napkins out with a bouquet of flowers on each. Again, super simple, but super effective!

We decided this year to set up a second drink station in the upstairs room where most of our sessions were taking place. The tea collection both upstairs and down belong the head of the retreat planning committee. She loves to share and this year has all matching jars. It made me so happy! 🙂 We brought the white carafes from church to keep things pretty and light. That is a white paper table cloth with plastic backing I have on top of the pink cloth. It prevented the spilled coffee and tea from staining the pink.

That is another sign I made for the weekend too… the “but first COFFEE”. I love how it fit in with the whole look. All the signs were made using my Cricut to make vinyl stencils.

The lace looking bunting was from last year’s tea party retreat. My sweet mama made all those for me last year using this tutorial. I was thrilled to use them again. She couldn’t be with us this year but was super excited to use them used again when I sent pics.

I tried to keep the tables simple this year. Once 8 ladies are squeezed around a 6 foot table with all their stuff, there isn’t much room in the middle. 🙂 I bought 7 of those cute flowers and garden tins from Dollar Tree and painted them white. They scratch easy (be warned) but they were super cute with the flowers in them. I decided to put these together ahead of time and bring them pre-made so that we could just put them on the tables. We used a bunch of the flowers at the church and poked them into some of the green flower foam (also in our decor closet). I use the word “we” lightly. One of the teens at church helped me out by doing all the arranging. She did a much better job than I would have in a fraction of the time. 🙂 I was thrilled she was there to help. I then scattered left over blooms and greens along the tables and placed a couple mini garden tools we had with them. Super easy!

The event turned out beautiful and had it’s intended affect. The ladies were loving the feel of the surroundings and were blessed by both the fellowship and the teaching throughout the weekend. I always say, my part of the events are far from the most important, but I enjoy showing love to the ladies who come by making their surroundings special!

If you enjoyed this garden theme women’s retreat, please pin the following image or share it on other social media!

You can find me gathering here.