It started with a couple of friends,who make cards, suggesting to me something to do upon my retirement. We met a couple times, about once a month and called ourselves the OLCC (Old Lady Card Club). Now I make cards almost daily. I truly enjoy making cards for people even though I know most will hit the garbage after being read. Card making allows me to think about the person I am making that card for – it slows me down and lets me relax. Of course, relax until I make my pretty much daily screw up or two or three….but overall very relaxing. The club consisted of Rita, Jean, Kathryn and I, and a couple times Joni. Then we started doing other activities together so it has become quite the social experience too.
As we started towards Christmas , Jean decided we need to paint with acrylics. So she added a painting tutorial at her home. We also added Brenda since she is now retired. We called ourselves the OLCCC (had to add in crafting!). It was a lot of fun but I still can’t truly paint – thank goodness for Jean fixing mine periodically!! Haha, and the wonky eye seriously did not help!!! Then the OLCCC went to Lori’s house to make ornaments and we had to change the name to the RLCCC (RETIRED Ladies – Kathryn didn’t want to be called old!). During our conversation it came up again that I make bread (and so does Chris – very tasty treats!) and Brenda asked me to teach her. So the RLC4 was born (Retired ladies cards, crafting and cooking club!).
So January 11th, here comes the RLC4 to my house. I prepped it like a lab – stations for making St. Valentine’s Day cards, and stations for learning about growing sourdough and baking bread. The kitchen is too small to let more than 4 people try to work so we simply rotated through. It was so fun. There was the incident of me turning off the oven after warming it, and then trying to bake rosemary garlic baguettes (just FYI- that doesn’t exactly work right!). It over proved in the “warmed up” oven but actually ended up decently edible at the end. And somehow the crockpot got unplugged so the split pea soup wasn’t quite ready on time, but there were other soups for lunch. And then Kathryn had a flour blow-up that was hysterical! She was mixing in the Kitchen Aide (saves the wrists!) and somehow got the plastic measuring cup stuck in the bread hook and POOF- flour everywhere!! We were crying laughing at that. But even she was able to save the loaf! Overall, I think everyone became less afraid of growing their sourdough (most named PJ- Philippe Jr) and more confident on working with dough. We ended with a super yummy batch of sourdough pretzels! Next month is just card making for Easter – I am working hard on getting enough cards for our 2.5 month trip to the east coast!
