Sunday, May 20, 2012

Ashland 2012

Six of the seven in our group returned to Ashland for the annual girls week away last week. This year is my 20th year as a member of the group; others have been involved for almost 30 years. The Sherwin Cottage on Oak Street works perfectly for us.















 We worked in pairs to prepare scrumptious breakfasts.



 Crepes, baked chai french toast, eggs benedict breakfast pizza, baked cheesy apples, smoothies, mimosas, YUMM...




We were spoiled with dinner out at Ashland's fantastic restaurants each evening,




and treated ourselves to awesome Pacific Northwest wines.
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We saw exceptional plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. My Favorite was Romeo and Juliet. It was set in a fabled world of the Spanish Californios in the late 1840's. The artistic directors took the play to new heights with their insight and nontraditional interpretation. It was magnificent. (I'm glad I had a Kleenex in my pocket at the end!)
Vaudeville, the Marx brothers, and craziness were the key words for Animal Crackers. Delightful with its music and zany comedy, this fast-paced play kept us in stitches.
There was much discussion about Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella as it showcased the three plays on the stage at the same time. It was a bit mind-boggling for me.
Several of the group saw The White Snake, adapted from the classic Chinese fable, and thought the staging was excellent.

Porch sitting throughout the day always brought great discussions and gave us a chance to unwind, read, or people watch.






Once again, we crowned the Cork Queen for 2012. The 2011 reigning Queen spent some time wearing the crown before it had to be relinquished to the 2012 winner.





The winning label for the theme "Nature" was:


Late night discussions, pudding shots (have you ever had one??), and popcorn with truffle butter were the best!







 Remnants of pudding shots = we had chocolate pudding with rum and baileys, and vanilla with orange flavored vodka and triple sec.







Ann got to return home in style when her husband flew down to pick her up. The rest of us had to make the 5+ hour drive home! But it was all worth it!!



We've already made next year's plan for the trip and are looking forward to getting together again!
(I took the pictures, so I'll have to wait until someone posts their photos before I can add one of myself!)

4 comments:

  1. Oh, this looks like so much fun! I thought about you and this trip this week and am glad to see your pictures! Please be sure to post one or two of you as well when your friends post them.

    I hope you got to share some of your writing with your friends as well.

    Welcome back!

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  2. I shouldn't have looked at this in the morning. No breakfast I could ever scrounge up is going to compete with these pictures. I'm glad you had such a good time. Good food, good wine, great friends, how could you go wrong. Eggs Benedict pizza, jeez you're killing me here. :)

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  3. Ha Dayner- I'll send you the recipe - its pretty easy and I'll bet the kids will love it too! Yeah, I'm back to oatmeal (and exercise) at home, but it was fun to live it up!
    Natasha - I didn't do any writing there, but have some ideas for future short stories. We actually had a street person ask us for food and he modified his request to make it vegan.

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  4. What a fabulous yearly get together you're a part of!! Thanks for sharing the fun. Your group of gals look like fun-loving and creative friends.

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