In the Summer of 2005, Sue Venturini & Heather Adams attended a Scrapbooking retreat in a private home in Jefferson, Colorado. The log home was beautifully furnished and owned by a family in Littleton Colorado.

While cropping, Sue and Heather discussed how nice it would be to have a similar home in the mountains to host scrapbook retreats, a hobby near and dear to their hearts. Having gone on retreats twice a year since their kids were babies, they had never cropped in South Park, but couldn’t help but admire the beauty of South Park and the surrounding area.

The wheels started to turn…they envisioned a scrapbook retreat house where no one had to drag tables and chairs, re-arrange furniture, move TV’s for easier viewing, or scrapbook only in the “mud season.” They saw a “retreat,” somewhere where ladies (many who are young Moms) could just “get away from it all,” and be pampered and relaxed as they enjoyed a weekend away, while at the same time working on their scrapbooks.

On September 4, 2005, they closed on the property in Fairplay and “Chocolate Moose Lodge” was born. After many, many weekends of cleaning, painting, staining, furnishing (some skiing!) and more, our first crop was held on the weekend on January 13-16, 2006.