Forget just doing a girls night and plan a weekend reading retreat with your girlfriends or book club instead. It’s the ultimate chance to relax, reconnect, and of course read with your favorite people!
Note: We were provided with some of the meals and swag items for free in exchange for sharing them in this post. All opinions are 100% honest and our own – I only reached out to businesses that I enjoy and recommend!
The Best Book retreat
We hosted a Romantasy themed reading retreat this spring, and it was easily one of my favorite weekend getaways we’ve ever done. I had so many questions from people about our book retreat that I knew I had to write a post explaining everything we did – food, activities, and all things books!
Even if you don’t care that much about reading, I highly recommend planning a weekend away with the pretense of it being a reading weekend. The time connecting with other people is even more important than the chapters read!
What is a Reading Retreat?
A reading retreat can really be whatever you want it to be but the basic idea is going away for a weekend with other people who enjoy reading. Whether or not you actually read over the course of the weekend is up to you, but I do know some people specifically plan reading times into their agenda.
And some people plan reading retreats just to go somewhere and read. I’ve even seen ones where people go and read for 24 hours straight, just stopping for bathroom breaks and snacks.
Now let’s get into planning a book retreat, and I’ll share details from ours!
Choose a Book Retreat Theme
You don’t really have to choose a theme because it’s a book retreat, which is already kind of a theme… but I love a good theme, so I did.
For our book retreat, we did a Shelf Care theme (like self-care but with shelf for bookshelf in case you didn’t get that), because all of the women I invited are my book buddies but also all of us really needed some time away and to take care of ourselves.
We also went in knowing that we were going to have a book club discussion about Onyx Storm (the third book in the Fourth Wing series), so I did shelf care but with a focus on romantasy since that’s the common genre we all share with each other! Oh and of course, cozy living!
Once you have your theme, you can choose how much or how little you want to incorporate it into your planning. I love a good party theme so obviously everything we did had some sort of tie in to our romantasy shelf care theme!
Invite Your Book Besties
I’m putting this above choosing the perfect location because I think it’s important to figure out who is going to your retreat before you choose a location! Unless you’re planning a solo retreat, you’ll want to invite fellow book lovers, and people you want to hang out with!
I recommend keeping the number small. We did six but I think you could have up to 12 without running into too many issues. Smaller retreats helps everyone feel comfortable talking, being themselves, and not feeling lost in a crowd.
Choose Wisely
You’ll be spending a weekend with the guests so make sure to invite people you can travel with! The whole point is a drama free weekend of relaxing, reconnecting, and reading! That doesn’t mean you personally have to know everyone well – as long as someone can vouch for someone, go for it. It’s a great time to get to know other people too! Strangers can become new friends too, as long as they have a love of books too!
Pick a Perfect retreat location
One of the most important things about any retreat is the location. For a book retreat, you definitely want to all stay in one house – a vacation rental through Airbnb or VRBO is perfect for finding houses with all of the amenities you are looking for! Other than that, you’ll need to ask a few questions to choose your location:
Questions to Ask about your retreat location
Do you want to stay local or travel?
If you all live in the same city, you’ll have to decide if you want to stay local or travel somewhere together for the retreat. There are pros and cons to both.
We ended up renting an Airbnb in Kansas City that was about 30 minutes away from all of our houses in a cute neighborhood with lots of close bookstores and restaurants. But it was a little tricky because 30 minutes is close enough to run home and a couple of the women attending did just that and while it was totally fine, it was a little disruptive for some of the planned activities. In the future, I would’ve planned things a little differently knowing that we’d have people going and leaving.
For our next one, I think we decided we need to go far enough away that driving back and forth is painful.
That being said – traveling somewhere you have to fly or even drive a far distance means you’ll have to be on top of things and make sure you don’t forget anything. Or that you can pack it all in a suitcase!
What kind of location do you want?
Do you want something remote in the mountains near nature trails or something in a cute town that you can walk to things? Want to be near water or in an A-frame cozy cabin that just feels perfect for a reading retreat? Want a big porch for reading or will you stay inside? Location matters, especially for being cozy!
How big of a house do you really need?
You’ll want something smallish to feel cozy but with enough space that people can still spread out if you’re going to plan in actual reading time! And make sure you know people’s bed and room sharing needs, so you can get a place that’s the right fit for your group! And I say needs because if you ask, what do you prefer – everyone is going to say a private room and private bed, but a good number of people are actually okay sharing a room if it means cutting down on costs!
We ended up getting a house that had more bedrooms than we really needed because I was trying to be nice and give everyone what they preferred, even though it made it a bit more expensive than I’d originally planned. And once we got there, we pretty much all wanted to share rooms to stay up late and chat anyway!
Do you need any specific amenities?
You’ll definitely want to think about what amenities you’ll actually need and ones that would be fun to have! We rented this Kansas City Airbnb that had a hot tub, firepit in the backyard, a digital game table, AND had a little dungeon speakeasy in the basement that was perfect for making mocktail mojitos, book club discussions, and other book themed antics.
Those amenities were all great but not necessary and definitely added to the overall cost. And we only ended up using both of them twice. So think about what’s more important to you – budget or being somewhere bougie.
Will you be cooking or bringing in food?
I’ll talk about our food in a section below but I wanted to bring this up in the choosing the perfect place to host your book retreat because it applies to finding a kitchen that works for your group. If you’re planning on cooking all of your meals, make sure that your kitchen is big enough and functional for that. A lot of Airbnb kitchen unfortunately aren’t designed for cooking all the meals, all the time.
The Airbnb we booked was super cute and the kitchen was big enough but what we didn’t realize is that there was very little counter space. We only made a few of our meals but even making those was a pain. And there wasn’t a great spot to put out snacks, so they kind of just ended up all over the house. When I do this again, I’ll look a little harder at the kitchen!
Is there sufficient Parking?
If you’re going somewhere say in the woods for a reading weekend in a mountain cabin, this likely won’t be a problem. But if you’re going somewhere in a city and you’re planning on having 8-10 women driving their own cars, make sure there’s enough parking for everyone. Or plan on having everyone carpool!
Is the area safe?
Most book retreats will likely be women and you’ll want to make sure it’s an area you all feel safe staying, sitting outside, and so on.
Are things walkable?
Do you need to be able to walk to restaurants and shopping or are you just planning to stay at the house all weekend?
Are there gathering spaces?
You’ll likely be spending a good amount of time just hanging out, talking, and enjoying each other’s company. Make sure there is ample cozy space to do that in the house! And plenty of space so you’re not on top of each other!
Tip!
When you’re considering destinations, I recommend avoiding places like the Caribbean where you won’t want to actually be inside reading or getting cozy. Save the locations you’ll want to get out and explore for another girls trip and focus on fireplaces, hot tubs, and cozy houses.
Decorations for Reading Retreats
I’ve seen some over the top book inspired decorations for reading retreats. We chose to spend more time focused on the activities and less time on the decorations since it wasn’t our house and decorations take more time to setup at your location.
We did do some minimal decorating by adding a skeleton dragon (hello Fourth Wing), this cute book page garland I ordered from Amazon that added the perfect amount of whimsy, a mythical blanket or two, and some beautiful flowers I had custom ordered from The Flower Babes – a local business that makes beautiful flower arrangements.
There’s just something about fresh flowers that brighten up a space. We did flowers for the kitchen table, living room table, and then small individual vases for each of the rooms. Just seeing the flowers made me happy, and I know the women loved them enough to take them home with them!
Book Retreat Swag Bags
Since this was a retreat, I thought it would be fun to put together personalized swag bags for everyone! And it really was – I loved picking out all sorts of fun book and Romantasy themed ideas to put in each welcome bag.
I asked our attendees for their shirt sizes and favorite colors and went to work! I’m going to write up an entire post with details on all the things I considered that would make great book club favors or gifts for book lovers, but here’s what we ended up with! I tried to do things that were bookish, things that were romantasy themed, and just a couple of cozy items!
Book Themed Swag Items
- Might Be Books, Might Be Snack Bags – I looked at tons of tote bags, and I LOVED that these not only have an interior pocket, they also have a zipper. And the text on the bag is just perfect for my group!
- Bookish bags and pens – this pack comes with glasses (that we used for slushies), pens, cards (that I used for our book hop), and cute bookish zipper pouches that I used to store all the little items!
- Bookish notebooks – I wanted to do my favorite personalized notebooks from Erin Condren but ran out of time, so these were second best!
- Books – I also picked out one book for each of my friends based on what I knew about them and added them to the bags because it was a reading retreat after all!
Romantasy Themed Items
- Bookish stickers – I bought a handful of stickers from ChapterCraftStudio as well as StationaryEscape, both had a ton of bookish themed stickers!
- 3D printed items – we got my son a 3D printer for Christmas and used it to make little gold dragons, Velaris inspired ornaments, and Fourth Wing bookmarks for everyone. While we made them ourselves, I’ve linked the items to similar ones on Etsy you can buy!
- Dragon rings – two to a set, these are fun for rings or toe rings! And they’re adjustable so you don’t even need sizes!
- Book themed candles – this store has Fourth Wing, Acotar, and a bunch of other fun licensed themed candles! Perfect for book reading and book shelves!
- Reign of Dragoness Card Game – Grandpa Beck’s Games sent me copies of this game for swag bags. We’ve been playing this one as a family since it came out, and it’s super fun! You use cards to play dragons in sets and runs, then use those dragons to take control and win! It was the perfect game to go with our theme and all those dragon cards – gorgeous!
Cozy Items
- Fuzzy blankets – I bought these in everyone’s favorite colors, perfect for snuggling up and reading!
- Slipper socks – these were perfect for walking around the house all weekend!
- Probably reading about dragons shirts – minimal design, soft t-shirts. These ended up being perfect, and I wear mine regularly! I also bought myself this Wingleader sweatshirt since I was in charge, wore it all weekend long!
Reading Retreat Itinerary
When you’re planning the agenda for your reading retreat, remember the point of the weekend is to relax. Schedule in free time that people can use for uninterrupted reading time, craft time, and just do whatever they want time. The point isn’t to hustle from activity to activity, it’s to relax!
The only things I really scheduled into our agenda were meals (since we had specific times set for catering orders) and the major activities like our bookstore hop and our blind dates. We mostly did cozy activities like reading, going for walks, and crafting during the daytime then played games and got silly during the evening.
Here’s our final agenda to give you an idea of what things looked like for us! You’re welcome to make a copy of our Canva agenda to get started if that helps! Next time, I think it’d be fun to have a welcome dinner, but we had people coming at all times Thursday, so we did our welcome activities Friday morning instead!
Reading Retreat Activities
Oh activities, my favorite part of pretty much any event. I promised my friends that I wouldn’t plan a bunch of adult party games for us to do during the reading weekend.
I lied. Once I got started planning activities, I just couldn’t stop.
My poor friends – I invited them to a book retreat full of reading and relaxing. And we barely read at all, maybe an hour while one of the women went on a run, but very little reading actually happening.
And it was perfect.
Because at the end of the day we all get a chance to read at home and what we all really needed was each other. And laughter. And the chance to just let go of the stress and pressure that we all face being moms, business owners, and just women in general.
you do you!
Before I get into the activities that we planned, know that you don’t have to plan a single activity. You really could just read and hang out all weekend. But I’m me and I love games, activities, and crafts. And the people I invited do too, so it was perfect for what we wanted.
Blind Date with a Book
A few years ago during a girls trip to New York City (with two of the people at the reading retreat actually), we bought blind dates with a book in a bookstore. Basically that means that the books are wrapped up and on the outside are clues to the book inside.
I knew I wanted to do this again at our book retreat because it was so much fun! I looked online to see if I could find ones that fit our Shelf Care theme and came across It’s Hello Book Club. She creates custom blind date with a books for readers based on what genre books, what spiciness level, and just general book preferences.
She took on the challenge of coming up with blind date books for everyone that fit our Romantasy theme, and she absolutely crushed it. Not only were the books inside so perfect, the outsides were beautifully decorated with flowers, stickers, and even little self care items like tea and face masks.
Watching everyone open their books without having any idea what’s inside was so much fun and It’s Hello Book Club has graciously offered to give 15% off to anyone who makes a purchase through this link if you use the promo code BookParty15! Highly recommend – the surprise element makes getting a book so much fun!
Reading retreat games
I mentioned this already but our reading retreat had a Romantasy theme to it. And if you’re not familiar with Romantasy, think A Court of Thrones and Roses, Fourth Wing, From Blood and Ash, and all of those other books that combine dragons, fae, vampires, mortals, magic, and romance. I’m reminding you of this again because when you see the games we played, they have a romantasy slant.
Note!
My site is filled with family-friendly content. Before I share these games, I had to give you a warning that some of these games are not ones I would play with your kids! They can be a little spicy – this was a retreat with adult women. Just be forewarned.
- Romance vs the World – this is like a spicy book lovers version of Cards Against Humanity. It was pretty hilarious once you got over the fact that some of the cards were a lot. If you want something ACOTAR specific, this game looks fun too, but I haven’t actually played it.
- Build-A-Bae – this game was so much more fun than I thought it’d be. I actually ended up grabbing it last minute when I went to pick up Slow Rise Donuts on Saturday morning, and they were selling it in the coffee shop. The goal is to gather attributes to create the perfect bae, and it’s hilarious!
- Romance Novels Puzzle – this 1000 piece puzzle was the perfect low-key activity for our first night. Plus, it included books that a lot of us had read, so that was really fun!
- Reign of Dragoness Card Game – this was such a fun game to go with our theme. It’s one I already have at home and play with my boys and love!
In addition to those two games, I also brought up a bucket of some of our favorite board games for game night! The only one we ended up playing was Quelf. I always thought I hated that game, but it was actually so funny!
I’ve included options that are not in that realm as well for a more typical book retreat!
- ALLPlay Fiction – this game combines the New York Times game wordle with books and deception. If we’d had a typical book club retreat, we would’ve played this!
- Book lover games – five different games that use books, reading books, and pretty much anything to do with reading!
- Really Loud Librarians – it’s not really book themed but the name the game is! And it’s a lot of fun so definitely worth trying out!
Fourth Wing Choose a Card Challenge
I’m going to write an entire post about this at some point but one of the other games we played was inspired by a scene in Onyx Storm since that was our book club book for the weekend.
The basic idea was that you choose a card from a deck of cards and get a gift based on the card chosen. The “gifts” could be anything and everything, good and bad, and just nonsensical.
I used cards from this don’t say Umm game and bought random things to go along with the cards. It went pretty much exactly how I hoped it would after vowing to make a game inspired by it when I read the book!
Book Club Retreat Crafts
Another thing I knew I wanted to have at the retreat was crafts. Again, this is something that I find cozy and relaxing. If you don’t, skip it. But the main craft we did was one of my favorite parts of the weekend!
There are SO many different book themed crafts out there, we had a hard time choosing just one. We did one organized craft all together (the book nook kits) and the others I just had out for people to work on throughout the weekend.
- Book Nook Kits – these little DIY miniature bookstores are all the rage on social media right now, and they were SO fun to put together. Most of the trending ones on TikTok take hours and hours to make (like 6-8 hours) but these ones took 1-2 hours tops. It was definitely helpful to have some more crafty people leading the charge on these, but everyone was able to do them. And they are so cute!
- Reading Dragons Embroidery Kit – these ended up being super cute and a great way to relax while listening to audiobooks!
- Coloring Books – I brought this cozy girl coloring book and this ACOTAR coloring book and people colored and doodled throughout the weekend.
Book Club Discussion
Since Onyx Storm came out just a little bit before our book retreat, we decided to not talk about the book before the retreat, so we planned an actual book discussion during our book retreat!
My friend Heidi has a bunch of book club discussion guides (and the cutest book themed stickers and crafts) that include questions, games, and other activities. I ordered her Onyx Storm one and we spent a couple of hours in the hot tub going through discussion questions and just talking about our general thoughts about the book and upcoming books!
I’ll share some other fun book club ideas soon too that you could work, but I liked having an actual book club themed activity – it made the anticipation for the reading retreat even better because I had to wait to talk about the book!
Bookstore Hop
This is another idea I’ll be sharing details and printables for soon but one of the most fun parts of our retreat was our bookstore hop.
We’re lucky enough to have a bunch of indie bookstores in Kansas City (Under the Cover was easily our favorite!) and many of them were close to us. I made a bookstore scavenger hunt of sorts that I’ll share soon, and we hopped around our local bookstores finding books to buy from the scavenger hunt!
This bookstore for example everyone got assigned a color and had to pick out a book to buy that prominently featured that color!
Try a Book Swap!
I wanted to do a book swap where everyone brings old books they’ve read and we all swap and go home with new books to read. Unfortunately, most of my friends only listen to audiobooks and have trophy books (just for their bookshelves), so no one had books to bring and swap!
They did however have clothes to bring so we did a clothing swap instead. Well, really my sister just brought bags of stuff to get rid of and everyone took her clothes home!
Book Retreat Food Ideas
I own a food blog so you probably think we made all of our own food or at least most of it. And you’d be wrong.
We did end up making my sister’s amazing homemade cinnamon rolls and my favorite make ahead sausage breakfast casserole for breakfast one morning.
The rest of the food we ordered in from local restaurants. And here’s why – ordering the food instead of cooking it all allowed us to actually spend time hanging out with our friends and allowed us to relax ourselves. Because let’s be honest, cooking, even if you enjoy it, all weekend isn’t fun. And no one wants to do dishes. Although these cinnamon rolls were worth it.
Choose How Much You Want to Cook
There are a couple of different ways you can handle food. My recommendation is to choose whichever one works with your budget but that will also allow you to eat well and actually relax.
- Order In – order small group catering from local restaurants. This is a great way to support local businesses and try different food. This is what I did – you can see our full menu below!
- Split It Up – split people into pairs and assign each pair to plan and prepare a meal. This will make sure that one person isn’t missing out on everything.
- Make Everything – if you’re really into cooking and don’t trust other people to be in charge, you can make everything yourself. If you do this, stick to low effort meals. I’ve included a bunch below!
Low Effort Retreat Recipes
Here are some of my favorite recipes that would work for a group like this – ones that feed a group and take little work to make! I’ve included a weekend full of breakfasts and lunch/dinner options.
- Breakfast casserole with ham
- Hash brown egg muffins
- Breakfast tater tot casserole
- French toast casserole with cream cheese
- Instant Pot chicken tacos
- One pan baked ziti
- Instant Pot fettuccini Alfredo (are you realizing Italian is a theme??)
- Creamy white chicken enchiladas – make these ahead of time then just bake!
Our Book Retreat Menu
Like I mentioned, we pretty much ordered in all of our meals or picked them up from local restaurants. To make things easy on yourself, stick with large group, family style meals like tacos, Italian, pizza, sandwiches, etc.
Thursday Dinner – Salumi Rose Charcuterie Board
Since the majority of our group wasn’t arriving until later on Thursday night, we did a traditional charcuterie board for dinner. And for snacks later that night and throughout the next day.
Salumi Rose is a local Kansas City business that not only makes the prettiest charcuterie boards (she customized it with our theme) but also hosts board making workshops – yes, they teach you how to make beautiful charcuterie but you also actually use wood-burning techniques to make your very own customized wood board! The board was beautiful and delicious – I’m definitely going to have to do a workshop at some point!
Friday Breakfast – Casserole and Cinnamon Rolls
I already mentioned that we did make one single meal – breakfast Friday! And even just making that one meal went pretty miserably. I forgot to bring cinnamon for the cinnamon rolls, and we stayed up so late on Thursday night that waking up to make casserole was the last thing I wanted to do.
We ended up eating breakfast so late that we just skipped lunch altogether since we were having an early dinner!
Friday Dinner – Family Style Italian from Cupini’s Italian
If you live in Kansas City and have never been to Cupini’s, you are missing out. It’s hidden gem (at least for me) in the Westport area. When you walk in, it looks kind of like a deli counter but they’re serving up some of the best homestyle Italian I’ve had in the area!
We ordered a tray of bruschetta, a half pan of their penne with Alfredo sauce (yum!), chicken spiedini, tomato mozzarella salad, garlic knots, and white chocolate mousse cake for dessert!
I wish I could tell you how much we enjoyed this entire meal. From the freshness of the tomato mozzarella salad (kind of like my caprese skewers) to the super flavorful Alfredo, everything was delicious. And dipping the garlic knots in the Alfredo, yep it was amazing!
We ordered food for eight and easily could have fed 12 so when I say family style Italian, we definitely took leftovers home to enjoy with our own families at home!
Cupini’s makes a great option for catering small to large events in the Kansas City area, which honestly can be hard to find! They offer everything from antipasto platters to pans full of pasta and of course – cake and cookie platters! If the rest of their food is anything like what we had at our retreat, I’m pretty sure anyone would be happy to show up to a party with Cupini’s catering!
Saturday Breakfast – Slow Rise Donuts
Slow Rise has a cult following in Kansas City for their sourdough donuts. People wait in line for hours to get these donuts. They’ve been so popular that they just announced they are opening a brick and mortar, finally! Briel and I have stood in line for Slow Rise Donuts a couple of times (including when we were making our Taylor Swift charcuterie boards), and I can’t wait to be able to just go get them anytime!
If you’re ever in Kansas City and Slow Rise is open and offering donuts, they’re a must-try. We had all of the flavors from cookie butter to jalapeno cheddar and every one was just as good as the others.
Saturday Lunch – Tiki Taco Bar
Tiki Taco is a local Kansas City restaurant that offers catered taco bars. Is there anything better for a girls night than a taco bar?
Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to try the meat we wanted to (carne asada) because of delivery delays, but we did get chicken meat and ground beef taco meat along with cilantro rice, lettuce, pico, and sour cream!
My husband makes some pretty amazing homemade taco meat, so I was personally partial to the chicken, but the ground beef was a solid option too. And the queso was some of my favorite queso I’ve had in the area. My favorite part was dipping the chips and tortillas directly into the queso!
Tiki Taco offers catering options for Taco Bars, Bowl Bars, Nacho Bars, and Burrito Bars that are perfect for catering large and small events! They have a number of locations in the Kansas City area, and I’m definitely going to have to their bowl bar out next time for one of our work retreats!
Saturday Dinner – Pizza Tascio
Somehow before our retreat, I’d never tried Pizza Tascio even though I’ve lived in Kansas City for six years. They have various locations throughout the area but until I saw it near our Airbnb location, I somehow just missed it.
And we’ve eaten there probably five times since, and the retreat was just a month ago. It’s easily my new favorite pizza in the area, and I recommend it to everyone that asks for pizza or places to eat in Kansas City.
Pizza was the perfect meal after wandering around Kansas City on our book hop and one day I’ll have to post a video sharing the reactions of my bookish friends eating the the Red Tascio pizza and the Nutella pizza. “Oh my gosh, this is amazing,” and “what is in that” all came out of their mouths.
Pizza Tascio was started by The Lombardino Brothers, which already makes me a fan since I own my business with my sister, but they also use organic flour, organic tomatoes, and 100% whole milk mozzarella. And you can absolutely taste the difference.
And don’t even get me started on the cheesy breadsticks. There is something magical about the cheese bread and maybe one of these days I’ll get them to tell me the secret ingredient. I’ve never had breadsticks that are better.
The pizza is ginormous, like eat one maybe two slices, ginormous. And the flavor combinations are gourmet but just work – think things like hot honey, ricotta, and pepperoni all together. Just look at this menu.
They also offer great deals like $5 deals you can pick up in store and a $10 2-slice + a drink combo. Plus, when you order online, you can get 20% off on Sundays with code FUNDAY and 25% off every Tuesday with the code TASCIO. It’s probably a good thing their closest location is 20ish minutes away or I’d be in trouble.
Sunday Breakfast – Leftovers
We had people leaving at all different times on Sunday, so I didn’t want to make anything real. Plus, we had tons of leftovers (and I knew we would), so people just grabbed leftover yogurts, granola bars, fruit, and donuts to eat while we were cleaning up!
Book Retreat Snacks and Drinks
In addition to actual meals, you’ll need to plan snacks, drinks, and desserts too! You don’t need to go overboard but you definitely need to include these!
Snack Ideas
For snacks, I asked my besties beforehand what they wanted to get an idea. Then I grabbed a bunch of those things plus some others – healthy and not so healthy snacks. We had everything from peanut M&Ms to monster cookie balls to Sun Chips, plus fruit and veggies. The only thing missing was my homemade Chex mix, but I ran out of time to make it – next time!
I setup a snack corner with all of the snacks available plus these fun mini snack containers people could fill up and take back to their rooms or reading locations. They were perfect!
Drink Ideas
For drinks, I had all sorts of different options to choose from. I grabbed everyone’s favorite sodas plus water bottles to stock the fridge. I also brought my hot chocolate maker (with cute Velaris mugs) and my Ninja Slushi (with fun book themed glasses) to make an epic dragonfruit lemonade slushy (dragonfruit for our dragon themed retreat!) one night!
All that being said – most of those drinks (other than the slushy) didn’t even used because Ruby Jean’s Juicery provided us with a case full of cold-pressed juice and no one wanted to drink anything but that because it was so good!
Ruby Jean’s is a local company started by Chris Goode in honor of his grandma who died of Type 2 diabetes. It’s actually the first healthy conscious restaurant on the east side of Kansas City and offers all sorts of cold pressed juices you can either get local, order online, or buy in 100+ Whole Foods across the country! It was perfect for our Shelf Care themed retreat!
They also also offer cleanses you can order directly to your home and after enjoying their juices throughout the retreat, I’m absolutely going to try one of those! I was so sad when we finished our last bottle!
Book Club Retreat Desserts
We went a little overboard on the desserts. As one does.
I wanted to share some of my favorite local desserts with my friends and I did that plus shared them with all of our families too when leftovers ended up going home!
Brown Suga* Cookies
My son’s favorite cookies are from Brown Suga*, a local bakery about five minutes from our house. They have this lemon crinkle cookie that started his obessesion with anything lemon, and I knew I had to have Brown Suga’ cookies are our retreat.
Brown Suga* offers a standard menu of cookies that are always available plus monthly specials like key lime, churro, and a plethora of other seasonal specialties. And I’m pretty sure we’ve tried and enjoyed them all. And they do a Happy Hour special Tues and Thurs where you can get three cookies for the price of two from 2-4PM – that’s my kind of happy hour!
They gave us bags of cookies – red velvet, monster, lemon crinkle, and cookies and cream – for our retreat attendees to enjoy Thursday and Friday – and I’m almost as obsessed with the monster cookie as my son is with the lemon crinkle. I love soft monster cookies but there’s something about this one that made is better than any homemade one I’ve ever had! Maybe the warm gooey chocolate on the inside – they’re one of my family’s favorite cookies and definitely a must-try in the KC area!
Sweet Kiss Brigadeiro
Brown Suga* is my son’s favorite but some of my favorite cookies are the gigantic cookies from Sweet Kiss, so I had to bring those to the retreat as well.
Sweet Kiss is in the Made in KC marketplace on the Kansas City Plaza and if I just let people know that they make cookies, my job will be complete. Their main offerings are Brazilian truffles called Brigadeiros that are also delicious but the cookies – wow, especially when you get them fresh. They have all sorts of cookie flavor options from s’mores (amazing) to churro and even a double chocolate passion fruit cookie.
You can not only order cookies but also boxes boxes of brigadeiros shipped directly to your home! The brigadeiros are Brazilian candies made with condensed milk and gourmet chocolate plus other toppings for each inidivudal truffle. They’re totally unique and totally delicious!
And if you don’t want to take my word for it, you can order a box for yourself online and use the code RETREAT20 to get 20% off orders of $10 or more! There are 15 flavors to choose from including everything from dark chocolate and raosated almonds to creme-brulee. My personal favorite was the classic dark chocolate, but I liked all the others too.
Other questions?
I tried to include as many details as possible about our reading retreat and how I went about planning ours but if you have additional questions, feel free to leave me comments, and I’ll share what I can! I’m an open book – pun intended!
Leave a Reply