With the New Year just days away, the end of the year always offers a time of reflection, recollection, and anticipation. This year marked Bayside Institute’s 3rd anniversary, its’ 4th summer, and well over 350 classes from its’ inception. Each year and each experience is entirely different. Classes are scheduled to include variety, diversity, relevance, uniqueness, and truly something for everyone. Topics including meditation, cake decorating, oyster gardening, container gardening, aromatherapy, and Civil war history offer a glimpse as to the variety of scheduling in a single year.
Some of my favorites from 2017 included:
Mindfulness Meditation held at The Point with Bayside member, Hollee Gritz. She guided members through a peaceful, mindful experience, offering the chance to take a break from stress, busyness, and to notice life’s small pleasures like the sound of the bay, the warm summer breeze, and the chorus of insects surrounding us.
Cake Decorating for the holidays! Members not only learned some fun decorating techniques with fondant, buttercream icing, and ice cream cones, but they shared in laughter and a wonderfully professional experience from a very talented local baker, Kylee, from Morning Buns. The tedious and detailed experience opened our eyes to understanding that cake decorating is truly an art-form and a honed skill.
Fashion with Faust Fashions. To me, the class topic didn’t quite matter, as Jami Faust Jackson came to visit us a few times. What did matter was the fun and entertaining discussion between women at each class. Members shared laughs, shopping woes, and shopping secrets – things relevant to all of us. We learned best shapes and silhouettes for our body types, which rules to follow and which rules to break, and most importantly – add a nude shoe to your wardrobe!
The International Wine Series! I think this is a favorite of many members. Shawn Damiano and I loved spending winter evenings with so many members, sharing a wonderful snack plate, 5 or so different wines from different regions around the world, all while learning more about our own individual tastes and wine preferences. Shawn was a delight to lead us on that journey, and was a very knowledgeable and entertaining teacher.
You can watch some of Bayside Institute’s memorable moments in this fun recap video we put together just for you! As always, thank you for your continued support. I am looking forward to a positively enriching 2018!
