Capture Memories

Glen Arbor, Michigan "We have the building until midnight!" a devoted scrapbooker reports excitedly. With that, a group of some 15 women are off from the Glen Arbor Bed and Breakfast, driving through Friday showers the few blocks to the Glen Arbor Art Association.

They quickly unload materials and set up at tables for two, work spaces designated with place cards and pink flowers-and-pearls goody bags. So launches their Scrapbookers' Escape Weekend.

Better weather might have them exploring the nearby gift shops or Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore along Lake Michigan. But maybe not. This is their weekend to scrapbook.

Patricia Widmayer, who owns the bed and breakfast with her husband, Larry, has seen it before on these organized weekends. The groups are intensely into their craft, retreating at night to this refurbished boarding house where loggers stayed in the late 1800s. Women, usually with a friend or two along, stay in comfortable rooms and suites and two housekeeping cottages.

For the few here new to scrapbooking, the weekend is an eye-opener. The popular craft frees women to enhance, emboss, embellish and, most importantly they say, to save the moments of their lives. Over this weekend, they coalesce into a sisterhood of intent and energy.

"We're always bouncing ideas off each other," says Kathy Schliess of Traverse City, Michigan. "When you get a bunch of women in a room like this, and you start pulling out all these pictures, all of the stories, the room is so full of emotion."

While some people stuff photos in shoeboxes or slip shots into plastic sleeves, these women create detailed theme pages with help from local crafters. For Dorothy Grant of Traverse City, it means making loving arrangements of photos.

"I didn't want my pictures sitting in a drawer," she says. "This enables us to treasure our lives. You're telling the story of your life, your family."

On Saturday, the group is finally convinced to leave within minutes of its 6 p.m. dinner reservation, steps down the street at the casual and popular Western Avenue Grill.

After the last dessert is eaten, the call of, "Who's ready to scrap?" goes up, and, in an instant, the women are gone. Some are at it until midnight. At one cottage, a few continue even later than that.

A subdued, though no less enthusiastic, group gathers for Sunday breakfast. They linger at the long dining room table to learn more about each other, their travels and lives.

They leave for the art association and more creative tips from their instructor. Would they come again?

Amy Stomper from Chicago, here with her sister, Beth Prince of East Lansing, Michigan, doesn't hesitate. "In a heartbeat," she says. By Maureen Blaney Flietner

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