Paula’s teenage daughter, Hannah, is also an active member of the Scrap Divas. She’s one of the youngest in the group and is surprisingly comfortable sitting around the table with much older women. She’s scraping a class trip to Disneyland, and the women "ooh" and "ahh" about how much they love the park. While on her trip, Hannah had friends take a few pictures of her, but she complains about how bad they came out – they’re framed all wrong and are just not suitable for her album. She tells the nodding Divas, “I knew I was a true scrapper when I started taking pictures to fit my scrapbook.”

Many scrapbookers have repeated this sentiment. Because they most often create scrapbook pages with groups of thematically linked photos, they take their pictures accordingly. Each scrapbook page usually displays groupings of two to four pictures on the same subject. Consequently, a single non-related picture is a conundrum and is often not included. The women also try to balance the number of close-ups with wide angles, make sure to take vertically situated shots and concentrate on people instead of landscapes. They feel that scrapbooking has made them better photographers, and they’re probably right.

Hannah rises from her task of mounting photos on paper printed with the popular teacup ride at Disneyland to call the next three Scrap-o words: artistic, heritage, retreat.

Scrapbooking retreats are a labor of love. Jenn and Yvonne tell the rest of the women about having to make five trips each to the car to pack their supplies for this one weekend. The self-imposed schedule of a retreat is no less extreme. After staying up until almost 3am scrapbooking the night before, many of the Divas arise at 8:30am to take their places at the tables. Meals are cooked individually; they are prepared and consumed with efficiency as to not waste any time that could be spent scrapbooking. The only group-wide breaks of the day come around 11am when Shirley introduces the Scrap-o game and then around 10pm when the Divas split an apple pie. A few of the women take trips into town to shower and buy food, but other than that, the Divas crop relentlessly. On Saturday, the Divas each spend an average of fifteen hours at their tables.

The average scrapbooker is just that, average -- the quintessential woman of middle America: white, suburban, working to middle class, and socially conservative. They have husbands and kids and a car payment and take pleasure at getting away for a few hours to go to a crop. Scrapbooking allows women to take personal time off from their families without guilt, because the albums they create so often preserve their family’s history. In the isolated world of suburban America, scrapbooking is a way for women to form communities that don’t involve their immediate families.

The Scrap Divas is a major social outlet for Shirley. She will be moving to Illinois within weeks of the retreat, but still plans to attend Oregon Scrap Diva events throughout the year. Scrapbooking has expanded her circle of friends to include women of all ages. Shirley speaks about the community she’s gained from scrapbooking with reverence. In an email she said, “[My friend’s] daughters used to tell me to ‘Get a Life.’ I was pretty much a couch potato. Well, I've got a life now, and I love it.”

Scrap Divas seem primarily attracted to the social aspects of scrapbooking. But there are women who scrap whose hardcore devotion is mind-boggling. One woman cleared out her son’s bedroom just weeks after he moved out in order to store her thousands of dollars worth of supplies. The room became her at-home work space. Before long, she took and promptly scrapbooked pictures of her scrapbooking room.

At the Diva retreat, the women have all brought enough snacks to share, including chips, cookies and three apple pies. They have set up a common food table in the kitchen, and occasionally a Diva will pass goodies around the square. One Diva brings out a bag of fortune cookies, and the giddy reactions from the women are a testament to the progressive hour-by-hour deterioration in maturity level – they’re like kids at a sleepover.

“Mine says ‘You like gambling, cards and horses, but not to excess’” says a grinning Paula as the women take turns reading their fortunes aloud.

“In the bedroom!” pipes in a Diva with the pop-culture joke.

“In the bathroom!” pipes in another, perhaps because the first suggestion is a little too risqué.

“Mine says ‘You will be invited to a sporting event in the near future’” says Jenn, one of the late arrivals.

Another Diva, JenO (so called for her screen name) pipes in, “My dad always used to say that the only way to make a fortune come to pass was to eat it.”

The women laugh at the double entendre, but Jenn takes the advice seriously and pops her fortune into her mouth.