At The Beach House: A Guest Book

A beach house is a uniquely special place -- a place where memories of friendship, family and wonderful times are created within the timeless sound of the surf. At the Beach House: A Guest Book is designed to save some of those memories. ''A guest book is a story told by many people,'' the book's creator, Sandy Gingras, writes in her Introduction. ''It's full of weather and salt and breezes. It's full of what the tide was and when the sun shone. It's who ate over... It's what we ate. It's little things mostly, daily things. But it adds up to a Life. You'd be surprised how it does. And what is ordinary today becomes a treasure over time.'' In the book's pages Gingras gives reluctant writers a gentle nudge with some suggestions, and blank pages allow for those guests with longer comments to share. An envelope at the back of the book provides a home for small mementos. At the Beach House: A Guest Book is the perfect accessory for the beach home, whether it's a week-long vacation rental or a generations-old family beach house. One of seven in author/illustrator Sandy Gingras' popular and inspirational ''How To Live'' series of gift books, the guest book embraces her themes of simplicity, appreciation, love and happiness. ''We hope that this book is more than a record of who came to visit. We hope it's a journal of thoughts and stories, a scrapbook of memories. We left empty places for photos or doodles, a pocket for a ticket stub or a feather... there's room for thankfulness to,'' she writes in the Introduction.