Day camp gives women a summer escape

While summer dreams include tantalizing vacations and lazy hours by the pool, for many women the season is, in reality, just a new backdrop to the same busy routine.

But for five hours on weekdays, an entrepreneur in the Philadelphia suburbs is giving women an opportunity to jump off the treadmill to cook with renowned chefs, get massages and appreciate fine wine.

Take Five, a day camp for women, was Carole Blum's way to give harried women like herself a guilt-free way to spend some time focusing exclusively on themselves.

Blum runs a clothing boutique during the school year, and for the past six summers worked as a director at a performing arts camp for children.

"All the women who dropped off their kids would say, 'I wish I could go to camp, too,'" Blum said. "They had such full to-do lists, with themselves always at the bottom of the list. Now my heart is in giving them a chance to just have fun."

Take Five is structured like a typical day camp, running 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, at $100 for a full day. It will continue through Aug. 9, and Blum likes to imagine that mothers come to her camp at the same time as children go to theirs _ just for much more grown-up activities.

Instead of making s'mores and weaving friendship bracelets, Take Five's campers can pick from a rotating schedule of cooking lessons, wine tastings with professional sommeliers and yoga and Pilates workouts for building strength and flexibility. Those who come back several times can earn complimentary horticultural lessons, massages and nutrition sessions.

While participants sometimes head to local restaurant kitchens to learn to prepare tapas, summer soups or the "girls' guide to barbecue," the camp's hub is at Blum's house in Philadelphia's affluent Main Line suburbs.

Kat Mittman, who teaches mat Pilates out of Blum's basement, said she enjoys working with women at Take Five because they are there to get the most they can out of each session.

"They don't know each other coming in, so they can be themselves without any preconceived notions or cliques," she said. "They're sometimes apprehensive to try something new, but I can tell when they open their minds and bodies. It helps when they're relaxed from baking beforehand."

Marcia Kaufman, 55, said a wine tasting at Al Dar Bistro in Bala Cynwyd has given her the confidence to pick out wines for an upcoming party at the home of her oenophile friends.

"I was never a connoisseur," she said, "but now I've picked up on little things I'd have had no way of knowing. I have more comfort walking into a store and talking about wine, rather than just picking out a pretty bottle."

For now, the camp itinerary is flexible, allowing women to stop in for just a morning cooking lesson or afternoon workout, as their schedules allow.

Popping in for an hour of Pilates, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, 54, called the camp "the American answer to the Italian siesta."

Like Blum, she has raised three sons and found that mothers often need the time off that camp provides more than their children do.

"We have the blessing and curse of living in a sped-up world," she said. "We need more mechanisms to make us slow down."

Blum hopes to add a weeklong rafting trip to Idaho and several weeks of intensive tennis training to future camp agendas. Whatever changes might come, she said she wants to keep it a place "for women learning to take time to learn, live and laugh."