This weekend the Corradetti, Waxman, and Cook girls got together for our annual Passover dinner-and-a-movie, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a picture with the Easter Bunny. We each got a copy for our parents to treasure, and our Cheesecake Factory Waiter helped us to create “The Passover Special”, a grilled chicken dish with all sorts of substitutes to make the meal passover friendly. After dinner we went to the movies to see Alice in Wonderland, and it was great… the perfect end to our passover event.

Well everyone, it’s finally looking more and more like camp season every day! Today we’ve got a bright and sunny afternoon here in the winter office, and we’ve been enjoying a few days of warm “summer-like” weather. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, it’s not QUITE summer yet, but in the Philosophy of Cara, once you start wearing open toe shoes, it’s basically camp time. So hello Birkenstocks, goodbye Uggs!

I have had a super exciting past few days, from my return from the ACA Camping Conference in Atlantic City, to the Taylor Swift Concert in Philadelphia, to a campy dinner in King of Prussia with the usual crew, and a few special guests. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Taylor Swift was excellent, and I know there were so many Canadensis kids in the audience! I was really impressed with how great she is live, and I’m looking forward to playing some Taylor covers on my guitar at a campfire now and then! We saw Taylor on Friday night, and then went back out Saturday to meet up with camp friends for dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and dessert and coffee at the Cheesecake Factory. Our usual group of 4 grew to 9, which was SO exciting, and definitely made for a memorable evening. We laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time, and even played some camp games while waiting for our table to be ready. Laughing with camp friends always reminds me why I do what I do every day, and why I love camp so much.

This week in the office has been “wild” (wild is my catchphrase, according to Forti), and the change of season has definitely put the push on the preparations for summer. The Tri-State Camp Conference got everyone seriously pumped up and we all came home with fresh new ideas, ready to make summer 2010 THE BEST SUMMER EVER!

Yesterday was oodles of fun, as we embarked on the second half of our Canteen on the Fly world tour… well, it wasn’t quite a global tour, but we definitely felt like superstars, arriving in time to chat with our camp friends and families, and then rushing off to make it to our next stop on time.  With yesterday’s unexpected warm and sunny weather, seeing camp friends on such a beautiful day gave us all the feeling that camp is just so much closer.

This is one of my favorite times of the year (other than June, of course, when camp is in full swing) because I FINALLY get to start excavating the large Tupperware containers of spring clothing from storage, and incorporating some of my favorite spring pieces back into the mix.  I’m also very excited to see the new trends for summer, and to stock up on plenty of Blue and Gold apparel.

I’ve  included some of my favorite campy craft projects on this blog before, and in keeping with the trend, here’s a camp creation from Group Leader Ricki Kahn created, and let me share with all of you:

Enjoy this week of beautiful sunshine, and think camp!

Over the weekend I got to spend some time with Becky Jacobson and Karen Sharir, and they told me all about their recent artistic collaboration…

Becky J had to write a  “Collaborative Recipe Poem”, meaning she had to write a poem with a partner, and the poem had to read like a recipe. Becky asked Karen to assist her with the creative piece, and the result is nothing short of masterful. The girls drew inspiration from the movie, Wet Hot American Summer (a camp counselor favorite!) and I laughed out loud the first time I read it. If you know the WHAS movie, you will be surprised to see just how many references the girls were able to squeeze in to their poem…

Recipe for a Wet Hot American Summer

Cleanse Arty the beekeeper and set aside,
Barbecue a crowned class B dungeon master —
let simmer in a thin sauce of hygienic products.
Add some arts and farts and crafts.

Dice up a talent show and be sure to leave the baggage and attitude at the door,
Because we don’t need it.
Fry it in a pan of “fondue with cheddar.”
Juice the deepest thoughts from your gournal.

Then take some “hey” from before and add it to the mix,
Throw in some dance belts, lycras, et.al. seriously.

Take Arty and his fake summer romance that didn’t even happen,
and spread evenly throughout the hundreds of colored markers.
Add One cup of determination to get McKinley loved.

Blend everything together in one huge piece of the space station coming towards Earth.

Before you put it all in the oven make sure to get the lower camp kids out of the ropes course,
I meant to tell you about that yesterday.

Toss it in the oven and make it your beeswax to get it out at 9:30 to see what it has blossomed into.

If you follow the directions exactly, almost all of your campers should make it out in one piece,
except for the few who are lepers.

But this tastes like burger so I don’t like it anymore.

Have you ever used a camp joke, or the general theme of camp, as inspiration for an assignment or creative piece? If so, email it to me at cara@canadensis.com and I’ll be sure to post it for everyone to enjoy!

Other than the usual weekend dinner with camp friends, life has been business as usual, only it seems that the days are flying by faster than ever, and I truly feel as though I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be leaving for Pre-Camp. I have been coming up with some crazy ideas for camp activities and craft projects over the last few weeks, so I’m really excited to start working on translating my ideas into reality as this month goes on. Here’s one project that Karen and I will be starting:

This piece is made entirely of recycled materials, mostly magazines and old canvases, and it’s going to be so cool to create our own!

Well, I hope everyone is excited for the arrival of a new month, another month closer to camp, and that all of our Philadelphia/Cherry Hill area campers and friends will be coming out to join us for Canteen on the Fly this Sunday!

Well, as promised, here are a few more unnatural siblings for your enjoyment:

Robin Hasson:

Nurse Betty:

Brian Krug:

“Camp Mom” Steph:

There you have it! Another edition of Unnatural Siblings, celebrity edition. Keep checking back, and feel free to send camp unnatural celebrity sibling requests to cara@canadensis.com!

Well, for anyone who uses Facebook on a regular basis, you know that the current phase sweeping the social networking site is this “celebrity lookalike” trend. In honor of this Doppelganger obsession, I’ve decided to use the MyHeritage website, to come up with some of our staff’s celebrity twins!

Jason Calabretta:

Cara Corradetti:

ERIC FORTI:

Will Armon:

Rachel Bachman:

Sam Ginsburg:

(Sam’s is my personal favorite!)

So there you have it! Unnatural siblings on a whole new level! Maybe I’ll do some more tomorrow…

Well, it’s only Tuesday and already I feel as though this week is flying by. I spent yesterday out of the office at Shippensburg University, where I tabled at the school’s job fair. The best part of the trip was getting to catch up with Austin Cromartie, who came by the job fair and kept me company at the table. I’m sure I don’t have to say that we talked about camp (duh), and got to share some other fun stories as well. When I went to Shippensburg last year, it was on a terrible snowy day, and I hardly got a chance to see the campus and walk around, but yesterday was bright and sunny, which made the day a lot more enjoyable.

And no blog post would be complete without an update of my weekend dinners with friends! This weekend I was excited to see my usual dining crew (Karen Sharir, Dani Corradetti, and Rebecca Waxman), and we were all even more excited to add Guest of Honor Bryan LaFave to our dinner club! Bryan is in town rehearsing for his upcoming tour, and it was so exciting to get to hear about his rehearsals, and plans for the tour. Here are a few pictures from dinner:

Of course the biggest event of this week is this season’s premier of LOST!!! Jason Calabretta and I are avid Lost watchers, discussers, theorizers, etc. We are both in a vortex of anticipation for tonight’s big event, and I cannot wait for the season to unfold, and for ALL the answers of the past few years to be revealed! If you are a Lost fan, I hope you’ll share your ideas and theories with JCal and I, and if you are not yet a Lost fan, I highly recommend watching all the seasons, getting caught up, and watching the series finale with us.

I’ve also got some extra curricular activities this week (aka, the other things I do in my life that aren’t camp related), and my week i ridiculously busy! I’ve got an Alumni dinner meeting with my Sorority in King of Prussia, and some volunteer work at the High School to keep me busy before I leave on Sunday for a week of hiring on the road. I’ll be blogging from the road, so stay tuned for all the updates!

Text message of the day:
“Thought you would love: The course number for psych is 1835. Where is the two?!?!”
~Dani Corradetti, on her course selection codes.

As always, it’s been an eventful week. Pam and Brian are getting ready to take off on the first part of our staff hiring road-trip, and I’m gearing up for a one day extravaganza of hiring at Shippensburg, all day on Monday. After a long and lonely week in the office, Pam and I will reunite and drive up north, for a few days of recruiting in Vermont. I’m really looking forward to going on the road and meeting some potential staff members. Although our counselor positions have filled up VERY quickly this year, there are still come positions we are looking to fill, and I can’t wait to put it at together when we return from the trips!

Over the weekend, with Becky J and  Dani in tow, we took a mini-trip to New Jersey to meet up with  Brooke Appelbaum in East Brunswick. We had a little bit of a wait before we could claim our table at Bensi, so we made a stop at one of my favorite shops, Anthropologie. While I wanted to buy everything in the store (especially the BLUE AND GOLD dish sets!), Dani and I fell in love with their beautiful jeweled hair barrettes, and had to choose a variety to bring home. Every clip was made with a different selection of stones and gems, so each one was unique! I think this could make for a very cool art shack project, especially if we first make our own beads in glass fusion! Definitely something to think about…

After our quick shopping excursion, we sat down for a yummy Italian dinner at Bensi. While the food was OUTSTANDING, our waiter was terrible! We had to ask for refills, and then waited forever for him to bring them to us. Even though the service was disappointing, the company definitely made up for it; I loved getting to spend time with Brooke before she went back to Ithaca. Many of my camp nights off are spent with Brooke and our friends, at Star Pizza or the “BK Lounge” (Our fancy name for Burger King), just talking about camp and having fun, so it was good to feel as though, just for a few hours, it was summer all over again. I can’t wait for anothe r season of late night snacks with everyone in 2010! Of course, we were having SO much fun, I totally neglected to take pictures, but I did take a video of Becky J laughing so hard that she couldn’t catch her breath, so perhaps I’ll post that later!

Finally, it’s been a VERY stressful few weeks in the Corradetti house, with Dani’s auditions for North Penn High School’s production of Thouroughly Modern Millie. I’m VERY excited to report that after days of grueling auditions and call-backs, Dani has been cast as Millie! So, I’m sure from now until May our house is going to be a wild rehearsal studio, since Dani has lots of songs to sing, scenes to memorize, and dances to learn (which means I’ll be taking on the role of full time piano accompanist…) If you’d like tickets to come out and see the show, you can email me at cara@canadensis.com and I’ll get you all the details!

Speaking of Musical Theatre Stars, Bryan LaFave arrives in Philadelphia TODAY, to begin rehearsals for his National Tour of Beauty and the Beast: A Musical Fairytale. I’ve already made plans to see him this weekend for a grand dinner, and I promise to take my camera along and post pictures and updates on the blog! I am beyond excited to get to see Bryan, since the last time I saw him was at camp this past summer!!!

Well, that’s all for now folks. I’ve got to get back to preparing travel folders for Brian and Pam, so that they’ll have directions, hotel confirmations, contact information, and parking instructions, all organized and easily accessible when they hit the road. Have a good rest of the week, Friday is almost here!

We stayed out very late, catching up and laughing about camp times (they are the greatest, after all!). Finally we decided to call it a night and head back to the car. Little did we know that the valet was off duty, so when we got back to the spot where we had left my car, it was parked on the street with a note in the dashboard. The note had the address and phone number of the location where we could pick up my keys. It was like our own little version of National Treasure!

We finally got my keys back and everyone got home safe and sound. It’s always fun to plan a weekend with camp friends, but it’s the unexpected events that make for the funniest of memories!

Finally, here’s your Eric Forti clip of the week:

Although there is SO much to write about the wild events of my camp-filled weekend, I’m going to share two photos as a sneak peak for now…