The winter meeting for our camp leadership staff doesn’t officially start until tomorrow morning, and we are really excited to have our Canadensis team together so we can start moving forward on ideas for summer 2012!

One of the best parts of the winter meeting is that we get to see some of our favorite camp friends, and I have just returned from the airport where I was picking up Moira.  I get to work with Moira in the Programming Office during the summer, and she is one of my favorite people of all time!  She is the hardest working woman that I know, and she is so great at putting together the camper/staff schedules during the summer…and she’s also a lot of fun!! We are going to start working on some of our new programs today, so get ready for an amazing summer ahead!

Whenever we are together, we discover a bunch of things we have in common…we just realized on the ride here that we both took vacations in Pittsburgh this year, we both make wishes at 11:11, and we both just signed up for long runs in May!!  I’ll be doing the 10-mile Broad Street Run, and she’s going to do the Buffalo Half Marathon!  I have a feeling that her time for 13.2 miles might be better than my 10 mile race, because while we have a ton in common, Moira is definitely a sporty girl, and I usually stick to Arts & Crafts!

I’m sure there will be a lot of Twitter updates from the Winter Meeting this weekend, so consider checking it out!

I hope you had a Happy Valentines day!  Of course, I look at it the same way I look at everyday…a chance to be creative!  Do you have someone in your life who loves a certain color?  Do they wear the color all the time, buy things in that color when they have a choice, and do they want to paint their bedroom that color too??

Well, Dave loves ORANGE…and since he deserves a special meal, I packed him an orange lunch on Valentines Day!  Everything was packed in his bag, so it was a surprise when he opened it!  There was orange juice, goldfish crackers, mac & cheese, carrots, jello, cheese sticks, orange crackers, orange starbursts…and of course an orange!  I wanted to make it extra special, so I added some corny lines to each of the food items, like this…Get it??  I “carrot” about you A LOT…like “I care about you a lot”.  Like I said…really corny.  I used the great new Post-It labels that you can cut into any size to make it stick to the items.

If someone you know loves YELLOW – think about bananas, lemonade, corn, pineapple and egg salad!

If someone you know loves GREEN – think about green apples, string beans, wasabi peas and a spinach salad!

If someone you know loves RED – think about pasta with tomato sauce, cherries, twizzlers, strawberries and red velvet cupcakes!

Get creative!  Good luck if the person in your life loves HOT PINK!

Before I go, check out the amazing photo of Simone wearing the elephant hat I crocheted for her.  Isn’t she the most precious thing you’ve ever seen?

I arrived in London, England just a few hours ago!  This is my final stop in February for staff hiring, and I’m excited to be participating in the Camp America Staffing Fairs in the United Kingdom!  I got to attend this fair a few years ago, and before that, I spent a summer living in London while I was in high school.  I was actually setup with an internship with a photographer, and being a photographer was the only other job I ever thought I wanted besides from being a camp director!

London is gearing up to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, and you can learn some London Fun Facts by clicking here!  I’m so excited to see some of our staff who live over there, and I’ll be uploading a photo of us soon!

I recently got to spend a lovely Saturday morning getting to know a new camper who lives on the Upper West Side of NYC.  Michele is a current 4th grader, and will be a Lower Inter Girl at camp this summer.  I first met her when she came up to take a tour of Canadensis and I was her guide – so it was only fitting that we switched roles, and she gave me a guided tour of her apartment!  I was so impressed by her awesome room – she has shinny pink carpet, oversize 3D cube art coming out of the walls, and fun stuff in every direction you look!  However, if you get dizzy, I don’t recommend looking down and out the window…she’s so high up that the people on the street below look like ants!

We both love dogs, and as you can see from the photo above, her dog Oreo is super cute!  This photo doesn’t even show how cute he is, but he loves to play soccer…just like Michele!  She loves the color blue, and all kinds of sports – she plays tennis mostly, but she also has gone to a golf camp, and played a season of softball.  She is a really good student, and she was telling me about the different class room jobs she has.  She is in charge of answering the classroom phone, but she also gets different jobs every two weeks…like being in charge of recycling, or giving out snack.  She said the best job is being the joke teller…which sounds like a great idea for our camp job wheel!  Oue bunk jobs rotates everyday so campers get to do different things that help keep the bunk clean.  Even when she’s not in school, Michele makes sure to spend 30 minutes a day reading.  Right now she’s enjoying the Percy Jackson book series.

She’s going to have no trouble finding foods she likes at camp this summer, and some of her favorites on the salad bar will be red peppers, cucumbers and carrots.  We talked about the awesome new water slides we are building in the brand new blue pool, and although she doesn’t think she’s ever been on a water slide, she is planning to try it this summer!  Although she doesn’t know anyone coming to Canadensis yet, she has a lot of friends at home…including some that live in the same building as her, so they are only an elevator ride away!  She was off to a chocolate birthday party at Max Brenners after our home visit, and hopefully one of her new camp friends will have a summer birthday so she can see what it’s like to have a Canadensis pizza birthday celebration!

Earlier this winter, “Aunt” Terri, the owner of Camp Canadensis, was taking a trip to London and Paris.  She had a great idea to pull together our international campers, and throw a “Canteen on the Fly” for our French campers!  Since we had just finished giving out t-shirts to all the US Campers that came to our Canteen’s on the Fly in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we thought we could make a special shirt for those overseas…

Supplies:

-A clean, pre-washed t-shirt – and an extra cloth

-Iron-on appliques – easily found at a craft store like Joann, Michaels or AC Moore.

-An iron and ironing board.

Instructions (This is super easy!)

1.  Layout the appliques and make sure they are in a straight line.

2.  Grab your extra cloth (I used another t-shirt) and use it as a barrier between your letters and the hot iron.  Make sure your letters aren’t shifting before you place the iron down!

3.  Press hard and gently move the iron in circles for however long it says on your package.

4.  Let the shirt cool, and enjoy your personalized shirt!

Here all the final shirts for “Aunt” Terri, the Paris campers, and an outstanding staff member named Lauren Berry who is currently living in London!

Another fun night of home visits!  My first stop was in Villanova, PA, and I can’t wait to introduce you to Skye, a current 3rd grader who will be a Junior Girl at camp for the first time this summer.  I first got to meet her when she spent the night at camp last summer for the Tour & More Weekend, and I can’t wait for her to spend the full seven weeks!  The first thing you need to know about Skye is that she is a serious dancer…she is at the studio at least three times a week, and she knows a bunch of routines!  She has recently danced to the song “Low” and “Superbass” in some of her recitals.  If Skye is in your bunk this summer, you are definitely going to have an awesome MTV Night dance routine! She is already planning on joining the Camp Canadensis dance team, and getting to travel to other camps for competitions.

She loves watching reality talent shows, including “American Idol”, “America’s Got Talent” – and she also likes “Glee”!  Her favorite movie is “Back The The Future”, so when we vote on the drive-in movies for summer 2012, she might have to convince her friends to vote for it! She also likes riding her bike, and she has a great driveway for practicing.  She enjoys playing tennis and doing gymnastics – and she plans to do a bunch of it this summer!  She has dedicated her winter to dancing, so she doesn’t get to do those activities as much this year.  She does make time for Hebrew school each week, but on the night I spent with her, she got to skip it because I was visiting!

By the time this blog goes up online, she will have just turned 9 years old (happy belated bday!).  When I met with her, she told me the plans for her candy themed/dance routine birthday party, and it sounded sweet and fun!   She had already gotten one of her gifts though, it was an awesome makeover of her bedroom!  She gave me a tour, and told me how everything was different just a few days ago.  Now she has a huge canopy bed, cool blue walls, and really fun decorations.  I can’t wait to see how she decorates her camp bed!  Her dad went to University of Arizona (like me!) and her mom is a huge fan of all things campy!  She is the big sister to two adorable little brothers, and everyone will be expecting lots of letters explaining all the camp fun she’s having this summer…

My next stop was in Merion Station, PA with siblings Ben and Talia.  Ben is a current 4th grader, who will be a Lower Inter Boy at camp for his second summer.  This guys stays VERY busy during the winter – he told me about the cake decorating class he’s taking, the books he’s been reading (he just finished a “Wrinkle In Time”) and the baseball he was playing in the Fall, and is looking forward to playing in the Spring.  He also told me about the art classes and ceramics workshops he’s in, he showed me some of the construction projects he’s been working on (like a huge bridge made out of plastic drinking straws that can hold more than 30 pounds!) and I don’t think that this even scratches the surface of what he’s been up to since camp!His sister Talia is a current 2nd grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl at camp for her first summer.  Talia has been a Tour & More overnight camper for two summers, and now she’s going to have the experience of being in a bunk and spending a few weeks with us as a true camper!  She and Ben share a mutual love of the Phillies, The “Lord of the Rings” movies, and they definitely love their puppies!  They have two dogs – Oliver, and the newest addition who joined the family only a few weeks ago is Hobie – named after another one of their favorite activities…sailing!  (Hobie gets his name from the “Hobie Cat” boat).  They also just got a very cool pinball machine, so I imagine they’ll be having some sibling contests in the years ahead as they become pinball wizards! Talia also goes by the nickname “T”, and while I was visiting, she gave me a great tour of her room.  She even gave me a demonstration about how she’s going to clean the bunk this summer!  She showed me how she folds her t-shirts – and she did an awesome job making her bed and arranging all the pillows…it looked like a big, comfy hotel bed!  She really likes to read as well, she has a lot of the American Girl books, but her favorites are series of books about puppy breeds.  She also likes to construct things and put them together – she had built a bunk bed for some of her dolls, all by herself!  Talia has a sporty side too – she loves soccer, and was on a development travel team this fall.  She also really likes to ski, and she recently was on the slopes in Utah with another new Lower Junior camper named Avery!  I can’t wait to see both girls up on water-ski’s on Lake Lenape this summer!

YAHOO!!!  Cara and I are warming up in the South, and we are in my absolute favorite state…Louisiana!!!  After I went to college in Arizona, I moved to Louisiana for my first camp director job, and I worked at the New Orleans Jewish Community Center for three amazing years.  If it weren’t for my dream job at Camp Canadensis, I don’t think I would have ever left!

Today we are going to the University of Louisiana Lafayette, and tomorrow we’ll be hiring staff at Louisiana State University.  On both campuses, we’ll get to see some of the kids who used to be campers at the day camp I ran, but now they have grown up and become college students!!  Although Mardi Gras is still a few weeks away, the celebrations have already begun, so after we’ve hired some great counselors, we are going to check out some of the parades.  We will to try and catch as many blue & gold beads as we can…they will come in handy for color war!  To learn more fun facts about this amazing state, click here.

Cara and I are making a quick stop in Ohio today – we are hiring staff on the Bowling Green State University campus.  This is my third straight year at BGSU, and it’s so much fun to see our returning staff members and familiar faces.  A highlight of our Ohio trip will undoubtedly be our visit with Michael Millinger, a second year Group Leader.  He works at the Pinkberry in town, so we are excited to enjoy some frozen yogurt with him, even if it’s kind of freezing!  To learn more about Ohio (the state that the show Glee is set in!) click here.

I recently spent an evening visiting two new campers, and my first stop was in Woodbury, NY.  I got to spend time with Kaylee, who is a current 3rd grader, and will be a Junior Girl at camp for the first time this summer.  Going to camp this summer was all her idea, and she even got to spend the night before Visiting Day at camp last year in the Tour & More program. Kaylee is super sweet, very funny, and clearly she is awesome because we have the same favorite color…green!  She loves to dance, play the piano, and she is looking forward to tennis and cooking at camp this summer.

She is really lucky to have a late bus to school, she only needs to wake up at around 8AM (the same time we wake up at camp) and before she gets on the bus, she manages to eat breakfast and practice piano – she is super dedicated!  She gave me a tour of her awesome room…she really has two rooms, her main bedroom and her “secret room”, which you enter from a small door in her closet, and it’s full of dolls, toys, and it would be a fun place to hang out with a few of your closest friends.  She also showed me her collection of angry bird dolls…she loves them!  Kaylee has a very tall bed, it’s like being on the top bunk (which only counselors are allowed on at camp).  It also has a railing all the way around it, so it’s pretty impossible for her to practice making her bed, but we’ll make sure she’s a pro by the end of the summer!

Kaylee is the youngest of three sisters, and her oldest sister Sam has a lot of years at Canadensis under her belt.  She will be going on a teen tour this upcoming summer, but I hope she knows that camp will always be her second home!  Kaylee will be really excited to receive letters from her sister, and she plans to write home a lot.  Maybe she’ll write a letter about the first time she goes on the ropes course!?  At her day camp, she didn’t like climbing up that much, but she loves the feeling of flying while coming down.  She pretty much loves everything…except homework!  But, she does enjoy school, and in her music class she is learning to play the recorder.

On the other hand, Shawn loves homework, and said her teach barely gives her any!  I had never heard that complaint until I got to hang out with Shawn, a current 5th grader that will be an Upper Inter Girl for her first summer at camp.  She is a very good student, and her favorite subjects are science and Spanish.  She is about to take a French class, and then when she is in 6th grade, she will have to pick a language to focus on.  One thing is clear about Shawn…she wants to go to camp right now!!  She wanted to know exactly how many more days were left until she could hop on the bus and then run into the lake!  We checked out the counter on the website so we could have an exact number, and I showed her this blog which helps introduce the new campers to the Canadensis family!

When we looked at the blog, my paper bracelet DIY was on top, and she wanted to learn how to do it.  It only took her about a minute to learn, and by the time I left she had already made herself a blue and gold bracelet, and she made me one in pink and green (which I’m wearing as I type!).  She and I have a lot in common – she is super crafty, and love crochet too!  She showed me a crochet blanket she is working on, and it’s REALLY good!  It’s pink and white stripes, and she’s doing a perfect job!

When I first met Shawn at Canteen on the Fly, we looked through the photo album of camp photos, and she remembered so much!  She remembered that COALS activity stands for Canadensis Outdoor Adventure Learning/Living Skills.  She’s really excited for the overnight, and that makes me happy because after arts and crafts, it’s definitely my favorite!  She is in her school chorus, so maybe she’ll lead her bunk in some sing-alongs while they are hiking out to the waterfall? She also plays the violin in the orchestra, but I don’t think she’s going to pack it for camp!

Although she will miss her parents, cute little brother and an adorable dog named Marley, she is ready for camp to start!

Behold the cuteness that is Aiden & Sydney!  They are the most adorable 2-year-olds walking around New York City, and they happen to be the children of my very best friend in the world!  I definitely don’t get to see this amazing family enough, but the last time we were together, I asked if they wanted to me to make them a hat like their favorite animal, and although they didn’t spend much time deliberating, Aiden requested a “Nemo” hat, and Sydney wanted a giraffe!  It’s been a while since I’ve done a crochet project for “I Made This Monday”, so I thought this would be a good time to show you how the hats turned out!

1:  Make the basic hat shape, and be sure to get a good head measurement, you don’t want it to be too small or too big (not to many kids want to wear a Nemo hat to high school!).

2:  Make all the appliques/attachments.  The photo above shows you that I had to make the eyes, tail, fins and stripes separately.  I think this gives a better finished look instead of trying to do a lot of yarn changes.

3.  One you have all the appliques, you have to sew them on.  This is probably my least favorite part!

4.  For the “horns” on the giraffe, I wanted them to stand up, so I used a tissue (clean of course!) to act as stuffing and keep them up!

5.  When all the appliques are attached, you have to weave in the ends of all the yarn so you can’t see the raw edges.

6.  Now the finished product is ready to be mailed to the twins!

Just looking at these hats make me ridiculously happy!