Hello Canadensis Friends! This will probably be my last time blogging from up at Camp Canadensis during the 2011 season because I’ll be moving back home to Philly tomorrow. The plan had been to move back after our Indian Summer/Family Camp Labor Day Weekend, but we lost power after Hurricane Irene and it just came back on last night! Unfortunately we had to cancel the weekend just in case we were still powerless.
During the 4 days with no power, it was actually really fun at camp! Some of the post-camp staff taught me how to play an awesome game called “Phase 10” which is kind of like UNO, but takes a lot longer to play (have I mentioned before that I love games!?) I also got to play some Monopoly with some of the full time staff, and to tell the truth…it got pretty interesting! Eric and Matt (who run the operations of camp) were incredible during the power outage, they hooked up a generator to the kitchen, so we still had great food, water, and a place to charge our cell phones!
Luckily we had beautiful weather during the day – so during down time it fun to ride bikes or go for walks, but at night it was totally dark. That was when we got creative – one night we had a Domino’s Pizza party for all the staff in Health Center (also hooked up to the generator) and I ended my nights reading by candlelight – it was great, and I finally finished the two books I had wanted to read all summer.
The best part of the power outage was that we had time to get crafty!! A big project that I started (and will likely finish in pre-camp next year) is refinishing some chairs and “camp-ifying” them! I found these awesome chairs up in our warehouse, and they are super sturdy with great bones, but they needed some love:
After unscrewing the seat cushion, I spent time cleaning off the years of dust, and stripping whatever paint I could remove. Then I got the spray paint out and covered the chairs (and my hands!) with a fresh coat of blue. Now, the truly fun part was recovering the cushion! These chairs will be in our Fabric Art program once they are finished, so I originally thought to take fun and different patterns of fabric from the fabric closet, but then Cara had the great idea to use Canadensis T-shirts!!! I cut the t-shirts up so that they were flat squares, and I used a staple gun to attach it to the cushion before screwing it back on to the wood. Here is what the finished project looks like:
Even Annie approves of the new chairs!! I hope this inspires you to get crafty! If you have any “Canadensis” themed crafts that you’d like to share, please send them my way!
