It’s Eric Forti’s birthday…he may not be blogging but we have this special wish for him!

One of my favorite winter events is the Canteen on the Fly that we will be doing for the third time this year!  Since canteen is one of the favorite hang out spots at Camp Canadensis, we take the concept on the road, and set up gatherings at ice cream stores in communities where we draw a lot of families from.  We love seeing our current campers, new campers, and even people who are just interested in hearing more about Canadensis at these events.  ALL of us from the winter office are there, so it’s a great chance to get to know us better.

Check out the super cute graphic for the event (if you click on it, it will enlarge)!  I’ll hope to see you there in October!

I love finding Canadensis car magnets around town! This car was spotted in Blue Bell, PA on September 27th… who wants to claim their car?!

Here I am again in the winter office, summer 2011 still fresh in my mind and real as can be. I’m still not 100% back in the “off-season” mode yet- it’s still warm outside and feels like we should all be running around camp, wondering what was in the box! As I do every year, my first blog post after camp is always a collection of some of my favorite summer pictures! So, without further ado…

Well, that’s a pretty good representation of my summer in pictures. Stay tuned for updates about life in the off season, and a very special welcome from those CITs 2012!

Here is another photo of the Camp Canadensis Crew on our recent trip to Maine.  Even while riding the bus, we stick together…at the front!

This week I was fortunate enough to take a trip with some of the ‘Canadensis Crew’ pictured above.  From left to right – Director Brian Krug, Assistant Director Pam Levi (me!), Girls Head Counselor Robin Forti, Director Eric Forti and Owner Neil Sukonik.  We attended the American Camp Association  “Residential Camp Conference” which takes us each year to visit the facilities of many of the great camps in the Northeast.  This year, we took the trip all the way up to Maine, and we got to share ideas and learn from other camp directors while taking in the sights of some beautiful campgrounds.

All of us at Canadensis love to collaborate with other camp directors – we think it strengthens us as a movement, and helps make the Canadensis experience better for our campers and families.

When we got into Maine, we had a little bit of downtime in Freeport near our hotel, so we explored town and found an incredible bakery “When Pigs Fly” – seriously, go check it and and order some of the most incredible bread ever! –  www.sendbread.com – We also saw the original LLBean which is now a huge store open around the clock.  Here is a photo of Robin and I in front of a huge hiking boot!

Comic Book Blue

Gold Arcade

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!

One of my favorite summer roles is showing new families around Canadensis – every time I give a tour to a family that is looking at sleepaway camps I feel like I get to see Canadensis for the first time!  I also get to meet a lot of great people by giving tours, and when the new kids start Canadensis I already have a connection with them.  One of the great things about being at camp through September is that we are still giving tours of our facility, and it’s not too late to set up a time to see Canadensis if you are still looking for summer camp in 2012.

The director of our Photography program at camp this summer was very talented, and he took some incredible shots of our facility that will be popping up on our website and media outlets in the next few months.  Below is a compilation of some of my favorite frames…and these facilities look even better when you come tour camp!

2011 has come to a close – we said goodbye to all our campers and staff nearly a week ago, and we miss everyone so much!  Since it is Friday, all of us who work for camp full time just blasted the Glee version of the song “Friday” throughout the office.  It reminds us of the way our Today Show producer, Jason “JCal” Calabretta used to play the song at Friday Morning Line Up, and the way we used to dance on the stage…don’t you just love camp traditions?

I’m still up at camp, and will stay up here until the end of Labor Day.  Luckily I have great company with Cara, Eric, Brian & Matt!  One of my favorite post-camp jobs is going through all the photos that Lauren “LMac” McGuire took this summer and put on the website for our families.  I’m creating a library of images that we’ll use throughout the winter, and when I finish, I’ll post some of the absolute best in the blog…there are a lot of choose from!  The photo above is another camp tradition…we wear our Color War team color, and spell out numbers of the year.  This will be turned into a poster, and given out at the reunion this winter, but this is a sneak peek!