Check out these awesome shoes camper JAKE GARFINKLE created!

Avery, Haley, Brittney and Ruby – all Lower Junior Girls

What a fun day!  On Sunday, we welcomed many of our super fabulous and awesome new campers at a bowling party in North Jersey!  The New Camper Bowling event is a great chance for campers to get to know each other, and we had families attend from states as far away as Maryland and Connecticut…we have the most dedicated Canadensis Parents ever!  I wanted to upload a few photos from the event so you could get an idea of what we did, and you can see more photos by liking us on Facebook here. 

I love a good game!  I’m helping 2nd year Junior Girl, Jordan

After putting on our name tags on, we started playing “New Camper Bingo” which is a great ice breaker that helps campers meet each other.  Each paper has a grid with 25 boxes that says things like…”Find a camper who…can do a cartwheel…has been to the top of the Empire State Building…has been in a show…can touch their tongue to their nose…etc”.  The campers race to meet new kids and find people who fit the description so they can write them in the box.

We end New Camper Bingo with the campers showing off their skills

When the game wraps up, we all come together and have a good laugh.  Then we break up into bowling lanes, and get to know even more campers!  Between all the great people to meet and delicious pizza to eat, we actually don’t do that much bowling!!  However, I did see a bunch of great strikes and spares on the lanes…

The last thing we do is take a group photo, so check out the great photos we took with our incoming campers!A HUGE thank to to all our staff & staff parents that were there for the day!  We’ll be formally introducing you to our Canadensis family soon.  An extra big thank you to Pete Tarnoff for always being willing to help!

I hope you have been enjoying the amazing weather we are having on the East Coast!  Today is another beautiful day (I can see it from my office window) and it reminds me how quickly camp is coming!  During the summer, one of my favorite afternoon snacks is to drink a Fresca, with a special straw…I actually use a Red Vine!  Red Vines are a much better version of the popular twizzler candy.  I know some people who don’t love the taste, but I think it’s a far superior candy, and it works really well as a straw!  When you drink it with the Fresca soda, it starts to melt and you get an extra burst of “fruitiness” with your drink!

I mentioned that this was one of my favorite snacks to Ilana and Alexis while I was giving them a tour of camp last summer, and they actually remembered!!  When I went to visit them this winter in NY, they gave me a parting gift with Red Vines and Fresca, and today was the perfect day to start enjoying them!  Thanks girls!

(Alexis and Ilana)

I’m excited to see you, and many more of our new campers at our New Camper Bowling Event this Sunday…it’s going to be so much fun!

Pete as Color War Counselor Captain in 2008

Pete Tarnoff, Group Leader
Kutztown University, Elementary Education.

Years at Camp: 14

Favorite Camp Memory: Color War 2008, being a Counselor Captain for Tropical Gold.

Advice for first year staff: Care about what you do. If you care about the kids and take pride in being a great counselor, the rewards are endless.

One thing you’re going to do this summer that you’ve never done before: I want to try and learn to wakeboard during free time if possible. I’ve been wanting to try it for years.

Advice for a first time camper: ENJOY EVERY MINUTE!!! The friends you will make will be treasured for a lifetime. You don’t get to be a Camper forever. ENJOY IT!!!

Some of our Canadensis families met us yesterday at the Jewish Relief Agency warehouse, which meets once a month to pack up food items, and then delivers it to households in need.   I know I usually blog on Monday’s about crafts…but I’m so impressed with the boxes of food we made and delivered yesterday, so I wanted to show you pictures from our awesome families that volunteered their Sunday morning!  Many people in the Philadelphia community come together each month to make JRA happen – and we like going in March to help with the Passover deliveries.  You can see how busy the warehouse was in the photo above!The first step of the process is that our volunteers grab an empty box, and walk down the line as other volunteers load it up with food.  It gets very heavy by the end of the line, but Rachel (a Junior Girl, shown above) was eager to do more heavy lifting!  Noah (a Upper Inter Boy) and Josh (a Lower Senior boy, both shown below), made many trips through the “conveyor belt” style line, loading up on things like matzah, carrots, gefilte fish, tomato sauce, crushed pineapple, potatoes and grape juice.The second step of the process is actually getting to deliver the boxes of food.  When we deliver as a group, they give us an apartment building where a lot of people are waiting for these boxes of food, so we can all be together.  When we got there, we unloaded all 60 of our boxes, and then we need to make sure each of them are going to the right place!  Valerie (a Upper Inter Girl, shown below) labeled each one with big, clear numbers.It was a really great event, and we definitely appreciate everyone who came out to help!  We have been helping JRA make deliveries for 4 years!  During the summer, we do it with our CIT’s, and we will plan to do it again next March…hope you will join us!

Some of our campers call today “Double Digit Day” because it is the day when we go from hundreds of days until camp, down to less than 100 days…hence, we are in the double digit figures!!  Can’t wait for summer 2012 at Camp Canadensis!!

My parents came to visit me in Philly this weekend, and it was so much fun!  We went to tour some of the historical sights…like the Constitution Center (which had an amazing Bruce Springsteen exhibit!), Independence Hall (where the Constitution was signed) and the Italian Market (a fresh air market, and my favorite place to stock up on veggies).  We also spent some time at the Philadelphia Flower Show, which was amazing!  The theme was Hawaii, and the florists created amazing displays with waterfalls, volcanoes, etc.   We were there on the last day of the 9 day show…so all the vendors were trying to get rid of their stock of flowers.  In the few hours we were there, we saw the price of a dozen roses go from $10 each, to 3 dozen for $10!!

So, of course I bought three dozen roses, and when I got home, I tried to get creative with my flower arrangements…I don’t know a ton about flowers – but plants in general has become a recent hobby for me.  I do know that you are suppose to cut the stems of your freshly bought flowers on a slant, under water.  In the photo above, I’m adding baby’s breath – a filler flower – to round out my arrangement of white roses.This is how it turned out…probably my favorite overall!  I had some clementines that weren’t tasting very good anymore, so I put them in the bottom of the glass vase, and I think it brought some fun color to the arrangement.I spread the three different bouquets around my house, and they make me smile every time I walk by.

I’ve been planting a bunch in my tiny city yard as well, when things start to bloom this Spring, I’ll post photos here.  I can’t believe it’s almost spring…that means camp is around the corner, only 103 days to go!

It’s a warm Friday afternoon in the camp winter office, and we have a special visitor today…my mom!!  My parents live in Arizona, but they are visiting me in Philadelphia for the weekend, and while my Dad is off doing consulting work, my Mom is hanging out with us here in the office!  As you can see, no one gets to just sit around when they are at work…we actually have a lot of stuff to do each day!  She’s putting together a mailing right now, and next she’ll be organizing some of our camp t-shirts.  It might not be tons of fun for her, but I’m loving having her here!

Now, for many of you campers out there, you may not have ever attended a wedding (I went to my first one at age 24!) but it’s a really fun celebration.  It has some similiaries to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, but it’s for two people who are in love.  It’s a really great time to get creative and crafty, and make something either as a gift or as something that might be helpful to the celebration.

Wedding Craft #1: (pictured above) is from Robin & Eric Forti’s wedding at Camp Canadensis in 2010.  It was a really fun celebration and many people decided to stay at camp, but some guests stayed at a big hotel down the road.  The couple provided bus transportation for the guests who weren’t at camp, but they wanted to have a sign on the bus so everyone knew it was for the wedding.  Eric’s mom and I had a great time painting the banner you see above.  Eric’s mom does great bubble letters, and we had fun picking out paint colors.  We put a lace border on the banner, and we used A LOT of tape to attach it to the bus because we didn’t want it to fly off while driving down the road!

Wedding Craft #2: From time to time, guests are asked to make a scrapbook page that is presented before the wedding at a bridal shower, and when the pages of all the guests come together, the bride & groom have a great book full of pictures and memories.   I definitely do not consider myself a great scrapbooker, but I like the way this page turned out for my cousin Mandy and her husband Phil.  Mandy and I grew up at camp together, but unfortunately I couldn’t find a good photo from those days…however, I did have some great pictures from our family reunion at camp, so you can see them playing softball and working in the camp woodshop in the top right corner.

Wedding Craft #3: Whenever I’ve been asked to be in a bridal party (it’s one of my favorite things to do for my close friends!) I’ve always asked if I can help with any of the “crafty” things leading up to the wedding.  I’ve made the baskets of “necessities” that go in the bathrooms during the event, I’ve made the bags that guests get when they check into their hotel, I’ve done table numbers and place cards, and even helped with programs.  But my all time favorite craft to make is a “bridal hoodie” – something the bride can wear on the morning of their wedding as they get prepped and gorgeous for the big event.  Below is my friend Julie, who married her husband Josh…hence the “J+J” on the front with their wedding date.

On the back, I put a mixture of their two last names (because she kept her maiden name) and most importantly, I attached a “bridal veil” into the hood!  No one could mistake that she was the bride, and she got all the special pampering a bride deserves.  It was easy to cut the veil out when it was time to wash the hoodie, and I know she enjoyed wearing it throughout the honeymoon…

I hope you enjoyed seeing these crafts – I have a bunch more, so maybe I’ll do a part two in the future.  Looking at my tan in the photo above make me excited for the warm summer days we’ll all get to enjoy at Camp Canadensis soon!