We hope to see many of our Westchester and Northern New Jersey families this Sunday at Canteen on the Fly!  We love Long Island…and we will be rescheduling our Canteen o the Fly for later in 2013!!

We had a blast last week in PA seeing campers and introducing new friends, check out some photos below! (I’ve brought back the frames!  Thanks to Cara and Matt for all the photos!)

With 2nd year, Lower Inter Anna!

Friends + Ice Cream…what’s better?  Jenna, Brooke, Kylie, Alexa and AlexaHaving a “cow” of fun with Avery, Haley, David and Group Leader, Pete Tarnoff!

Giving out t-shirts to campers like 4th year, Upper Inter, Tes!There were so many great colored in tees, this one by new Lower Inter, Sierra was amazing!!Some of the New CIT’s of 2013 with their fearless leader!  Mindy, Lauren, E-beth, Alix & Cara

More awesome designed tees, with new Junior camper Samara, and her brother!

Cara and I got to do a fun project today at work!  We used fabric markers to color in a brand new Camp Canadensis t-shirt, and the best part is that we hope you’ll get to do this project too at our Canteen on the Fly events in your area later this month!! All campers and counselors who attend the event get free ice cream and a t-shirt!  We wanted you to have an example of what the shirt can look like colored in…I went for a blue and gold theme, and Cara went for fun neon motif.  Here’s what they looked like halfway through…We’ll keep the final results as a surprise for when we see you at Canteen on the Fly!  I like my finished product, but Cara’s shirt is absolutely amazing (Eric and Matt agree!)…it’ll inspire you to make your own stunning and personalized shirt!  If you want to practice before testing it out on the t-shirt, you can print out this blank design:We hope you have our Canteen On The Fly events marked on your calendar…we’ll send out updated information about it soon!

I got to spend some time up at camp last weekend…and Camp Canadensis is beautiful no matter the season!  I’m sure a lot of you have never seen camp at this time of year, so I snapped a few photos to share with you.

First of all, Barrett Township (a group of 5 villages that includes Canadensis) is transformed during the month of October into “Scarecrowville”.  The town signs are all transformed, and Aunt Terri told me that even the post offices change their stamping machines to say Scarecrowville! 

(Mountainhome is a town right next to Canadensis)

Most of the homes and business in town were decorated – including a personal favorite…Callies Candy Kitchen!!!  Callies makes the most amazing sweet treats – it’s a great place to stop for last minute visiting day candy, or to visit after a tour of camp.  Our campers have the chance to win a trip to Callies during the summer if they keep their bunk the cleanest all summer!

Annie had a great time up at camp – it was a perfect day!  She missed all of you down by the lake…One of my last stops up in the Poconos was at a farm stand to pick out my pumpkin!  My neighborhood has a pumpkin carving contest each year, so I wanted to make sure I found a great canvas to work on.  I will be carving over the weekend (can’t wait for the pumpkin seeds!) and I’ll post photos of the finished product!Finally…last week while the Canadensis Crew was answering phones at the NPR Pledge Drive in Philadelphia, I got to meet Terri Gross from “Fresh Air“!  It’s a radio program that has been on NPR for more than 25 years and is broadcast nationally.  I listen to Terri’s show everyday on my drive home from work, and she’s the most incredible interviewer.  She’s talked to nearly every celebrity, and she explores great topics daily…she’s the radio version of Oprah!  Listening to her daily has really helped me get comfortable with interviewing people…which is something I do quite a lot in the winter office…we do have around 220 staff members to hire each year!  She is a role model of mine, and she was so gracious with her time.

Have you ever met a celebrity that you look up to, or your favorite celeb??  Email us photos so we can share it on Facebook!

I wanted to post some of our winter calendar in the hopes that we’ll be seeing you soon!

Friday, October 19th we will be volunteering answering phones for the NPR Pledge Drive, if you listen to NPR and would like to donate, give us a call between 10am-3PM at 1-888-345-9499 and a Camp Canadensis rep would love to chat with you!

Saturday, October 20th and Sunday, November 11th are chances for new families to book a tour of camp.  You must call ahead to reserve a spot, but if you are considering camp for 2013, come up and take a look!

We are hitting the road and coming to your town for Canteen on the Fly!  This annual program brings together new campers, returning campers, staff, alumni, prospective families…and anyone that wants to enjoy some ice cream and camp fun!  Saturday, November 10th we’ll be in the Philly Suburbs!  Monday, November 12 we’ll be seeing our Long Island campers while school is out for Veterans Day.  Our final leg of the tour will be on Sunday, November 18th in West Chester & Northern New Jersey.

Shortly after ringing in the New Year, we hope that all the 2012 campers and staff will plan to join us for the camp reunion!  Saturday, January 5th from 10:30-12:30 at Funtime America in Cliffwood, NJ.  Lunch is included.

There is even more to look forward to this winter…

-As always, myself, Brian and Eric will be doing home visits all throughout the winter getting to know our new campers.

-We’ll be letting you know about local community service events.

–New Camper bowling in April is a chance to start making camp connections for current K-4th graders.

–Staff hiring trips in Australia, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and more new destinations for 2013 is how we recruit an outstanding staff, and it leads to fun mini reunions for our staff in those areas.

Hope to see you soon!

Hi camp world! I’m really excited to be able to share my first post-camp reunion story! My sister [aka, Upper Senior counselor] Dani and I, along with my two best friends, spent last Saturday in beautiful NYC! We went in to town to see a play and ended up getting to meet Jake Gyllenhaal – talk about a crazy morning!

After some shopping we decided to meet up with my other favorite celebrity, [Upper Senior group leader] Alex Feigin, for dinner that night!

Alex and Dani put that photo on instagram and within minutes their Upper Senior girls were going crazy! Alex said that her parents we ALSO in town seeing the new Paul Rudd play – now, anyone who knows us knows that we LOVE Paul Rudd, specifically in his famous camp movie, so hearing that he was in town meant we HAD to get tickets. As it always is when we’re together, the man at the box office was able to give us rush tickets in 2 private boxes, we thought that was a pretty sweet setup!

After dinner we had some time before the show so we trekked uptown to one of my favorite places – Bendels! We were having the time of our lives in the headband room and Alex posed for this picture with her favorite accessory…

After lots of laughs and crazy hair pieces we went back downtown to see our show! My friends and I sat in one box, while Alex and Dani sat in the “Upper Senior Box”:

The actors in the play were absolutely amazing – we were all on the edge of our seats the whole time! After the show we waited outside for a chance to see Paul Rudd… we were NOT dissapointed:

I love NYC, I love seeing shows, and I LOVE my camp friends, so this was pretty much the perfect day! Dani and I are already planning our next trek for November, so hopefully we’ll have some more camp friend sightings to report! I hope you’re all making time to keep in touch with your camp friends throughout the winter, it definitely keeps the campsick-ness away!

I love this picture above – it is of Rachel & JMitch, the Presidential Gold Color War Captains, sitting with the rest of our amazing CITs of 2012 on the Amphitheater stage the last night of the summer while the whole camp sang the Color War Alma Maters one more time.  As the weather has dropped 20 degrees overnight, and I’ve been back in the winter office for nearly a month, it’s officially time to say goodbye summer, and start focusing on 2013!

Hopefully, a lot of you have been able to see camp friends (either in person or through Skype) and that you are keeping the memories alive!  I’m lucky to have this job where I get to “ThinkCamp!” all the time, but I got to see some camp friends who live a bit father away just a few days ago.  We mostly ate and enjoyed each others company, but we also did an arts & crafts project!  See below…

I hope by now that you’ve been introduced to the adorable Carli Forti…

Since Carli’s been living up in Canadensis with her parents Eric & Robin since she was less than a month old, she never really got her “crib” setup at home in the Philly suburbs.  (“Crib”…get it?)

Anyway, the furniture and bedding were great, but she was lacking some inspiring artwork – so the Camp Canadensis crew came to the rescue to ensure that her walls would make her room feel like a home.  We divided up tasks…Matt Unger, Sam Ginsburg, Dave Malter and friends worked mostly on hanging frames and a quilt.  I worked on some vinyl art work (similar to the kind we put up in the Camp Canadensis Welcome Center), which includes the tree below.  Once I got the branches up on the wall, everyone started adding flowers…including our Today Show Producer, Jason “JCal” Calabretta, and our Lower Juniors Group Leader, Melissa Torban.

We hope Carli enjoys her new room for a few months, but she’ll be back at her summer home before she knows it!

Happy October everybody! It was a chilly morning as I made my way into the office – I guess this means summer really is over! Now that we’re back in full swing in the office I’m really excited to get back to my blog – I’ve got so much exciting camp-themed fun lined up for this fall and I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Looking back over the summer, I can definitely say this was the BEST SUMMER EVER! So, as is usually my “first-blog-back” tradition, here are some of my favorite moments of the summer, captured on film for you all to see. The best part, I’m proud to say, is that I took all of these snapshots myself! I’m getting super proud of my photography skills and I loved toting my camera around with me, from Ithaca to Orlando, to capture the most amazing summer of our lives…

Credit to LMac for this one:

There are literally hundreds of photos I could post and still never show you what a fabulous summer we had. A picture is worth a thousand memories and this was a summer we’ll never forget 🙂

After months of planning and waiting, the first day of camp is about to begin!!  Campers have loaded onto buses, and we are just waiting for them to arrive at Canadensis so the summer can begin!

We cannot wait!!

We’ve been having a lot of fun at pre-camp!  As we are waiting for our full staff to arrive for orientation, BeckyJ has been up here doing all sorts of odd jobs, and getting crafty!  She made some super fun photo props that we’ll be using at the photo stations at dances this year, and we couldn’t help but try them out!

She’s also been using the Accucut to create posters for our TAC (Tagged At Canadensis) Program.  It recognizes campers that go above and beyond in making Canadensis a warm and caring place.  When a camper gets a TAC, they get a Camp Canadensis dogtag, and their name goes up in the Dining Hall.  BeckyJ made these cute posters to display the names!

You’ll see them in 15 days!

If you come to camp from PA or South Jersey, you’ve probably driven by the Stonewall Garden Center at the bottom of our camp hill a hundred times.  I stopped in there for the first time a few days ago with Aunt Terri & Cara, and I fell in love!  Gardening is one of the new hobbies I picked up this past year, and this place has some beautiful plants.  We picked out some plants that accentuate the absolutely beautiful setting we have at Camp Canadensis.  The hanging basket I’m holding is now at camp, and hanging outside the main entrance to the Dining Hall.Aunt Terri is a gardening pro…she knows what grows well in the Poconos, how to arrange everything, and how to keep it safe from the deer who like to eat plants as a midnight snack!  I learned so much from her, and we loaded up the car full of beautiful plants to bring home and place around camp.  We spent hours getting everything potted, and picking out the perfect spots…it was so much fun!  We hope you’ll enjoy seeing them this summer.  Only 17 more days to go!