Hey, Plant People!

Do you have an affinity for the botanical world of trees, flowers, vegetables, and everything in between? If so, then today is right up your garden alley. Today is Plant Appreciation Day—a day designated to celebrate and enjoy all the plant life around us! The plant life kingdom helps us out every day in ways that we rarely consider. Let’s take today to consider just some of those things that plants do for us every day!

All I Need is the Air that I Breathe
Plants breathe just like we do with one major exception—they don’t inhale oxygen, they inhale carbon dioxide. And they exhale oxygen! How nice for us (and them) that we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. My sister shares her birthday with Plant Appreciation Day and, appropriately, she cares for nearly a hundred houseplants. They clean the air and boost her spirits! So much greenery tends to brighten attitude! And Happy Birthday, Kim!

Mouth-Watering Menu
So, they supply us with the air we need to breathe! That’s pretty significant. What else? How about some amazing nutritional foods that grow right out of the earth?! A staggering variety of vegetables and fruit grow from plants in all different kinds of places! Also, the animals that we eat are sustained by the wild-growing vegetation; so even if fruits and veggies aren’t your favorite, they still play a huge role in your diet!

Wood You Do Me a Favor?
As I already mentioned briefly, plants boost our spirits and brighten our attitudes. Giving us clean air is helpful for sure, but trees go above and beyond. Producing negative ions (which is essentially the energy of the earth), provides countless benefits for us like improving our mood, reducing pain, and boosting our energy. While plant life in general puts out negative ions, a walk in the woods is where you’re likely to get a noticeable dose!

Today is a perfect opportunity to get closer to the plant world. Take a woodsy hike. Buy some houseplants. Plant some seeds. Propagate a plant and give it to a friend! Give up thanks for all that plants do for us today and, as always thanks to YOU for reading!

- John

Hey, Leafy Green Lovers!

Today is a day dedicated entirely to just a single little leaf that packs such a monstrous punch of protein, iron, fiber, a crazy amount of vitamins, and various other incredibly beneficial nutrients. Today is National Spinach Day. It may not look like much, but this is one incredibly versatile vegetable that can add a lot with just a little to a menu of different meals!

One of the beauties of spinach is that it’s good to eat raw or cooked (although cooking actually releases more of the benefits)! Some people snack on spinach leaves. My mother will make mini cucumber, spinach leaf sandwiches using spinach leaves as the bread and a cucumber coin in the middle. Pretty healthy snacking, Ma!

It’s such an easy thing to simply throw it into the mix with a big garden salad. It’s great at adding some variety to all the lettuce leaves working as the foundation. And—not to knock lettuce—but spinach is a million times better for you.

But the simplicity of spinach doesn’t stop there. Along with being an easy salad add-in, spinach is just as easy to add to your soups, going in virtually any soup. Put it in a bean soup. Put it in a potato soup. Put it in a mushroom soup. Put it in a stew. And the great thing is, you don’t really even need to cook it. Just put it in the pot at the very end. Stir it in and the heat of the freshly made soup do all the ‘cooking’ it needs.  

After adding it to salads and soups, you can add it to so many other things! Put it in with casseroles, chop it up and add it to an omelet; blend it up with milk and blueberries for a delicious smoothie! The possibilities go on and on!

Appreciate this amazing little source of so many essential vitamins as well as minerals like iron and zinc—not to mention the awesome nitrates it has stocked up. Enjoy adding this awesome leafy green to your meals and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Here at Everything Summer Camp we have an idea of the effort and hard work that goes into all the preparations and operations for the summer camp season! There are so many different working parts to making sure kids have a blast at camp. So, today—National Employee Appreciation Day—we’re highlighting all the hardworking staffers that make summer camp happen all over the country each year.

Camp Nurse
From scrapes to illnesses and conditions, kids need care throughout their camp stay. Every summer camp keeps at least one nurse on call at all times throughout the camp season so they can ensure that the week/s long stay is safe for everyone.

Camp Kitchen Staff
Campers need to eat! The camp kitchen staff works similar to your school kitchen workers, however, camp is providing three square meals a day and typically a snack and dessert as well. For many camps, two shifts need to be filled in the kitchen.

Camp Custodian
There’s plenty of cleanup in the camp season, cleaning the cabins and buildings, emptying the trash, cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, washing the linens, and plenty more. Depending on the size of the camp, there may be a staff involved.

Camp Groundskeeper
Groundskeeping means lots of work outdoors, mowing grass, raking leaves, clearing hiking trails, winterizing the grounds, picking up trash, and doing many other tasks to maintain the land. Like the custodial position, the size of the staff depends on the size of the camp.

Camp Lifeguard
Just about every summer camp offers swimming and other activities involving water. Lifeguarding at camp typically isn’t any different than lifeguarding at your local pool or beach: Lifeguards who meet state regulations are required to be present.

Camp Administration
The Big Cheese and other head honchos (a.k.a. camp directors and their administrative staff with an account director and public relations director) handle finances and dealings with press releases, the media, mailings, and camper relations during the off-season.

Camp Counselors
Saving the best for last, the counselors of a summer camp spend the most time interacting with the campers and impart the cool knowledge and skills that they’ve been trained on or likely even were taught a handful of years back when they were a camper.

So, as you can see, there’s plenty of work that goes into making summer camp happen every year. Take some time to reach out to the staff from your camp who have gone above and beyond to make your camp experience something special! Write them a letter or send them a camp-themed greeting card which you can find by clicking here. Happy Employee Appreciation Day and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Fairy Talers!

Happy Tell a Fairy Tale Day! It’s appropriate to ‘tell’ a Fairy Tale as they had been passed down from generation to generation by mouth, subtly altered from storyteller to storyteller. It wasn’t until they were recorded in the written form that they were substantially reworked and, in a sense, frozen in time. Check out this Blog post from a few years back to learn the history of Fairy Tales.

One thing’s for sure; Fairy Tales have withstood the test of time and have come out on top. What is it about these interesting stories from long, long ago that has kept us captivated for so long? Well, they’re more than just entertaining stories. They help us grow! Here are several examples of how Fairy Tales foster maturity.    

Moral Compass
Fairy Tales help develop our sense of right and wrong with strong moral lessons and exaggerated personalities that embody good or evil. Anyone can see that the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is a villain and that Red is a sweet, young girl.

Trust Must be Earned
Along with right and wrong, Fairy Tales impart lessons to be careful who you trust. We recognize her mistake when Snow White takes the witch’s apple. The lesson here being that strangers may seem nice on the surface, but they cannot always be trusted. People should have to earn your trust.

A Fan of Firsts
Childhood and life in general are full of firsts. You’ve got a first day of school, first time at camp, first recital.... It depends on what it is, but first times can be anxiety-inducing. We tend to put ourselves in a character’s place when we hear a Fairy Tale so we imagine ourselves embarking on a journey.

Cause and Effect
We see in Fairy Tales that actions have consequences. The actions of the characters is what determines their fate. And the consequences are extreme: Cinderella maintained a pure heart and became a princess. Her evil step-mother let her heart remain black and her fate was rather grim.

Enjoy finding a favorite of Fairy Tales you know and share it with a friend or family member today to celebrate National Tell a Fairy Tale Day. See what lessons you learn from them and, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey, Friends!

Today is Make a Friend Day. Make a Friend Day is all about appreciating the people you consider to be your pals. Whether it’s your best friend since the first grade or somebody friendly that you met today, friends are important to have in your life. When you are blessed with the gift of friends, you don’t need anything else because your friends are there to help you out.

All too often we’re stuck living the busy side of life that demands that we work, work, work!!! But when you finally get a break, you want some good company to enjoy the good times with and to help make the fun even more fun. You want somebody you call a friend!

Friendships usually take a little bit of time and a little bit of effort before you become best buds. So don’t be scared in case you hang out with somebody new and you don’t have an absolute blast. Does that mean you just aren’t ever going to be friends? No. You just haven’t had the chance to be comfortable around each other yet.

It’s a great learning experience—making friends. After all, you learn all about another person and learn how to communicate in their style. You learn what you have in common with them. And what you don’t have in common as well.

Sometimes making friends is just as easy as finding someone who seems approachable. Is there that kid at school that you see in the cafeteria all the time, but never talked to before? Go up and introduce yourself. Ask a thing or two about them. People love it when you take a casual interest in their lives—it’s flattering. So you’d be off to a good start by just doing that.

You may end up fast friends. Take the next opportunity you find where you can introduce yourself to somebody new at school, or camp, or anywhere else that fate would have it. Maybe you’ll make your best friend today! Best of luck. As always, thanks for reading!   

- John