Hey there, Holidayers!

Each season provides us with its own specific atmosphere. And this particular season was made to be spent in the warm company of those who are dear to us. Despite the fact that it contains the coldest, darkest day of the year, we brighten the season up with our cheerfulness, our good will, and the company of our loved ones.

Just like I’m sure all of you do, I have plans to get together with my family during this holiday season. I’m taking the next few days off to be with them for our Christmas celebration. My family tends to get pretty into the holiday spirit, so there’s sure to be lots of food, festivities, and gifts!

I know I have all MY gifts wrapped up and ready for their recipients! I can’t wait to see what everyone in my family got for each other!

Every family has their own holiday traditions, and while traditions can be liable to change from time to time, some never will. I have a fairly big family: six siblings (including in-laws), three nieces, one nephew, and my mother. That’s a lot of presents, which is certainly a lot of work. But, despite how much effort is involved, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

In fact, our gift-opening is my favorite part about our Christmas Day traditions. The whole family grabs a cozy seat in the living room with carols playing in the background, we drink hot chocolate, and watch one-by-one as we all open our presents which previously surrounded the tree. It typically takes us about three hours!

From everyone here at Everything Summer Camp, we wish you nothing but the warmest wishes for you and your families’ holiday traditions. Enjoy the festivities and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Horrorheads!

Do you love the seasonal scare of Halloween and all its horrific elements? One fantastic element about getting into the Halloween spirit is being scared! That’s why people watch scary movies! We, here at Everything Summer Camp like to watch them too…well, MOST of us, anyway. I guess some of us might be too scared for a good horror flick *AHEM*—JULIANN!

I asked everyone about their favorite scary movies and most of them told me that they didn’t like scary movies. They then went on to share with me the one that they hated the most. I think that means it’s their favorite.

Naturally, I started with our President, Ed. He told me he didn’t really like scary movies. “The only good horror movie I’ve ever seen is ‘Silence of the Lambs’. They jumped the shark in the sequel, though.”

Next, I talked to our Vice President, Mark, who declared ‘Psycho’ as his favorite scary movie. “The original,” he clarified. “Give it to me in black and white with no special effects or gore—just a really creepy story to scare your pants off!”

Like Mark, our Operations Manager, Brian, had to clarify that his favorite scary movie is the original movie and not the remake. “’Let the Right One In’—NOT ‘Let Me In’! It’s not that the remake is bad, it’s just redundant and unnecessary,” he says.

Our receptionist, Tim, shared one of his favorites, ‘Event Horizon’, a sci-fi horror movie. Keisha, the Supervisor in the Call Center, gave me the zombie thriller ’28 Days Later’ for her favorite. And Matt, our Sales Director, said ‘Poltergeist’ always got to him.

Nate, Manager of our printshop at Screenprinting Direct, doesn’t really do scary movies, but he’s a big fan of Scooby Doo. I think that’s good enough.Out in the factory, Shirley, our Production Supervisor, says she’s a fan of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ and Teresa asked, “What about the ‘Saw’ movies?” Art, the maintenance/handyman around here threw out classics like ‘The Fly’, ‘Chucky’, and ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ before landing on the original ‘The Blob’ for his favorite.

Over in Shipping, Derek and Ryan both had a great time reminiscing about their old favorites. First, Derek said he liked those kinds of movies like ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’. His favorite, though, is ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’.

Ryan threw out ‘Halloween’, but then started speaking of another. “The one with the bees,” he said. After further investigation, he realized the movie was ‘Candyman’. “It looks stupid now,” he said after showing me the trailer. “But when I was nine, it scared me like crazy!”

As for myself, I like a story with some truth to it. Not just one of my favorite, scary movies, it’s one of my favorite movies—PERIOD—‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is a weird, crazy ride that really has you scratching your head and holding your breath!

So those are our favorites. WARNING: Some of these movies are rated R. If you watch these movies on channels like USA or TBS, you can watch them with the R-rated factor edited out. Of course, you should ask your parents’ permission to watch it as well. You don’t want to get nightmares, do you?! Happy Halloween, Scare Fans, and thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Halloweeners!

Halloween is right around the corner. It comes and goes so quickly; you’ve got to enjoy this time of year while it lasts, so I’ve compiled some great activities to help you have some Halloween fun this year! With ideas like these you’ll have a howlin’ good time on this horrifying holiday!

• First of all, get your house well-decorated! Having pumpkins, gourds, and jack-o-lanterns around the house—inside and out—always helps establish a spooky setting. Other decorations like ceramic figures or disturbing items to hang on the wall work well too.
  • Get crafty with decorations and make your own! When I was little, my mother and I made cool ‘Toilet Paper Roll Bats’ by covering toilet paper rolls in black construction paper, adding faces, and attaching them to invisible thread that got pinned to the ceiling. They were a lot of fun to make and my mother still hangs them today.
  • You can also make a weird wreath out of gourds. Just string them together on some wire, shape it into a circle, and hang it from your door. Add a black bow to make it extra frightening.
• You can turn the chore of raking into a fun time by stuffing your leaves into some ratty, old clothes, creating leaf people. It’s a fun, little project and it makes your neighbors do double-takes as they walk by.
  • Scarecrows are also fun to construct. Last year, I made one using just a couple pieces of wood screwed together to make a ‘t’, some curtain fabric, straw, twine, and a jack-o-lantern.
• If you’re really into Halloween and you have the right yard for the task, you can make a haunted house in your backyard for all your neighbors to cross…if they dare!
  • ‘The American Scream’ is a great documentary that features the homemade haunted houses of some people who get REALLY into Halloween! Check it out if you can. It’s great!

Hope these ideas have helped inspire you to make some decorations of your own! Don’t forget to get creative, and thanks for reading, folks!

- John

Sorry, there’s no Blog post today. It’s Labor Day, so I’m not working. I’m out having fun, like you should be.

Happy Labor Day from Everything Summer Camp!

- John

Hey, Libbers!

Today I’m sharing a Camp Lib I wrote just for our Production Supervisor—Shirley. Shirley makes camp trunks and she’s probably one of the best in the country at doing it. After 27 years of building them, we pretty much consider her an expert! You can read about how our camp trunks get made in the Camp Lib that Shirley helped fill out below (but you probably won’t learn anything from it!).

If you want, you can write down your own words for the blanks too. Just use the following list of requested words and you can make your own version of Shirley’s Camp Lib below. And remember—a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea; a verb is an action word; and an adjective is a word that describes a noun while an adverb is a word that describes a verb. Enjoy!

1. Verb
2. Adjective
3. Verb Ending in ‘ing’
4. Noun
5. Noun
6. Verb
7. Plural Noun
8. Past Tense Verb
9. Verb
10. Noun
11. Noun
12. Verb
13. Plural Noun
14. Plural Noun
15. Noun
16. Noun
17. Plural Noun
18. Noun
19. Noun
20. Verb Ending in ‘ing’
21. Adverb
22. Noun
23. Verb Ending in ‘ing’
24. Noun

Here’s the Lib:

When you jump out into our factory here at Everything Summer Camp (the home of C&N Footlockers), you’ll find our production crew quick at work. They’re skipping all year round to make all of our C&N camp trunks. What started out in a small garage 27 years ago now operates in a 24,000 square foot fish.

All C&N camp trunks are made from boat; so the first step is to slice the wood in our saw room. Then we cut our steel sheets with the metal husbands.

After we’ve snored the wood as well as the steel the next step is to limp one side of the wood with Durawrap paper lining. It’s grandkid-resistant, cat-free, and virtually fight-proof!

After that, we take all of the wood hikes and make footballs out of them at our Assembly shrew. Some of the boxes are shallow as they are made to be the bear of the trunk while the other, deeper boxes become the leaves of our trunks.

The next step is to attach our nickel-plated rubber duck and hardware—all of it done with a Philips head staple gun. This all happens at the swimming station.

Slowly, once all the trim, the latches, the handles, and the shoe have been attached, you’re lookin’ at the final product. The trunk then gets passed on to our Crying Department where it gets shipped out to you.

We hope you treasure your employee trunk forever!

Thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John