Hey, Camp Shoppers!

Here at Everything Summer Camp, we feel like shopping for your summer camp gear should be just as much fun as summer camp itself. Okay, summer camp’s pretty fun! Maybe not quite THAT much fun. But pretty fun, right?! We’re always trying to give our customers something to enjoy whether it be our cool contests, our personalizable products, or our sweet sales!

Along with our durable construction, awesome product selection, and outstanding customer service, we like to throw in perks to shopping with us where we can. We hold sales and have giveaways. But you have to wait on us in those instances. For something you can go do right now—sign up for our ‘Happy Camper Rewards Club’!

Sign Up
Here’s a perk to shopping our online store that’s always going on. No need to wait on us to greenlight anything or give you the go-ahead. The button for our ‘Happy Camper Rewards Club’ is located in the bottom left corner of our homepage. Click that button and sign up so you can start earning S’more Bucks! We’ll give you 300 S’more Bucks just for doing that!

S’more Bucks are our campy term for loyalty points. How much is one S’more Buck? The equivalent of one U.S. penny. Thus, a hundred S’more Bucks adds up to a dollar…a thousand S’more Bucks is ten dollars…etc.

Earn Bucks
There’s a handful of ways that you can earn S’more Bucks and they’re all so easy it only makes sense for you to start! The first way to earn S’more Bucks is to make a purchase at Everything Summer Camp. For each dollar you spend, you get five S’more Bucks! Here are all the ways to earn your Bucks:

• Make a Purchase => 5 S’more Bucks for each Dollar Spent
• Follow us on Twitter => 50 S’more Bucks
• Like us on Facebook => 100 S’more Bucks
• Follow us on Instagram => 100 S’more Bucks
• Sign up to Receive Emails from us => 300 S’more Bucks
• Tell us your Birthday => 500 S’more Bucks
• Refer a Friend => 1000 S’more Bucks

It probably only takes about two minutes to sign up for a Rewards Account, tell us your birthday, and sign up for our emails. And for just that, you get $12.00 in S’more Bucks! It probably only takes five minutes to do everything listed above and just for that, you get $23.50 in S’more Bucks! We’re happy to give away the free money in exchange for our customers to engage and shop with us!

Reap Benefits
The easiest way to use your S’more Bucks is to redeem them whenever you go to checkout. With minimal effort, you’ll have your own, personal discount on your order. The other way to use you S’more Bucks is to give a voucher to a friend or family member (in case you’re in the giving spirit)! Vouchers work just like a gift card code—just enter it when you check out and your discount will be applied to the order!

So shop with us and have a blast while doing it! Enjoy watching your S’more Bucks accumulate. Enjoy spending your S’more Bucks. And enjoy making your S’more Bucks back! As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

The recommended camp outfitter for more than 270 summer camps, we here at Everything Summer Camp are proud to work with every single one of them! And we love singing the praises of the many camps with whom we’ve developed a working relationship too. That’s why today I’m shining our camp spotlight on the magnificent Birch Rock Camp for Boys.

Birch Rock Camp for Boys has sat on the shores of tranquil Lake McWain in Waterford Maine for nearly one hundred years—since 1926. Proud to be the smallest boys camp in the state of Maine, Birch Rock only takes 90 boys each summer to create a close-knit and deep-rooted community every season.

Birch Rock offers a plethora of incredible activities such as Baseball, Basketball, Lacrosse, Soccer, and Tennis for sports as well as Archery and Riflery, Biking, Ropes Course, and Outdoor Skills for adventures. In the water, they offer Canoeing, Kayaking, Windsurfing, Sailing, Swimming, and more. Boys at Birch Rock can also take some pretty cool classes that focus on Arts & Crafts, Drawing, Painting, Pottery, Shop, and more!

For downtime at camp, Birch Rock boys can enjoy browsing all the options available in the camp’s cozy library in the woods. Find some great reads here and, on special occasions, partake in card game or board game with your camp friends.

With less than a hundred boys each summer, Birch Rock Camp assigns just four campers to stay in each one of their cozy cabins. Birch Rock Camp has a great, knowledgeable, and welcoming staff!

Besides the comfortable cabins of Birch Rock’s Lower Camp, Birch Rock offers awesome facilities like their outdoor areas of courts and baseball diamond and soccer field, Ropes Course, Biking Trails, and their beautiful Lake McWain waterfront. They have the Woodshop, Boathouse, Health Lodge, and much more. Get a good look at Birch Rock Camp on their website by clicking right here 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, Camp Folks!

We’re studying all those turns of phrase and old sayings that are woven so deeply into our language that we may not even realize that we’re using one when we do. These sort of sayings are more specifically referred to as idioms or adages.

Today’s featured saying is ‘A Horse Apiece’. What are the horses and the pieces being referenced here?

We’re based in northwestern Wisconsin here at Everything Summer Camp and, apparently, so is this adage. For whatever reason, its usage has remained primarily contained to the state of Wisconsin along with parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We’ll look into that more in just a little bit, but first—

What Does "A Horse A Piece" Mean?

What does this adage mean? It’s really just a way of saying that there’s essentially no difference between a couple of options.

If someone asked which of 2 routes to the airport was quicker and both routes were a five-minute drive, you could reply, ‘It’s a horse apiece’. A synonymous phrase is ‘Six of one and a half dozen of the other’ in other words, it's the same difference.

 Let’s start digging for the origin of today’s adage.

Origins of the Phrase "A Horse A Piece"

The likeliest origin of this phrase comes from old dice games (back sometime in the 1800s).

While there is an old dice game called ‘Horse’, the phrase ‘A Horse Apiece’ was used in a wide variety of games. It was used to refer to a situation when two players are throwing for the best two out of three. When the first two throws result in a tie, then it was said that you were to have a horse apiece. A predecessor to this phrase is an even more basic version of it: ‘a horse and a horse’.

These dice games and the phrases that come along with them used to be popular much more widespread than they are today. In keeping with the tradition of the phrase we thought it would be fun to list some of our favorite camp games to play best two out of three.

Our Favorite Camp Game to Play Best Two Out of Three

If you consider yourself competitive, chances are you don’t like to settle for only playing a game one time. 

Neither do we, so below we’ve decided to list some of the camp games we love to play using best two out of three rules.

Horseshoes

Horseshoes are the original backyard game to play with family and friends during cookouts and get-togethers. Our freestyle horseshoes set is perfect for summer camp because it’s lightweight, portable, and can be set up for both inside and outside use.

Eno TrailFlyer

Like a mix of cornhole and skee-ball there’s nothing better than geting your ENO TrailFlyer setup once you’ve made camp. 

Perfect for 1v1 or 2v2 games, the ENO TrailFlyer brings a lightweight, easy, and no knots version of your favorite backyard game wherever the trail takes you.

4-in-a-Row

This travel size classic 4-in-a-row game folds up into its own case, and fits easily into any backpack or bag. If you’re looking for a fun game to sit down and play once you reach the top of the mountain, you can’t go wrong with 4-in-a-row.

Bocce

A traditional bocce ball set is a bit too heavy to justify packing for camp or bringing on the hiking trail. 

Our backpack bocce ball set uses smaller balls that are lighter than standard bocce balls for a game of bocce that can transported almost anywhere! The backyard bocce set has everything you need to play including 8 low-density balls, 1 jack ball, a measuring tool, instructions and carrying pouch. 

Now bocce can be played anywhere, anytime.

Card Games

There are so many card games that are great for camp. Some of our every summer all-time favorites are:

• UNO
• Skip-Bo
• Phase 10
• Old Maid

One of the great pastimes of summer camp was becoming UNO cabin champion and then taking on the other best UNO players in other cabins.

Wisconsin's Unique Connection to the Idiom

So why is this phrase  originally about being tied in a best-of-three series so strongly associated with Wisconsinites in the current day? Oddly enough, the phrase seems to have simply died off in most other places and stuck in this particular part of the United States.

I would love to hear more people start using this phrase outside of Wisconsin—it’s a great way to quickly relay that there’s no difference between two possibilities.

As always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John