Hey, Camp Fans!

Summer gets busy fast—especially near the end; we all want to fit in as much fun in the sun as we can before the season ends. But make sure you don’t miss out on the opportunity to share your camp stories with the widespread camp community, not to mention win a cool participatory prize from Everything Summer Camp!

With August in full swing, there’s no time to dally! Get your memories written up and send your submissions into us—our final call is just two and a half weeks away on August 31.

Don’t forget: Everyone who submits gets a $15 gift certificate to Everything Summer Camp! But on top of that, the ante is getting upped for this year’s Camp Story Contest! Instead of seven, this year we’ll have ten random winners.

Our first randomized winner will receive our top prize of a $250 gift card to use on our website! Two more winners will receive $100 gift cards to our site. Three random winners will get $50 gift cards. And four random winners will receive $25 gift cards.

Articulating all your new camp experiences on paper helps you process and reflect on all the things you learned. If you’re not exactly sure what you’d like to write about, you can check out some ideas on the previous Share Your Camp Story post I wrote last month. Check it out by clicking here to see it.

In your submissions, please include your first name as well as your last name initial, what camp you visited, and how long you’ve been going to camp. Parents are more than welcome to send us their submissions to let us know how the camp experience was on their end too!

We enjoy hearing your camp stories so much we can barely wait to receive a fresh new collection of stories from this year! Share your stories by clicking right here. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey, Back to Schoolers!

Everything Summer Camp has an excellent selection from the Three Cheers for Girls brand. And where there’s Three Cheers for Girls, there’s bound to be Back-to-School products! Lo and behold—backpacks, lunchboxes, and locker décor for the return to your education. But you won’t find these products on our website.

What’s going on here?

No, I’m not trying to trick you. We really do have these products and you really can’t find them on our online store. We’re doing something a bit different. Normally, we’d announce our back-to-school products on our website, but this year we’ve sent our products over to Amazon.

Knowing that a lot of our customers are also Amazon Prime members, we thought you might appreciate saving on shipping fees by shopping Everything Summer Camp products on the Amazon site. See, on our site you can get free shipping for orders that reach $49 and over. At Amazon, however, you can get free shipping simply with Prime Membership.

Check out the awesome Three Cheers for Girls Back-to-School products available on Amazon right now! We’ve got:

Locker Wallpaper Sets
Decorating your locker makes the little world inside more fun, more functional, and, of course, more YOU! It adds some spice and pep to an otherwise gray, monotone landscape. Every glammed out locker starts with the Lockers 101 Wallpaper Set! Get your pick from pretty patterns like Unicorn Stars, Mermaids, Celestial, and Aquatic Scribbles.

Magnetic Mirror
You’ll love checking your glamorous self in this 6″ Magnetic Locker Mirror! Pick your favorite pattern to cover the frame of your mirror with the cutesy Aquatic Scribbles, or Celestial Glitter, or Unicorn Stars and enjoy your own image when you go into your locker.

Backpacks and Lunch Boxes
Everybody needs a Backpack and Lunch Box for school! Keep with the Three Cheers spirit and get yourself covered with the awesome available designs they’ve designed. Bring your textbooks and lunch to school in style!

Enjoy getting your cool school products for the returning school year. Shop the links in this post from now until the end of September while supplies last. Good luck in the coming school year and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Campfire Kids!

Happy National Campfire Day to everyone! Of course, we all enjoy keeping warm around a fire on a cool night! But it’s even more fun when you can do it while sitting in a circle of friends, sharing stories and getting mesmerized by the flames. And don’t forget the cherry on top with some delicious hot chocolate or roasted s’mores! After all, they’re as much a part of the campfire experience as the firewood is.

The campfire continues to be fed in order to keep on burning, but how did the flames first start growing and reaching upward? How does a fire get started?

Well, some people prefer to stand on the shoulders of society and bring a lighter when they go camping—or maybe they opt to ‘rough it’ with a book of matches. But there are other folks who really want the woodsy challenge and experience of making a fire from a more primitive fashion.

If you want to go all out with the bear necessities, all you really need in order to stoke a spark is a couple good pieces of wood along with some tinder and a good woodcutting knife. Creating heat through friction from rubbing wood against wood is a difficult, but eventually productive method.

Flint and steel with charcloth is a popular choice for people who want to cut the challenge back a little bit. They bring these items along so they can strike the flint against the steel.

This striking shoots sparks into your prepared pile of tinder with the charcloth on top. Hopefully the charcloth starts to burn enough from the sparks that it can pass the heat along to the tinder below and get that burning. From there, you can start burning your smaller twigs and sticks before moving onto your firewood.

So make the best of the today’s holiday and go enjoy the beautiful weather of the great outdoors. Stay safe and good luck, campin’ folks. And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Summer Camp Fans!

There are plenty of celebrities who happen to be former summer campers and we love featuring these famous names to learn a little about them. Celebrities who had attended camp were featured in 2013 and, since then, I’ve covered over 100 celebrities on this Blog! Having covered so much ground, now I’m going back to retread some of the big names who were already featured years ago to get a closer look.

In his previous post, I shared that Mr. James Franco not only got his claim to fame from the cult classic TV show ‘Freaks and Geeks’ from 1999 but also attended a four-week program at Innerspark: California State Summer School for the Arts where he focused on a variety of artistic media from Dance to Film to Theater and Creative Writing and more!

But let’s dig deeper to see what makes this Hollywood heart throb tick…

James of all Trades
James got a lot out of his four-week stay at Innerspark! Not only did he come out a famous actor, but the guy is also a painter, an author, a professor, as well as a musician. Talented is an understatement to describe Mr. Franco.

Cashier Acting
Against his parents’ advice, James quit school at UCLA to pursue an acting career. He got a job at McDonald’s to support himself till he started landing roles and used his time talking to the customers to practice his different accents. He eventually returned to UCLA and graduated in 2008.

General Family
James ended up working alongside his mother, Betsy Lou Franco, on the soap opera ‘General Hospital’ playing the role as his mother’s character’s son on the show. James admits the experience was pretty weird to work with his mother, but he eventually got over it.

James Freak-o
When he first met James for casting on ‘Freaks and Geeks’, showrunner Judd Apatow thought James was kind of a homely guy. After James was hired, Judd was surprised to continue hearing from the women around the office how cute and dreamy they all thought he was.

“Always have one artistic thing that is pure,” James has written in his novel ‘Actors Anonymous’. “At least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.” Do yourself the favor of living up to these simple and powerful words. And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp People!

Working with more than 270 summer camps, we take our opportunities to sing the praises of camps all across the nation. Here on the Everything Summer Camp Blog, I make an effort to frequently highlight summer camps who we feel deserve a special mention. Today I’m swinging the Summer Camp Spotlight southward to the Lone Star State of Texas.

For more than 90 years, girls have escaped to the heart of the Texas Hill Country where they find the rustic campgrounds of Kickapoo Kamp. Nine miles southwest of Kerrville, Kickapoo sits 2,000 feet above sea level for a clear view of the surrounding area. The crystal clear Turtle Creek runs through the campgrounds—a spring-fed stream that flows into the Guadalupe River.

Enjoy fun activities like Aerobic Dance, Archery, Arts & Crafts, Beauty Spa, Campcraft, Canoeing, Cheerleading, Dance, Drama, Flags, Fitness, Gymnastics, Nature Exploration, Ping Pong, Riflery, Tennis, Western Riding, and more. Kickapoo also offers an awesome water sports program in their spring-fed Turtle Creek where kids can go Swimming, Water Skiing, go down the Water Slide, and more.

When you arrive at Kickapoo, you’ll see the “Lodge” front-and-center of the property as well as the camp Dining Hall. Along the layout, you’ll find the Activity Building that they utilize for activities like Arts & Crafts, Dance, Ping-Pong, and more. They boast Archery and Riflery ranges. They have an arena and barn for horse-riding. There are secluded spots for overnight camping cookouts and more on top of that.

Kickapoo Kamp has twelve cabins and each has its own bathroom facility. The cabins are built to accommodate 8 – 12 girls as well as a pair of cabin leaders. Cabins are filled with girls of nearest ages in order to give them the most comfortable living quarters where your camper is sure to develop a sense of camaraderie and connectedness.

Here, Nature has been abundant with wonderful clean air, sun showers, and beaming moonlight. Get the opportunity to bond with nature, friends, and yourself at Kickapoo Kamp. As always, thanks for reading!

- John