Hey, Camp Fans!

We’ve got the itch, here at Everything Summer Camp, to spread the word about the awesome camps with whom we’ve formed tight bonds and relationships. It should come as no surprise to our readers of the camp community that we love these camps so much—we work with over 270 of them! And today we’re spotlighting a beautiful Texas camp—Heart O’ the Hills All Girls Camp!Founded in 1953, Heart O’ the Hills sits on the Guadalupe River’s South Fork in Hunt, Texas, at the heart the beautiful Texan Hill Country. Each summer, for well over 50 years, Heart O’ the Hills has shown more than 150 young women the time of their lives.

Girls who find themselves at Heart O’ the Hills are treated to two to four weeks of engaging and exciting activities such as Western Horseback Riding, Red Cross Swimming Instruction, Archery, Riflery, Tennis, Cooking, Fencing, Climbing, Video, Wilderness Survival, as well as a great range of individual and team sports.

Through the power of friendship and teamwork, Kitty Magee—the previous director of the neighboring Camp Mystic—reluctantly took the job as Heart O’ the Hills Camp Director. Despite her experience, Kitty was reluctant because now she had a five-year-old daughter and a family life to maintain. But she couldn’t let her community down and rose to the challenge anyway.

Heart O’ the Hills campers are assigned to cabins or ‘tepees’—as they’re called at the camp. The youngest campers stay in smaller tepees that typically house five campers and a cabin leader while the older campers live in groups of 12 with four cabin leaders as well. Heart O’ the Hills tepees all have a bathroom and a sizable closet. Each tepee is named after a flower or tree that’s a Texas native.

If Heart O’ the Hills sounds like a great camp choice for you, give it a closer look and visit their website sometime. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

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 23.
Don’t forget: Everyone who submits gets a $15 gift certificate to Everything Summer Camp! Once we have everyone’s submissions, we’ll select seven randomized winners–four $25 gift card winners, two $50 gift card winners, and then just one first-place winner who will get a $100 gift card for our website. And all participants will get a $15 gift card just for submitting!

Writing is an extremely useful means for campers to cement all the fun memories and valuable skill sets that they learned at camp. It’s great to jot down new experiences to help yourself process and reflect on what you learned. If you aren’t 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. 

Please include your first name and your last name’s initial, what camp you visited, and how long you’ve been going to camp in your submissions. Parents are more than welcome to send us their submissions based on their camp experience as well.

We love hearing your summer camp stories and can’t 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, Camp Folks!

We love surrounding ourselves with businesses similar to our family-like business here at Everything Summer Camp and that’s why you can find great selections of camping gear and other camp supplies from leading brand names such as Coghlan’s, TexSport, and Outdoor Products. Now available on our website is the SAFEGO brand of the SAFEGO Portable Safe.

Their Portable Travel Safe stores valuables off your person and absolutely secured. Lock your Safe around a permanent object whether you make a trip to the beach, the park, the gym, the poolside, or any other outing.

The founder of the SAFEGO family is Zach Perlman—fellow outdoors enthusiast—who decided to enjoy a visit to the beach one day just a few summers ago. When he arrived, he set up camp by laying out his beach towel and setting his valuables aside. Like so many of us at the beach, Zach stuffed his things inside his shoe, assuming that to be secure enough. He cooled off in the water and when he returned to his beach towel, he discovered somebody had stolen his wallet, keys, and phone!

Of course, Zach was bummed out over this unfortunate misdeed. It was this crummy moment, however, that led to the birth of SAFEGO and the Portable Travel Safe. Resolved to make lemonade from this sour life experience, Zach found inspiration to create a solution so this didn’t have to happen to him or anyone else ever again!

This safekeeping accessory is manufactured from lightweight, durable, and water/sand-resistant, high-impact plastic. And with rust-resistant, nickel plated zinc alloy lock hardware on the safe, the SAFEGO Safe is built to manage the wild conditions of the elements. It’s got a heavy-duty, plastic-coated steel cable made from material similar to a bike lock that easily attaches to a beach chair, table leg, park bench, or pretty much any fixed object.

Keep your keys, cash, wallet, camera, sunglasses, jewelry, or any other belongings safe with SAFEGO’s Portable Travel Safe. Check out our other Travel Accessories by clicking here and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

Earlier this month, I introduced our readers to our year-round assistance in our Graphics Department, Mellina. Today, it’s my pleasure to tell you about our other helping hand whom we’re happy to have in our Graphics Department at the Everything Summer Camp print shop, Deb! Deb came onboard our team three summers ago and has continued each year to prove her helpfulness in our printing production!

Always in good spirits with a smile on her face, Deb’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves and help out with our production of personalized products such as Iron-On Clothing Name Labels or Clothing Stamps, her main area of expertise is in clothing itself! We stock an abundance of blank clothing which Deb transforms into camp clothing according to the orders we receive.

Deb’s days typically begin with pulling the blank clothes she’ll need to complete the day’s orders and then she executes the actual production, applying prints to clothing by all sorts of different methods. Much of her work can be accomplished on a heat press, but her second home is in the embroidery room where she operates and oversees the production of our machines.

Along with pillowcase and laundry bag printing—not to mention her assistance in our graphics production—Deb enjoys the variety of work that life in the print shop provides her. “I’m never strictly standing at the heat press for eight hours.” She smiled. Before working at Everything Summer Camp, she was employed at the fitness center chain, Curves. And before that, she stayed at home, raising her beautiful family of three children with her husband, Don.

While her kids, Rebecca, Sara, and Jared, have not had the experience of summer camp, Deb and Don go on family camping trips about once a year which the whole family enjoys throughout the years. They’re planning a trip to Montana to visit Don’s niece as they’re a rather adventurous couple. They get out to make fun trips as much as they can; in fact, Deb and her husband met while planting trees in Bemidji, Minnesota.

In her childhood years, Deb attended Bible school which always ended with a retreat. She loved it so much, she went eight years in a row! Deb touts an indomitably good attitude and brings it to work everyday. I can say with all sincerity that I’ve never seen her in a poor mood. “Everything makes me happy,” she told me, “Except for when I get mad.”

Enjoy the camp clothing and other personalized graphics products that may have very well come from Deb’s caring hands and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Summer Campers!

No matter if celebrities are singer/songwriters, famous athletes, or big Hollywood stars, so many of them seem to have once been summer campers back when they were younger. Ben Stiller has cemented his name in the comedy world, but did you know he attended camp before he became a household name?

It’s true. Born and raised in New York City, Ben and his parents Anne and Jerry decided on the East Coast camp, Camp Pinnacle—located at the center of the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina in Flat Rock. In operation since 1928, Ben went to camp a bit later (in the 70s), unlike his dad, Jerry Stiller who went to camp roughly a decade after Camp Pinnacle was founded. You can check out more on Jerry Stiller by clicking here.

With two actors for parents, Ben was given a front-row seat to the hectic lifestyle of show business. He would regularly join his mother and father on the sets of television shows and, looking back on his early years, said that “It was a show-business upbringing—a lot of traveling, a lot of late nights—not what you’d call traditional.”

His childhood was anchored with his sister, Amy, just a few years older than him. With a sensible interest in filmmaking, Ben and Amy would make Super 8 movies with friends as often as they could. After being inspired by the television show Second City Television while in high school, Stiller realized that he wanted to get involved with sketch comedy.

Ben scored his acting debut at just nine years old when his mother landed a short-lived television series from the 70s called ‘Kate McShane’. As Ben found a love for acting, he still had fun inviting his sister to appear in a number of his movies.

Despite his nontraditional childhood, Ben had his fun summer camp experience and he had a consistent school education, having attended the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine and he graduated from the Calhoun School in New York. During his high school years, Ben was inspired by ‘Second City Television’ TV show that sparked his interest in sketch comedy.

After high school, Ben enrolled at the University of California in Los Angeles to study film. During his time there, however, he couldn’t shake the idea he wasn’t making the right choice. After just nine months, he moved back home to take acting classes in particular. With talent and determination, he worked away doing auditioning and searching for an agent—which, as we all know, he was successful. You can check out Camp Pinnacle to see if it looks like a good fit for you by clicking here and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John