Hey, Everything Summer Camp Fans!

While our competitors will have you ordering for camp a whole month in advance or emptying your wallet to get your stuff on time, we ship your order out in days, not weeks. When your order is placed at Everything Summer Camp, it goes through our system and, after any personalized items on the order are made, the order goes to shipping.

When the camp season hits, we have to be ready for it in multiple ways which is why we either stock all our products or make them in-house. This way, we ship your order fast. It’s certainly a team effort among departments, but in the end, every single order goes through the shipping department. The season inevitably gives these guys a workout every year!

Welcome to shipping.

This giant warehouse where we stock all of our camp trunks and other products (aside from our customizable graphics and camp clothing) is where the magic happens.

An extremely busy place—this time of year especially—the summer shipping crew works methodically thanks to shipping manager, Ryan’s, careful orchestration and execution of the day. These guys get your quality camp gear from Everything Summer Camp out to you on time every time!

The details of each order is printed and all the orders that need to ship that day are pushed out the door first. The crew goes to work “picking orders”. Orders without customizable products get “picked” from our stocked products. The order is then looked over to make sure that it’s complete and ready to be shipped out to you.

Each order is boxed up then. The shipping labels are printed and the order is seen into the back of a UPS truck and delivered to you. A fun and moving work environment, the shipping department is great at what they do! As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Mom and Dad!

This post for parents stretches back three weeks ago when I started this Tips and Advice series about what you can do to alleviate your concern for your child’s upcoming summer camp stay— ‘childsickness’, as summer camp experts Chris Thurber and Jon Malinowski coin the term in their book, ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’.

Thurber and Malinowski mention a number of things you can do to ease yourthoughts about missing your kid. So far, I’ve given you five pieces of advice; I revealed three tips in the first post of this series and the other two in the second post. Today, I offer the last two pointers mentioned in Thurber and Malinowski’s camp book about easing the separation for parents and kids during summer camp.

#1. Stay Busy
It’s important to have plans when your kid is at camp. Even if your plan is to just have quiet time at home, it’s good to plan on doing it and then, when the time comes, do it. Otherwise, if you have other kids at home who aren’t attending camp this year, this gives you individual time to spend just on them.

While some parents like to do vacations during their kid’s camp stay, other people are a little more glued to their daily schedules. But even if you must stick to your typical routine throughout your kid’s camp session, it’s still important to find some things to do like see friends, go catch a movie at the theater, or finally get to a project you’ve been putting off. None of this will keep your mind OFF of your kid, of course, but it will help you to stay busy and think positively.

#2 Take Care of Yourself
Also, it’s important to take some time that’s just to yourself. Do the things that you want to do and take this time to relax for cryin’ out loud! Quiet times like these aren’t a dime a dozen—they only come around every so often and you should make a note to appreciate them! Take this time to decompress, kick back, catch up on reading, take a bath, go for a walk.

Some parents feel guilty about having a good time while their kid’s away. But this isn’t logical. It’s not as though your kid out doing something dangerous or unsupervised. Your kid is having a great time at summer camp. They’re out enjoying themselves; there’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy yourself as well. Enjoy the time you have with your kid being away and enjoy the time even more when they come back!

This concludes my Tips and Advice Blog series about easing the separation during your kid’s camp stay. Hope you got a lot out of it. And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp Aficionados!

Memories are great, but photos make a great accessory to help visualize your memory of a time that was obviously fun enough that someone took a picture to, more-or-less, immortalize the moment. Photos help us hold on to memories and keep loved ones close by even when they’re far away. Today is National Camera Day! Read on to learn how cameras were invented.

These captured images have come quite a long way from their early days of playing with light exposure to the current digital age where people’s cell phones typically have a high-quality, built-in camera. This technology was tinkered with for a long time. 

Inverted images that shown upside-down (commonly referred to as a Camera Obscura) had been a point of interest for many years—potentially since the ancient Greeks. It was in 1816 that the first somewhat successful photograph was produced by a French inventor named Nicéphore Niépce.

He made his own camera and coated a piece of paper with sliver chloride to use for the photograph. In the chemistry world, silver chloride is known for its crafty conversion to silver when illuminated or exposed to heat. It darkens when exposed to light. Absolutely intriguing stuff!

This technology was played with and eventually made for the market. By the 1840s, cameras became a commercial item, available to the public. Transforming from a wooden box to a more ‘handheld’ design, cameras have continued to evolve in our present day.

From disposable to digital, cameras have really evolved throughout the years. You can find great cameras for your summer adventures right here at Everything Summer Camp like the Fujifilm Quicksnap Waterproof Camera and the Kodak Fun Saver Camera. Treasure your camp memories forever in our fantastic Three Cheers Photo Book or the appropriate Summer Camp Photo Frame. Check it all out right here and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

As usual, Everything Summer Camp is gearing up for the fast-approaching summer camp season (some of you may already be there). We really got into this season—we’ve been bringing in new products left and right! So many, actually, that it’s been a little hard to keep up with on the Blog. But for those of you who are still awaiting their weeks of summer camp, I’ll continue to inform you of our latest products.

We just brought in a slew of new products from an excellent supplier—Outdoor Products! In fact, there are so many new products from them that I don’t even have enough room to talk about it all on this Blog post. But, what I can do is give you the lowdown on several.

Duffels
I’ll start with the duffels since there are so many of them. First of all, we have their Deluxe Duffels which cover a vast array of different sizes. These are your classic, barrel-shaped duffel bags in Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, and Mammoth-sized.

Then there are their Utility Duffels, another barrel-shape style with a bit more pocket room and other accessories than the Deluxe Duffels offer. These bags are available in Large, Giant, and Colossal Sizes and are perfect for camp.

Ponchos
Available in children’s sizes as well as adult, these Mulitpurpose Ponchos prepare you for a rainy day. Lightweight, they fold up nice and tight for easy packability and you can lay it flat to use it as a ground tarp too for keeping your gear off of a freshly soaked ground. Provided with a full cut hood and drawstring closure, you can stay nice and dry in these awesome Ponchos.

Backpack Rain Cover
These Rain Covers keep your backpack—and all the gear inside of it—shielded when the rain falls. It sports urethane-coated nylon taffeta to make it 100% water-resistant. It’s guaranteed to keep your pack dry with its elastic take-up as well as side snaps to provide FULL coverage. And it’s supplied with a nylon drawcord and cord lock.

Pick up any one of these great ‘Outdoor Products’ and check out their full collection right here at Everything Summer Camp! As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Folks!

Unlike so many of the posts on this Blog, this one is just for the parents. Last week I posted three ways that you can do to alleviate your concern for your child’s upcoming summer camp stay—or ‘childsickness’, as summer camp experts Chris Thurber and Jon Malinowski call it in their preparatory guidebook, ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’.

In their book, they mention a number of things that you can do to help reduce the pain of missing your child during their camp stay. Last week I talked about learning as much as possible about the camp, talking with other parents whose kids are or have been to camp, and also, to prepare your kid as best you can for group living. Today I’m offering two more pieces of advice from their summer camp book:

#1. Get News from Your Kid’s Cabin Leader.
It can be very comforting for parents to keep in touch with cabin leaders and get word about how their kid is doing. Leave some stamped postcards addressed to yourself with your kid’s cabin leader and ask them to send an update here and there so you know how things are going.

It’s cool for a kid when parents find fun, creative ways to connect with their kid while they’re apart during summer camp. A popular thing to do is to leave a letter for your kid with a cabin leader on opening day. When your kid gets this letter it should help ease your kid into this separation.

#2. Write Often
Writing to your kid feels great and it feels even better (thought it may not happen that often) to get a letter back from camp. Whether your kid’s camp is near home or not, it’s guaranteed to feel extremely far away from home to your kid. Camp, though fun and awesome for a kid, is a strange, new place that feels very far away. A letter from you makes things seem a little closer.

Letters to your kid should be positive and upbeat. Kids aren’t good at communicating, at least not by mail during their summer camp stay. They have so much to do that’s right there in front of them and ten times more fun than writing a letter home. But they’ll greatly appreciate a letter from you!

Next week will conclude this month’s series on what do to help take care of your ‘childsickness’. Tune in next Tuesday and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John