Hey, Flashlight Fans!

In this holiday season, our hearts are light. But that’s not the only kind of ‘light’ associated with this time of year. After all, with the days growing darker and darker, we use fluorescent, incandescent, and LED lights a lot more often than we do in the summer. Flashlights come in handy year-round too. Today of all days, you could very well find yourself in need of a flashlight since it happens to be the Winter Solstice—the one day out of the year with the shortest amount of daylight and the longest night. That’s why National Flashlight Day is today as well. The Winter Solstice AND National Flashlight Day consistently land on December 21 every year.

Did you know that when the flashlight was first invented in 1898, you were lucky if it worked at all? They required two D cell batteries which had become commercially available only two years prior. This early on, batteries were very weak. The light they created drained the batteries so fast that the light would only come on in quick flashes before dying out. That’s actually how they got the name ‘flashlights.’

Grab your flashlight and bust out your modern-day batteries! They’re the only things you’ll really need in order to celebrate this day. You can find fun flashlights here at Everything Summer Camp. We’ve got various, hands-free headlamps. The Hybrid Solar Flashlight is able to keep its charge for years. And the Odyssey 6 in 1 is a flashlight that’s also a WATER BOTTLE!

Today is a good day to test your flashlights, make sure that the batteries are still good and make sure that everyone in your family knows where the household flashlights are. It’s also smart to keep a flashlight in your car.

Entertain your family with some shadow puppets on the wall tonight and be sure to keep your Winter Solstice bright! Thanks for reading, Everybody.

- John

Hey there, Cookie Cravers!

It’s that time of year again when we get the chill out of the house by heating up the oven and baking cookies! This season, in particular, is meant for baking cookies. In fact, today happens to be National Bake Cookies Day! Put your talent as a baker to use today and make up a fresh batch of your favorite kind of cookie. 

There’s no better feeling than warming yourself up from the inside out by enjoying a chewy, gooey cookie fresh out of the oven. Whether you go with Gingerbread Men, Sugar Cookie Cutouts, Chocolate-Covered Oreos, Oatmeal Raisin, Snickerdoodles, classic Chocolate Chip Cookies, or some other holiday favorite, your sweet tooth is sure to thank you.

I remember a zillion winters ago when my siblings and I would keep the kitchen nice and toasty with batch after batch of cookie dough baking away inside the roasting oven. We loved frosting and decorating our Gingerbread Men and Sugar Cookie cutouts with frosting, Red Hots, and sprinkles.

Cutout Cookies make an excellent cookie choice since they offer the most variety and fun in decorating afterward. You can go with traditional Gingerbread Men, or you can make cookies in all sorts of wintry shapes like snowflakes, snowmen, mittens, boots, stars, and evergreens. Your kids will be sure to enjoy frosting and decorating them just as much as they’ll enjoy eating them!

Baking makes for a great activity to do with your kids. It’s fun, crafty, and it keeps the house warm! Kids may struggle to keep the kitchen clean, but with the proper supervision, baking is a great way for them to spend a day of their winter vacation. With the fast-approaching holidays, it’s nice to have some treats around the house for welcome guests and visiting relatives.

Have fun with your baking this year and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Holiday Preppers!

People give gifts for lots of occasions: birthdays, weddings, graduations, housewarming parties…. This time of year, however, gifting is typically taken to a whole other level. We like to have our bundle of presents beautifully wrapped with colorful ribbons and bows and festive tags that designate who shall receive each one.

We’ve been doing things this way for a surprisingly long time too. It’s no shocker to learn that gift-giving is an age-old tradition carried out through endless generations, but what IS surprising is just HOW LONG we’ve been wrapping our gifts for one another. It’s been practiced since the invention of paper, some time around 100 A.D.!

People in England used wallpaper for a while in the 1700s, though it didn’t work well as it tore easily when it was folded. By the early 1900s, gifts were typically wrapped in brown paper or tissue. But soon after, as the Second Industrial Revolution (also known as the Technological Revolution) yielded amazing advancements, the mass production of gift wrap was made possible.

The finishing touch on the perfectly wrapped present is always the gift tag: the element of the wrapping that reveals who the gift came FROM and who it’s going TO. But don’t bother wasting your money on some store-bought gift tags. You can get them for free right here at Everything Summer Camp.

Yep. That’s right. We’re emailing out free, downloadable gift tags. Subscribe to receive email from Everything Summer Camp and you’ll receive these great gift tags you can print out on your printer at home. Signing up for Everything Summer Camp email has multiple benefits. You can get access to great gift ideas, exclusive deals, free gift tags, and more.

Take our help for the final touch on your wrapping this season and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Chocolate Chasers!

If you’re really THAT crazy about chocolate, then there’s a good chance that you already know what tomorrow is: Cover Anything in Chocolate Day. And when I say, ‘anything’, I mean ANYthing! Because chocolate, you see, is a surprisingly versatile food.

For those of you who are able to boast a matured palette, you may have already experienced the explosive spiciness of a salsa that bears one surprising ingredient which is the most intensely desired superfood of them all…you got that right, chocolate.

I’ve talked a lot about chocolate on this Blog in the past. I’ve talked about Hot Chocolate Day and the history of Chocolate, I’ve talked about Chocolate Ice Cream Day, Chocolate Cake Day, Chocolate CUPcake Day, S’mores Day, Chocolate Mint Day, and I’m positive that I’ve, at least casually, mentioned Chocolate in other posts. Well, I’m not about to stop now!

If Cover Anything in Chocolate Day is tomorrow, then why am I posting about it today? Why, to give you some time to prepare your chocolate-covered treats, of course. It takes a little time to go through such a process. Here’s how you do it.

Once you make the chocolate, you’re ready to cover your snacks. What you’ll be covering in chocolate is completely up to you. My advice is to not be afraid of the unknown. You can find that, just like the chocolate in salsa, chocolate and many other flavors pair up nicely. Get wild and wacky with the things you choclify today. Some people cover GRASSHOPPERS in chocolate!

Here are some weird and extraordinarily intriguing ideas:
•    Cheddar Cheese
•    Saltines
•    Licorice
•    Grapes
•    Dried Apple
•    Gummy Worms
•    Popcorn
•    Banana Chips
•    Orange Slices
•    (And the one I find most interesting) Bacon

You never know until you try it, folks. So melt some tasty chocolate and wrap it around some of your favorite snacks for a world you’ve yet to discover! And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Holiday Shoppers!

So much effort goes into gift-giving this time of year; when the time finally comes for your loved ones to open their gifts from you, you want that moment to be perfect. Unfortunately, when you order online, this moment’s perfection depends on more than just the role that you play, but the role played by the company from which you ordered as well.

We, here at Everything Summer Camp, understand the importance of gift-giving and want to help make sure that your gifting goes just the way you want it to this year. We know there’s nothing more irritating than making sure that you’ve placed your online order well-enough in advance and not receiving it until after it’s too late!

Make sure that this doesn’t happen to you. Order from Everything Summer Camp!

To ensure that there is no confusion, I’d like to guide your attention to the handy-dandy holiday map that we refer to this time of year. Thanks to this little, color-coded map, there won’t be any confusion about how early you need to place your order at Everything Summer Camp to receive your items by the time you need them.

While delivery times will certainly vary based on where you live in the country, we like the old adage, ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’. That’s why I’m giving you the magic numbers of 1:00pm CST on December 17. That’s the date that everybody in the contiguous United States can use for guaranteed delivery by December 24.

December 17 may be early for some of you. Everything Summer Camp is based in northwestern Wisconsin, so if you live in Wisconsin, most parts of Minnesota, or other neighboring areas, you can get away with placing your order as late as 1:00pm CST on December 21.

Happy holidays, Everyone. Thanks for reading!

- John