Hi new friends, my name is Patti and I am a camp nerd, through and through.
I’ve worked in the camping industry for 17 years, working my way up from counsellor to director and everything in between.
I love talking about camp, I love reading about camp, I love pinning camp things, and watching camp movies, it’s my full time job and my full time hobby (well, almost, I do other things too, cause ya know, balance). So I thought I’d start writing about it to share some of my experiences and thoughts with other camp nerds. These are all the things I wish someone had told me when I was starting out as a shiny new camp director, and some lessons that I’m still learning along the way.
I’ve recently left my full time directing job, and have started a new adventure as an entrepreneur with Patchwork Marketplace, doing some volunteer consulting work with some local non-profit camps, and am in the early stages of starting my own private camp.
When I hang up my whistle and tuck my clipboard away for the night, I’m also a wife, a well trained human to some spoiled cats, and a recovering (and lapsed) chocoholic.
I’m trained at breaking the ice with people (it is literally part of my job, and I know about 100 ways to do it) feel free to drop me a line and we can chat it up!
Thanks for stopping by!
The Camp Nerd 
Love your About page. The closest I’ve ever been to camp is watching The Parent Trap, so it’s really interesting to find someone so passionate about it!
Also, I want to see pictures of your cats on here sometime 🙂
LikeLike
And more pictures of that beautiful lake. A perfect way for an intriguing short post is to just post a picture, maybe with a short caption. I’d love to see more of that. I’m still trying to find a way to fit pictures into my posts. Good luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks freckles for breakfast, I appreciate your advice on using a photo as a post – what a great idea! I will definitely be doing that.
Also, keep your eye out for some future posts about awesome camp movies, it’s on my ‘to-do’ list. I love the parent trap (the Hayley Mills version) but there is just not enough camp in it! hahaha
And I will be sure to add some photos of my cats at some point, I have enough of them that I could do an entire blog just on them!!! (Like I said, well trained human!)
Thanks again for posting.
LikeLike
I wanted to check out your “About” section since you’d left such a nice message on mine. Wow, I feel like this post was written about me! 🙂 What are your favorite camp movies and books??? I’m always looking for those. That’s why I started writing my own: I never could find camp books that were quite like the way I experienced camp. I love Indian Summer, Salute Your Shorts, and the Camp Sunnyside books.
LikeLike
Camp Nowhere and Meatballs are two of my favourites and Camp Takota is a new favourite! I really liked the short lived tv series Camp and of course Bug Juice (which I somehow only discovered about 2 years ago!) and I loved Camp Caribou when I was a kid (although it may have been a Canadian show)
You’re right though, there aren’t that many camp books that I’m in love with, but Camp Nurse by Tilda Shalof was a neat perspective. Camping by Nancy Hundal is a lovely little children’s book. I read a lot of resource books – Basic Camp Management is a good resource.
LikeLike
We loved the show Camp last summer and were very sad it got cancelled. We were looking forward to finding out what happened. I’ve heard of Bug Juice for years but never got to see it (we just got DirecTV 2 years ago, so didn’t have the Disney channel when it was on). Love Camp Nowhere and Meatballs, of course. I had never heard of Camp Caribou before, but I looked it up and youtube. Looks like a fun one for the kiddos. Camp Takota looks great. I tried to rent it from the library just now, but they didn’t have it listed. 😦 I’ll have to look on half.com or something. Thanks for the recommendations!
LikeLike
I can’t say that camp is one of my foremost interests, but I love your style, and everything you say comes off as being super enthusiastic. It’s so nice when people actually write about what they love, and it’s obvious that that’s what you do. You make me nostalgic for the summer, and I’m glad that I found you! Maybe you’ll help me get through the cold.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for stopping by Moonpaste! (Love the name by the way, is there a story behind it?)
You’re right, I am super enthusiastic about camp… sometimes to the dismay of the non- camp people in my life! hahaha
I checked out your blog and I love your words! I can’t write poetry but I certainly appreciate it! I look forward to reading more, and hopefully reading about camp will help you get through the upcoming winter – I know planning for summer gets me through 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ahaha there’s no super story behind it, but it was my old email address and it’s just kind of stuck throughout my career of naming things. You could say that strange names run in my family.
It’s a great thing when you find something that you’re not predisposed to but that you can appreciate anyway. I think that’s what this whole blogging thing is about, really 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person