Jingle All the Way Quilt Camp- part 1

Friday afternoon I drove up to Tecumseh for one of my favorite Christmas traditions-- Mother/Daughter/Friend/Grandma/Aunt/Cousin Quilt Camp. My mom started running these quilt camps when I was just 5 years old. I never missed a December one. Now I come back and help with Hot Chocolate Club, all of the little girls like Sophie and Katie that come with their moms and aunts and grandmas, for the weekend. I was so excited to see these little girls.

The Hot Chocolate Club had our first meeting on Friday night. We learned all 20 girls names first. Many of them are returners and we're old friends, I feel like they're all my Quilt Camp cousins that I get to see once a year. Then I taught them the cup game that Lennon and Maisy do on YouTube and that is in Pitch Perfect. We went really slow and repeated a lot. All the girls, including the 7-year-olds got it. I think I could do it in my sleep-- clap, clap, 1, 2, 3, clap, up, down, clap, grab, hand, table, hold, hit, over.

This year Mom and I would be working on my much-anticipated t-shirt quilt, piles of shirts that have been saved since I was in High School. Mom and I had picked out fabrics earlier this Fall that would go along with all the shirts and I couldn't wait to see what we would create with all these pieces I love so much. You have to iron on interfacing to the back of the t-shirts so that they're more sturdy as you're sewing the blocks. We got everything ironed on and most of the t-shirts cut down to size before calling it a night.

Saturday morning after breakfast was the main event for the Hot Chocolate Club-- the Quilt Camp Amazing Race! We divided into Team Penguin and Team Snowman to compete in a series of challenges and activities that took us all over the building.

We played all sorts of games with fill-in-the-blanks, Christmas wreath hula-hoops, crossword puzzles, buckets of pencils, and ornament assembly lines. Team Penguin won the race but we all had so much fun working together.

We went back to work for a little bit and managed to cut all the borders for each block of my t-shirt quilt. Now that we had all the pieces we could start sewing- one row later it was time for an adventure hike.

We played Ga-Ga over in Lake Village and the girls loved the game. It was kind of hard for some of them to get out or into the pit but they played like champs.

My CILT friends Zoe and Will showed up out of the woods after their interview and I was so excited to see them. It didn't take long before we convinced them to play with the girls. Basically it was all the girls against Will for "GET THE BOY OUTTTTT!!!!!!" Bunny, our littlest girl, always played under the radar and would end up being one of the last few in the pit with everyone chanting, "Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!"

Sixty degrees in December seemed like the perfect weather for a pizza picnic outside.

My friend Natalie came to help me out this year. She's a YL/FBC/CampT girl who is a rockstar. I loved having her be a part of this too and was so thankful for her help with the girls. Danielle and Liz are two of the oldest Hot Chocolate girls who have been coming since they were little. They are both so sweet, creative and helpful.

The Hot Chocolate Club rocks.

Late in the afternoon I had to say good-bye to Quilt Camp to head off on a secret adventure. I left all my t-shirts behind with Mom and Nat and said good-bye to all the little girls until tomorrow.