Tag Archives: Camp Kuratli

A Blast From the Past!

Good evening!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers out there, or those Aunties, Sisters, Girlfriends, or Daughters who sometimes have an active mothering role to someone special in your life out there (that covers just about all of us, I think!!)!!! Today, my sweetie and I got to have a lovely visit and a great big ol’ lunch over at our mom, Linda’s place!! It was a bunch of fun!!

Happy Mother’s Day mom!!! 😉

Today, I wanted to share some of the pictures I took of Camp Kuratli up in Boring, Oregon yesterday. This is the Salvation Army camp that me and a lot of friends grew up going to every Summer. We had music camps, family camps, young adult/teen camps, and community camps. It seemed at times that we lived at camp almost all Summer long. One yea, I remember we made it home for EXACTLY 3 days all Summer, which gave us just enough time to wash all of our clothes!! I am not sure exactly how we were able to function without washing our clothes!! We must have smelled SOMETHING AWFUL!!! 😉

Here is what you see when you first get into camp. The main office is on the right, and the gymnasium, which I know we called something else, but I can’t seem to remember what is on the left of this pic.

Here is another pic of the large gymnasium! We hosted a lot of concerts here!

This is the old craft house and the stairs that all of us kids would race down to get to the shower house so we could get into the pool first during free time!!

Here is the caboose AKA Canteen (where we would wait in line to buy all sorts of candy and junk food!!)/Nurses Station – at least it was when we went there as kids. I don’t remember it quite looking so fresh, but we all sure had a fun time playing all over this thing!!! 😉

The camper cabins are all spaced out around this large loop. Here a few of those cabins.

You couldn’t really call being out at Camp Kuratli as roughing it because all of the cabins had indoor plumbing, running water, and space heaters! This place was really more like a resort for kids. 🙂 Here is some more of that loop of camper cabins!

Here is a pic of the other side of the circle, I am not sure what everything is now, but back in the day the building on the far left was the rec hall, which was where we could go during free time to play board games and stuff in case it was raining – although most of us spent EVERY free time in the pool – we figured we were already wet, so who cared if it rained??? The next building is the mess hall, and in front of that is the flag pole where we would line up every morning for revile, lowering whatever item of clothing happened to have gotten raided the night before (usually some poor camper’s underwear, of course!!), raising the American flag, saying the Pledge of Allegiance and then prayer for the meal. The next building was where the staff washed their laundry! I have no idea what that tiny building on the far left is, I don’t remember that, but it is right at the top of those stairs that you saw in the craft house pic. and a little farther to the right is where the caboose lives.

Here are a couple of pics of Merlo Field. This is up behind the circle of camper cabins, and this, for me, has changed the most dramatically since my days of going to this camp. This used to be a great open field!! Now it houses the camps swimming pools.

It sure is still beautiful though!! I know it is hard to tell, but up in this bit of forest is a very large house, and I remember whenever the campers would get really loud, the owners of the house would complain, and for some reason that made all of us campers laugh!! Like we were doing something right!! Even thinking about it now, still makes me smile! 😉

But mostly it was and is all of the lovely trees, the creek that runs through the camp, and the fact that we were right in the middle of the MOST BEAUTIFUL Oregon forest that helped make this camp special to all of us kids.

Here are a few panoramic views of the main circle, please feel free to click on these, or any of the pics to see them at full size – they are pretty large!!!

I hope you enjoyed these pics as much as I enjoyed taking them and reminiscing about this AMAZINGLY FUN time in my life!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

I’m Getting Married in the Morning!

Good evening!

Ok, I’M not actually getting married in the morning, and it isn’t ACTUALLY in the morning, it is on 9-10-11. But my BFF Dawn is getting married, and her sis, Heather is Dawn’s Maid of Honor, and I get to be her Maitron of Honor!! We are so excited!! 😉 We spent the day up in Portland taking pictures of the place where she is wanting to have her wedding, and to go search for the perfect wedding dress! So, I wanted to share some of those pics that I took from our day!!

The first thing we did was headed to Camp Kuratli out in Boring, Oregon (yes, that is really where it is located). We all grew up out there, and that is where Dawn and Erin met! So, they are thinking about getting married in the Tabernacle out there.

It is mostly the same as we remember, except for some minor details like the layout of the stage.

but those same old orange chairs, we are going to have to get creative in decorating to hide those uhm…ugly chairs! 😉

The ceilings are IDENTICAL to how we remember them from when we were younger!

We were just a little shocked and taken aback by just HOW BROWN this room is!!! I don’t remember it being quite so brown!!

Hmmm…I wonder if we can call on a Fairy Godmother to put her wand to work and create some wedding magic!! 🙂

Next on to wedding dresses!! We ended up going to this little boutique up in Portland, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is even called, but they were very friendly and were even able to make some time to let Dawn try on a few dresses. It is prom season right now, so the place was

H-O-P-P-I-N-G!!!

Here is Dawn dressed as a ballerina! Isn’t she cute?? 😉 No, this is her getting ready for the dresses to be delivered. Her criteria was a knee length, flowy, champagne colored, strapless dress that she could pair with a black sash around her waist.

Taking a break while chatting it up on the phone!!!

Here is dress #1. Very creative idea, the outer layer of this skirt kind of reminded me of fancy war camouflage netting!! Fun, just like Dawn! 🙂

Here is dress #2. Can we say Grecian goddess? But, maybe a little too “boobie” for her special day!! 😉

Dress #3. We are getting closer, the bubble skirt on this was really great, and she really like the cut of the bust, plus I really like the detail at the waist.

Dress #4 was MY FAVORITE!!! A little vintage! A little Glam! and ALL CHIC!! 😉

I just LOVED the detailing at the waist on this one. Unfortunately the tulling was REALLY itchy on this one! Dawn’s arms would have been red from rubbing against this skirt all night!

Here is dress #5. Another bubble skirt option, and I liked the delicate slope of the bust on this one, but something about it just wasn’t right.

After lunch, we made a stop at one more place, and we were able to find her THE PERFECT dress, however it was so late in the day, no one thought to toke a picture of it! DANG!!! Our Bad!! 😉

I would have to say that we did have a lot of fun hanging out, catching up, giggling, seeing the old camp, and searching for the perfect wedding dress!! No worries Dawn, finding the perfect dress is, at least for me, the hardest part, and you did that IN ONE DAY!!! 😉

You go girrrl! 😉

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉