Strictly Guiding

So much excitement

2012-01-27T00:00:00.003Z

There's our regular meetings.

But like furiously paddling swans, appearing calm on the surface, there is so much more going on:
1. Fellow Guider has clearance to do her holiday licence even though we are going out of county, so our trip away this term will be two nights!
2. Disney on ice cheque is written, all I have to do is post it tomorrow.
3. I'm helping get 250 lightbulbs for a division project.
4. In a few days, I am going to a major UK tourist attraction to see if we can run a sleepover there.
5. Daughter is so close to finishing her Baden Powell Award, that she has been accepted on a county adventure weekend in next few months.

And the girls think all we do is turn up and chat (ok, we do that a bit too!)

Update: the girls are excited about #1 too, we've had 19/24 sign up and 3 of those not going have a dance festival otherwise they would come too!

Badge tab

2012-01-17T18:46:00.006Z

Clair of Kids, Craft and Chaos posted her badge tab online this weekend, she is quite rightly proud of herself for finishing her Guiding leadership qualification - well done!

And while I am bigging up other Guiders, well done to Cara in Canada, her brilliant website Brownie Meeting Ideas is one year old today and is a massive hit with nearly 25,000 hits already!

Although I like Clair's minimalist badge tab (I am particularly jealous of the Blue Peter badge and love that she has a badge from the West Highland Way, which starts near where I grew up in Scotland) I have gone the other way, my badge tab is bling bling because I like to cram on as many badges as I can that mean something to me.

From top to bottom:
Black trefoil - my promise badge as an adult, it should be dark navy but mine is one of a few that came out black!
Silver trefoil - an award from my Guiding Region, Midlands, for services to local Guiding. I was given this in 2008 and it has been very inspiring to me to keep going on those occasions I think it is all too much for me.
Just under the promise badge is my five year award, next one is ten years and amazingly I am only three years off that already!
To the right of that, hiding under my promise badge is a tiny Canada flag. I was given that by a Canadian Guider, Claire, who I swapped some badges with a few years ago and became a really good friend who stayed with me a couple of summers ago. She's a great friend I would never have made if it wasn't for Guiding, we had a wonderful weekend in London together and I know if I make it over to British Columbia, I have somewhere to stay!
To the right of that is the Camp & Holiday Scheme badge, I only have an overnight licence but you get the whole badge anyway!
Next row is my Penguin badge, that's what the Brownies call me. Next to that is my 20:10, 20/10, 2010 promise badge, given to anyone who made/remade their promise at ten past eight on October 20th 2010 to mark 100 years of Guiding. Very special.
Nearly there! The small shamrock is a present from the Senior Section girls who joined our Brownies weekend in London in March 2010. We were happy to help them have a weekend away and the badge was a very sweet gift. To the right of that is an Adventure 100 pin badge, that's probably the first one I will remove, we did have fun doing that challenge though!
To the right of that and slightly over the centenary promise badge is a World badge, I love having that to show we are part of a worldwide sisterhood of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.
Hidden under that and the last badge is a Baden Powell House badge. That's there because we have stayed there with the Brownies a couple of times, on that March 2010 weekend but also on the exciting night when my Brownies met JK Rowling - the very reason i started this blog!
Finally, my Leadership Qualification badge hangs off the bottom of the badge tab, I use it to anchor the badge tab on to my tshirt so it doesn't swing and hit Brownies in the face when I lean over to talk to them!

So, that's my badge tab, I loved seeing Clair's and talking about mine - see, it isn't just bling for the sake of it, all the badges are special! Would love to see other Guiders tabs, not just in UK but abroad as relevant!

Birdhouses presented

2012-01-13T10:59:00.002Z

Our birdhouses were presented to the school where we meet during last night's meeting and the headteacher was really thrilled. In fact she included them in assembly this morning as well (I was able to attend as I am off today) and all the Brownies that go to the school got up and showed them off, it was quite sweet how proud they were of them.

Great job girls!

Duchess of Cambridge volunteers

2012-01-10T18:45:00.000Z

The Duchess of Cambridge has volunteered with Scouting, and will be helping occasionally with Beaver colonies and Cub packs near her home.

OK, as an ex-Brownie, it would have been great if she had signed up with Girlguiding. But it's up to her - either maybe there were no Guiding units near her home, or maybe she wanted to try something similar but different.

I'm not quite as Strictly Guiding as you might think, I am all for both Guiding and Scouting, with a child in each and as a leader in Guiding and a former helper with Beaver Scouts myself. So anything that brings in the volunteers to either organisation, I'm all for it; the publicity around her involvement might make a few people think they could give up similar amounts of time.
Both organisations have lots of children desperate to take part and not enough adults, there's about 1 million members between the two organisations and around 80,000 kids waiting to join.

To volunteer with Scouting: http://scouts.org.uk/join/join_volunteer.php
To volunteer with Guiding: http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/get_involved/volunteer/register_your_interest.aspx

(Picture Copyright St James's Palace)

Brownies Build Birdhouses

2012-01-06T19:56:00.004Z

Is it madness to decide to build four birdhouses from scratch (well, the wood was cut to shape but that was it, no drillholes etc) as a Brownie pack?
I decided it wasn't and bought everything we needed. Then I panicked and decided it was foolish. Husband tried to talk me down and we decided to open one up and see how hard it was to put together. We put it together but it wasn't easy and I decided it wasn't viable for Brownies so I would take the other three unopened ones back.
But then I spoke to one of the four dads who had volunteered to help us that night and he was happier about it, he even offered to pre-drill the holes on the remaining three to speed up the process so the girls would just have to hammer and use screwdrivers.
And that's what we did! In the space of just over an hour, we set up workbenches, then had one of three dads focus on each of three areas of the three birdhouses: the legs, the roof and the base of the house. The girls moved round each area in turn so they participated in each bit and the fourth dad helped on whatever section was going slowly.
By the end of the just over an hour, every girl had had a go with a hammer, a screwdriver or both, and had helped to collect screws and nails, measuring them to ensure it was the right type each time.
And we had four bird feeding tables, ready to donate to the school where we meet - well, almost ready, I am going to use woodstain to add a squirrel, a rabbit, a fox and a hedgehog to each to represent our sixes.
I am glad we did this - I panicked and we nearly didn't do it but the girls did brilliantly, the dads were very patient and very careful and we had no injuries at all, not even a splinter!
I've included a picture of the girls working, I can barely tell who each girl is in that picture, so I don't think it identifies anyone. I can't include the one of them beaming with the end results, but trust me that they do look very like the one you can see here!

Looking backward then forward (personal edition)

2012-01-03T18:31:00.002Z

I did post about what happened at Brownies in December and what we have planned for the months ahead.

Some personal news too:

The newest Cub Scout was invested
And my daughter, age just turned 13, achieved her black belt in taekwondo

I don't often talk about my kids on here, it doesn't feel right after an experience a few years ago that caused an issue - hmm, is that vague enough!?! Just know that I have a reason.

But I am so proud of both, my son for carrying on the Scouting tradition that's been in our families since the 1940s and my daughter for achieving such an amazing level in her sport at such a young age and with so many other things like school and Guiding to fit in at the same time.

Normal Brownie-related service will be resumed!

Looking backward then forward

2012-01-01T18:31:00.002Z

I was quite lax in December with updating what the Brownies had been up to, a very busy month for me and a fair bit of stress (nothing serious or too long term) meant I just didn't have time to write things up.

Two things to tell you though:

We took 24/25 Brownies (the last one had another commitment) to have breakfast with Santa! It was at our local garden centre, and the girls had such good fun. They had a cooked breakfast then decorated gingerbread men, then finally got to meet Santa and each speak to him for a little while. Then they got to walk through his grotto and choose a present. They were all very excited, we had hesitated a little because we knew our sister Rainbow pack had done this a while back and loved it but we thought maybe some of our older girls would be a bit jaded, but they all had a brilliant time.
We followed that up the next day (a busy weekend!) with the division Guiding service. Our district was organising it so I saw very little of the actual service as I was helping late comers find seats, then setting up to serve mince pies and tea, but I did get to see my daughter who had been chosen to do the reading for her district, which was lovely.

So that was 2011 - what lies ahead for 2012?

We are planning a weekend away at a venue Kelloggsville knows very well, and we are going to Disney on Ice just before Easter. In regular meetings, we will be building birdhouses then donating them to the school, having a cinema night, a mystery games night, Thinking Day, two weeks on Sri Lanka, a promise evening (exploring the promise rather than a ceremony) and an Easter party.

We are in the unusual situation of no new Brownies this term, we had 25 last term and one has gone to Guides, so we're back to 24 for one term. Then 5 leave at Easter so we will have lots of newbies then!

That takes us up to Easter, the summer term will definitely be hinged around Olympics but we haven't planned it out in detail, there's enough to be going on with.

It's December 22 and we finally decorated!

2011-12-22T16:44:00.003Z

Yes, it does look almost exactly the same as how it looked in 2009, and how it looked in 2010, but we have at least moved on from December 12th when I showed you our Spartan tree.

We have a decorated tree:

Everything else is exactly the same as years past, with one addition - a Christmas pterodactyl attacking the Christmas Minis Tirith.

What?

Merry Spartan Christmas: My Christmas Struggle

2011-12-12T21:07:00.005Z

I'm going to get there. But right now, life is so packed, with more work hours than usual, two children with Guide/Scout activities, a sport each, me doing Brownies, husband working longer hours than this time last year...oh I don't need to tell you, and I'm not struggling-struggling, we're going to get there, just a little later than usual.

So if you want to see how my house will end up looking, check out how it looked in 2009, and how it looked in 2010, then you'll know pretty much how it's going to end up looking in 2011. Even if that's Dec 24, 2011, it will happen!

For now, our Christmas theme is Sparta: so, welcome to our Spartan Christmas*. We managed to find time to pick up a tree - and what a tree! - on Sunday but picking it up was sandwiched between daughter being collected from a sleepover, husband returning from his bike ride and me and daughter needing to head out to a Guiding carol concert. When we returned, she still had homework to do, so she focussed on that and the decorations remained in the box as we do like to all do them together.

We were going to try again today, but then by the time I got son from football, fed him and sent him to Cubs...it was well past bedtime once husband was back and son was home again, so now we are planning to try again tomorrow.

Merry Spartan Christmas!
*Spartan as in austere , don't think of my husband and me as Menelaus and Helen, please!

First Toymaker doll finished

2011-12-08T00:15:00.000Z

Our first completely finished doll came to Brownies this week - just look how gorgeous she is!

And bear in mind that this has been made completely from scratch; every piece of the doll stitched together, stuffed then stitched to the body then the girls had to make the dress, the boots, the tail, the tiny cat ears, the hair.
It's taken a lot of concentration to get to this point.

I've seen a few of the dolls that the girls have finished over the last couple of weeks, but this is the first one with all the accessories too.
She did a great job, and I can really see this being something the girls will come across 15 or 20 years from now and remember that they made that, from scratch, at Brownies.

Button Christmas Tree Update 2

2011-12-05T00:01:00.000Z

I made contact with the lady that came up with the button Christmas tree, she not only gave me permission to use a picture of her tree, but it turns out she was a Guide, in Oxfordshire in the 1980s!

It's a small world, I had assumed she was American/Canadian as the stores she references are North American and she mentions dollars. She must have emigrated at some point, and it's funny that Guiding links us - although I was a Guide in Scotland when she was a Guide in England and I'm not suggesting for a second that we ever met!

Badges, Christmas and a promise

2011-12-02T19:09:00.006Z

Fun evening, and I am still on a high from the great time we had.

We started with badge presentation; instead of handing out badges as they are earned, as we normally do, we saved them all up to the end of the term and had a presentation instead: nothing too fancy, we had a bag for each girl and in there was a Christmas cracker, some sweeties, next term's diary and newsletter and then whatever badges they had earned.

Out of 25 girls, just one didn't earn any: while my original thought was that half the girls might earn some and that might inspire the other half, since it was just one girl I did give her a general badge instead, as I didn't want to single her out.

At the other extreme, one girl earned five badges, plus her Brownie Adventure badge plus a Brownies Well Done badge for being very helpful to other Brownies.

After the badge presentation - and the girls seemed to like it this way so we may well do it again this way next term - we moved on to the Christmas section of the evening, as planned by my daughter as part of her Baden Powell award. The girls split into their sixes and moved round one of four sections every ten minutes:

Food: mince pies, a mini yule log and a drink of squash, plus they pulled their crackers
Colouring: a wooden ornament each, coloured in and then a gold tie added to hang it
Button Christmas trees: ten green buttons going from large to tiny plus a yellow one to go on the top, you thread through them and tie to make a Christmas tree, it is very cute, I will say ten minutes wasn't quite enough for this, 15 mins would have been better, but as they all had their bag of badges, they were able to drop in their bits and pieces to finish at home
Games: snowballs made from newspapers and a Christmas tree unravelling game which is too hard to explain!

Finally, after clearing up, we had a promise ceremony for our littlest Brownie, M. She was very sweet, "whispered" it in my ear but actually said it quite loud, and was really thrilled to be included in the pack.

So, for regular meetings, that's it for this year as the school where we meet will have school play next week and school disco the week after. We do still have two events before Christmas, one for the unit and one for units across the whole town, so more to come.

Button Christmas Tree Update

My daughter got the idea for the button Christmas tree from her Guide Guider, I had a quick search online and found it, this person made it after a failed attempt at a Martha Stewart ornament - I must email her and let her know how many people have been using her idea! Both my Brownies and daughter's Guides used normal thread instead of the suggested cord but other than that, this is definitely the original!

Jelly Babies again

2011-11-24T08:22:00.002Z

We ran the jelly babies evening again - it's the second time we've run it though all the girls who took part originally had long since left, even the Guiding team has changed enough that only two of us remembered it.

Once again, it was brilliant fun, and so easy for us! And with the only expense a few bags of jelly babies, some cocktail sticks and a few sheets of paper, it is a very low cost evening.

Shelterboxes delivered

2011-11-16T00:01:00.000Z

Do you remember, back in the spring, my Brownies, together with Rainbows, Guides and Senior Section, all worked together to raise money for Shelterbox after the tsunami in Japan?

We heard in the last few days that the three boxes we had a stake in (one box fully funded by us and two boxes that we contributed to) have been delivered to Kenya.

With Somalia struck by drought, famine and conflict, thousands of Somali families have ended up in Kenyan refugee camps. Obviously we originally raised the money for Japan, but you can't specify where the boxes will go, and the way Shelterbox works is that they send out the boxes immediately, people fundraise as we did while an incident is happening but by the time they deploy the boxes we fundraised for, it is often to a completely different place. We did support their work in Japan, because they can only send boxes out if they know more fundraising is coming in.

Shelterbox set up in the Ifo 2 extension refugee camp with sanitation, schools, a market and hundreds of tents - including ours. I am telling the girls they should be very proud they have helped give families shelter, warmth and dignity.

Remembrance Sunday

2011-11-13T17:30:00.004Z

Briefly: very touching Remembrance event (though the minister did go on about how we must remember the fallen, he was quite literally preaching to the converted on that one as we were all there so that's exactly what we were doing) and very proud of the Rainbows, Brownies (including 14 of mine), Guides and Senior Section that turned out.

My son was a mile or two away, marching with his Cubs and looked very grown up when I dashed across to collect him and saw him march back. Daughter had come with me although as her Guides are within the same district as son's Cubs, her Guides were also marching and she's decided next year she will go there instead of with me.

"They shall grow not* old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them."

*It is grow not old, not as is commonly said, not grow old. In fact, I noticed the chap that read it out at this morning's event said it the wrong way, but as he was an ex-serviceman who had truly grown old without his comrades in arms, he can certainly be forgiven.

Concentration paying off

2011-11-11T13:51:00.003Z

Remember I said the girls needed to concentrate hard to make their dolls? It's paying off - they made massive progress this week (well, the girls who brought their dolls to Brownies did, the one who left her doll at her nan's house just had to help the others!) partly thanks to the mum of our newest Brownie who brought her sewing maching along.

They have two weeks to keep working on them at home now as we have a different meeting next week, but they are starting to look like dolls now!

Concentration

2011-11-06T11:31:00.004Z

Our Brownies are doing the Toymaker badge right now, and it's taking a lot of concentration. One of the leaders is running the badge and has chosen to have the girls make a doll from scratch, complete with clothes.

They will look just beautiful when finished, but my it's hard getting 25 girls to master running stitch! On my table I had six girls: one was very good, one was pretty good, one better than she thought, another had no interest whatsoever, the fifth was keen but random and the sixth just couldn't get her fingers to do what I was telling her no matter how many times I showed her a couple of stitches very very slowly!

The leader actually cut out all the pieces for the dolls, it took her a whole day - it'll pay off when we see the gorgeous results but there's a lot of concentrating between now and then.

Easyfundraising boost again

2011-10-29T14:08:00.002+01:00

Seriously, I know I bang on about easyfundraising every three months, but if the parents in your youth group shop online, it is absolutely money for nothing. We just heard how much we are getting for the July to September period, and it is £70!

If you want to know more, here's what I wrote in October 2010.

If you want to sign up your group, do it here, and my group'll get a thank you from easyfundraising for referring you, without affecting the amount you earn.

What is a Brownie Pow Wow?

2011-10-23T12:39:00.002+01:00

This week at Brownies, we had a Brownie Pow Wow - a chance for the girls to have their say about what they do. In this instance, we were looking for their ideas about what they would like to do next term, there was no voting at this point, but once we have taken their ideas and come up with rough ideas for the meetings, we can take some of them back and get the girls to vote.

The most successful bit of girl decision making we have had in recent years was when we were running the Adventure 100 programme to celebrate 100 years of guiding, and the girls narrowed down the 100 ideas in the challenge to the 11 weeks that we ran the programme.

After discarding the wholly impossible (a sleepover in Australia - not Australia themed, she actually wanted to go there for a night), or modifying them into something vaguely possible (the girl who said she just wanted to watch tv all night did think a cinema trip might be fun), we will be mulling over the following suggestions:

Things to do: Cinema, Sleepover, Pyjama party, Midnight feast, Panto with costumes – cluedo?, Park, Climbing wall, Riding, Sports, Olympics, Art and craft, Ice Skating, London
People to help: Cystic fibrosis, child charity, comic relief, soft toys for the school, stroke society, teenage cancer, walking for a charity, boy in the chip shop
Places to learn about: Ireland, Africa, China, Italy, Scotland, New Zealand, India, Spain

The boy in the chip shop - this related to a poster two of the girls had seen in a nearby chip shop about fundraising in the name of a little boy who had been very ill. So the girls were very well-intentioned when they said "boy in the chip shop" but I did want to say: "There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis, he's a liar and I'm not sure about you."

Could they BE any noisier!

2011-10-20T21:17:00.004+01:00

The Brownies were soooooooo noisy tonight! A combination of thinking up play-lets about famous scientists (for Science Investigator badge) and parent-teacher meetings running tonight so several girls going in and out during the evening.

We also had a pow-wow, and had them suggesting what they would like to do next term - as ever there were crazy ideas like visiting New Zealand for a sleepover, but there were some great ideas that will help shape the next two terms once we work through them all!

Half term next week, so no Brownies, then when we get back there will be lots of Toymaker fun!

Blog Action Day 2011

2011-10-16T00:01:00.001+01:00

It's Blog Action day 2011 today. I took part in this last year: Blog Action day 2010: Water and am happy to do so again.

I'm simply going to gather together posts I've made mentioning food over the years of this blog. I hope you might feel inspired to join the global conversation on your blog!

What should parents expect for their Brownies?

2011-10-15T16:00:00.001+01:00

This post was prompted by Working Mum's post No Brownie points for Brownies. While she's going to ring her daughter's Brown Owl and hopefully get the lines of communications going, it did get me thinking about what parents can reasonably expect of us as Brownie leaders and volunteers. (And that's not getting at you WM, as you know from my comments I do think you're not asking too much!)

The dates that Brownies will meet that term, and, before you break up at the end of term, the date of the first week back next term. You might not know what the girls will be doing each week, but you should know if they are meeting.
How much subs is for the term, and how payment is taken (eg, is it £2 a week, and do you pay weekly, half-termly or termly. Are cheques ok or does it have to be cash)
That your daughter will be supported towards making her promise, and, when she is ready to do so, that she will be able to (technically, Brownies don't ever have to make it if they don't want to). That may involve the Becoming a Brownie booklet, or a unit's own version.
That your daughter will be safe when she's with us (we do risk assessments, check venues for fire safety, give girls a chance to talk to us about anything that is worrying them, etc)
That we will offer your daughter a range of experiences as best we can given our own circumstances, because we are (generally) parents too who have to juggle family, work, other commitments with Guiding
That when it comes time to move on to Guides, we will help your daughter learn about the new section and move when she feels ready.

Anything else I should add, other Brownie Guiders?

And in return, here's what Guiders would love in return from their Brownie parents:

That you come in with your daughter, make sure we are there and are happy to take her - dropping your daughter off without checking first is sadly more common than you'd think and every now and then will result in a girl being left on her own because a parent didn't check if the unit was somewhere else that night. (This hasn't happened to me, but I know of other leaders where it has happened and we do have a couple of parents who try to drop and run without coming in, we soon set them straight)
That you pay subs promptly, ideally on the first night back so that we don't have to chase and chase and chase till we get them
That you send your daughter in uniform and sensible shoes, not her favourite clothes - and if you do send her in her favourite clothes, don't be surprised if they come back dirty and/or ripped
That you return forms on time, again so we don't have to chase them. And don't be surprised if your daughter can't attend because you ignored the deadline.
That when we need an extra adult occasionally, someone will step forward and help. Actually, my set of parents are brilliant for this, they know that two of us Guiders have younger children, and four of us Guiders have older children and that if we need a night off, there's a good reason. Also that "I have a younger child" doesn't wash as an excuse - so do some of us yet we are there every week, we're only asking you to help once in a blue moon.
That you have patience with us when we mess up: forget to give your daughter a badge, forget supplies for a specific craft etc. Just gently remind us, we're human too!

Again, other Guiders, anything else I should add to that list?

And parents - anything you think we should be doing as a minimum?

Trying something new

2011-10-13T08:01:00.000+01:00

This term we are trying something new with the Brownie badges, waiting till the end of term to give them out. In the past, we have always given them out the week after a girl completes a badge (or as soon as we can order them if we don't have them in) and we have sometimes felt it just seems a bit routine, the badge goes in a pocket and rarely gets sewn on.

We're hoping that by waiting and doing a whole term of badges in one go, it will get them all excited, and if they come home with two or three badges in one go, we might actually see them sewn on next term!

It's going to be up to the girls though, they will decide in January if they want to do it that way again or if they want to try another way. Right now I have acquired 25 bags, I've named them and drawn a trefoil on each, then written on the back what needs to go in each one. Just need to think of how we will hand them out now, what we can do to make it all special.

Going Away with Brownies

2011-10-10T08:01:00.000+01:00

Quite excitingly, one of our Assistant Guiders has decided she would like to do her holiday licence. I only have an overnight licence (I honestly wish I had just done the holiday licence at the time but I just don't have time now to do those extra modules) so currently our girls can only go away for one night, or we have to piggyback on someone else's licence as we did when we went to Hautbois (apologies for missing images, my old ones got deleted) and Wales.

I did go on a training for the holiday licence and I flip flopped for ages on whether I could fit in the work to upgrade my overnight licence, then eventually decided against it.

So I am thrilled that this Guider is going to go for it, and have promised to support her. Which for a start means digging out Going Away with guiding and our list of local approved places. Oh joy, digging through the stores of too much stuff!

Guiding in Kenya

2011-10-07T11:37:00.000+01:00

One of the leaders with our Guides and Senior Section is going on a Girlguiding trip to Kenya next year. Last night she came and talked to the Brownies about Kenya and what it is like, along with one of the Brownie's dads who has been there too.

The girls were really interested and I think it gave them a lot to think about. They were each sent home with a tube of Smarties and asked to eat them then bring the tube back full of coins, as the Guider is fundraising to go on her trip. Our district has donated £50 to her fundraising, as has the division, and we donated last night's subs in "payment" for her running the night - we have to be very careful not to just donate subs to other charitable causes as the parents pay these for their daughter's time in Brownies not for someone else. But as she ran the whole night with no cost to us, other than rent, it is the same as when we pay St John Ambulance to run the First Aid badge for us.

We did stay away from the current tourism issues in Kenya, kept it at the girls' level so it was more about animals, and standard of living. The biggest hit? You know the game where the first person says "I went on holiday and took my suitcase" then the next person says "I went on holiday and took my suitcase and..." - well, we had 23 Brownies, 2 adults, a Guide and a YL take part in that game and the very last Brownie, one of our youngest, managed the whole list of 26 items when it was her turn! I think the Brownie dad enjoyed himself too, as he stayed on to help X run a Kenya night for the Guides as well!

Here's what the Guider will be up to:

My name is X, I have been selected to go to Kenya with Midlands Guiding.,This is a fantastic opportunity for me and am due to go in March next year for two weeks. We are teaming up with a charity called Akamba Children's Education Fund (ACEF) for the project. This charity aims to advance the education and health of over 940+ vulnerable children who attend the Brainhouse Academy situated in Mathare, North Kenya-which is one of the worlds largest slums.

The children are schooled and all receive one meal a day of porridge. The facilities are basic with just two non-flush toilets, no electricity, no running water and no school books. 170+ of the children are orphaned and live within the school. This is a high standard of living for these children and often the only meal a day they get is the one provided by the academy. All these tasks are done whilst dealing with and considering that 90% of the children have HIV or AIDS, which is a taboo subject and not discussed openly. Brainhouse academy receives no government funding or development support. Based in a slum, it is simply not recognised by the government. We are going there with the aim to generally support the school with lessons, cooking, cleaning, lessons and we would like to introduce a Netball team. The charity had already established football and cricket for the boys, now its time for the girls!

In return for our work, we are undergoing training in leadership and mentoring, prior to and after the event. Giving us advancement on our skills in leadership to then better the relationship with have with our units and to spread though Guiding. This is not a 'jolly holiday' but a long term commitment to bettering ourselves to benefit the charity and upon our return, using the skills within our units. We were due to go next August, but due to this being election time in Kenya, and the political unrest this causes, it has been bought forward considerably. I have to raise £2000 for the trip to which I am finding a challenge in itself. I am currently selling a quiz though work, to friends, family etc and am doing fundraising with my unit.

*If anyone feels the urge to donate to X's fundraising, please do get in touch, however this isn't a begging blog post, more letting you know what we have been involved in.

Why should my kid join Scouts or Guides?

2011-09-23T14:55:00.000+01:00

Well, us Guiding and Scouting leaders could tell you it's because it will build character and friendships, they will learn new skills, they'll discover the wider world and how they can contribute to it...and all of that is true.

But also, every term or so, you'll be able to get rid of your kid by giving her/him to us for the day while they go off on a fun day or another event. And if you are REALLY lucky, then even if you have two kids, sometimes event dates will coincide and your daughter will head off with the Guides on a day trip on the exact same day as your son has a Cub fun day and there is an overlap of five hours and you and your other half won't know what to do with yourselves!

Except, if this situation were to occur to me in the next, say, 24 hours, I'd know exactly what we're going to do: a few chores then off for a lovely pub lunch.

Of course the flip side is when you have children in different sections and they need to be in different places at the same time. Our Rainbows, Brownies and Guides can't have our usual meeting place this week coming and so Rainbows are going for a walk in a nearby village, Brownies are heading to a nearby shop to learn about Fair Trade and Guides are going for a chip walk. And one mum has a girl in each of the three sections and when she usually drops off one and collects the next from the same place, on this occasion she needs to be in two different places at 6pm. She'll work it out by sharing lifts, but I prefer my circumstances this time!

Newest Cub Scout

2011-09-13T19:11:00.000+01:00

Remember the newest Beaver? Who turned into the oldest Beaver?

Well, with his eighth birthday this weekend just gone, this week he turned into the newest Cub.

*sigh* - it is only him getting older, right, not me as well?

Back to it!

2011-09-11T15:53:00.000+01:00

Back to Brownies - and we have 25 girls once more, despite deciding we would stick at 24 from now on. We had already said yes to a Rainbow moving up to take us to 24 then we got a transfer girl. You only have to put a transfer at the top of the waiting list but she's 9 and a half and will only have two terms with us so we just brought her in.

We've started the term off with Crime Prevention, ably led by one of the Assistant Guiders. There was much fingerprinting and giggles! We have a PCSO (Police Community Support Officer) coming next week which should be interesting, and just in case she pulls out for any reason at the last minute, we have the surefire hit Jelly Baby evening all prepared and sitting in the boot of my car - the jelly babies have an April use by date so we can use them at the last minute or use them next term, whatever we need.

Be inspired

2011-08-24T20:42:00.000+01:00

A few blogs by fellow Guiders (and even a Scouting monkey!) to inspire you in these last days of summer:

http://kelloggsville.blogspot.com/

http://cazowl.blogspot.com/

http://toomanyhats-toomanyhats.blogspot.com/

http://gus-augustusclibbon.blogspot.com/

http://tawny75.blogspot.com/

http://badjokesandovenchips.blogspot.com/

See? Normal people (setting aside the very cool monkey!)

Could you volunteer too? If so, have a look at: http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/get_involved/volunteer.aspx

patriotic

2011-08-17T20:31:00.000+01:00

I want!

It's not very big, but I would put money on me picking one up next time I am in a Guide shop!

Love stuff like this, a bit different yet still definitely Guiding.

All quiet? Not quite!

2011-08-01T20:13:00.000+01:00

While Brownies is quiet as it is summer, daughter has been working on her Baden Powell Award - the highest award a Guide can earn. The pressure is on: with her brother earning his Bronze Chief Scout Award, her sense of competition has kicked in.

For one clause, she is working to gain her Agility badge, and that's what has been occupying us: runs, cycles, and swims to fit in - all with her brother tagging along in some form.

Not a bad way to spend the days of summer!

Guide twins beat Brownie twins

2011-07-26T08:37:00.000+01:00

Remember the Brownie twins who gained more than 120 Brownie badges? There were just four badges they didn't manage to get.

I just spotted a story about Guide twins who achieved EVERY Guide badge - 45 each.

Remarkable - yes it is less badges than the Brownies gained but to achieve every badge across all the different areas is incredible plus many of the Guide badges are a lot harder than the Brownie ones, not just incrementally harder in terms of age.

Makes me wonder how those Brownie twins are doing as Guides!

Subs for a term times three

2011-07-23T20:39:00.000+01:00

I know I've mentioned easyfundraising before but I just found out our unit is getting a whopping £76.34 for the last three months, so I wanted to enthuse about it again! That will cover three girls' subs for a term, if needed, if anyone is struggling to pay, or we can use it towards trips etc.

If you want to sign up your Guiding unit, or other charity, then please use our referral link: http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/referral/679 - it makes no difference to the amount you could earn, and we could earn a small percentage on top.

What lies ahead?

2011-07-21T17:18:00.000+01:00

Well, we've had our planning meeting for the September - December term, it's always good to do it before the summer hols start as it is so hard for us all to get together once we break up.

We'll

be studying Fair Trade, recycling things, learning about crime prevention, making toys and doing experiments, plus a party organised by my daughter as part of her work towards her Baden Powell Award.

The girls

can count a lot of what we do towards some of the Brownie badges too, so if any of the activities pique their interest, they could earn one or more of:

World Issues
Toymaker
Crime Prevention
Science Investigator.

They're all badges we've looked at before as a unit, but not with the girls we have now, so all fresh, and we're doing each in a different way too so it'll be fresh for us too.

Brownies round the world: Japan

2011-07-16T14:17:00.000+01:00

Since my Brownies have done so much about Japan this year (both the Japan Challenge and fundraising after the tsunami), it seems only natural to make Brownies in Japan the next in my series on Brownies round the world.

*Brownies round the world: South Africa

*Brownies round the world: Denmark

Japan has had Girl Scouting since 1919 so they recently celebrated 90 years while the UK celebrated 100.

Their Brownies are called Brownies, and are followed by Junior Girl Scout, Senior Girl Scout then Ranger Girl Scout. Brownies are aged 6-9, Juniors 9-12, Seniors 12-15 and Rangers 15-17. There are also Tenderfoots, like our Rainbows, they only started in 2001 and unlike Rainbows, girls are only a Tenderfoot for one year before moving to Brownies.

The Brownie promise:

Watakushi wa:

Kami [hotoke] to kuni o aishi

Mainichi hitobito o tasuke

Tokuni uchino otetsudai o shimasu

The Brownie motto:

Te o kase

Translated:

I promise to do my best:

To love God [Buddha] and my country

To help other people every day

Especially those at home

Motto: Lend a hand

Brownies wear a very sweet blue pinafore over a white blouse, with a blue sash for badges. I can't see my British Brownies happily wearing the pinafore but it is very cute!

Guiding was brought to Japan by a British missionary teacher called Miss Muriel Greenstreet. It was banned by the government during the Second World War and restarted in 1947.

The core of the Guiding programme in Japan is:

Self-development
Relationship with others
Enjoyment of outdoors

A message from Girl Scouts of Japan following the tsunami.

Useful links:

Making Friends has a paper doll of Japanese Guide uniform
Japanese Girl Scout uniforms
Badges that can be earned by Japanese Brownies

Oldest Beaver

2011-07-13T16:19:00.000+01:00

Remember the Newest Beaver?

Having gained his Bronze Chief Scout's Award, he has just one more meeting and he'll be off to Cubs. Time truly flies.

Masked ball

2011-07-11T19:50:00.000+01:00

Last week, our Guiding district held a masked ball for the girls. 12 units were invited and we planned it out between us, sharing the load.

As they came in, I photographed them, sitting on a throne. Then there was dancing, then they moved round 4 areas: a game with card, musical statues, making a corsage and a chill out zone with drinks and snacks. There was also face-painting and more dancing, and they went home with a chocolate frog (as in kiss it and see if it turns into a prince!) They had already made their masks, in normal unit meetings.

It was fun - certainly more of a hit with the Rainbows and Brownies, but we had very few Guides and no Senior Section signed up so it inevitably ended up aimed at the younger girls.

All about me

2011-07-04T17:33:00.000+01:00

I'm taking part in Jenna's Commenting Challenge and I noticed quite a few people were doing a Ten Things About Me to introduce themselves to their new visitors so I decided to do the same.

I'm Scottish, living in England, born in Ireland. When the census reports are opened up in 100 years time, I am really going to confuse people - why does this woman who lives in England and was born in Ireland call herself Scottish? Weren't they crazy in 2011! The truth of it is, I have Scottish parents, was raised in Scotland and have a Scottish accent and no matter how long I live in England, I'll always be Scottish.
I have lived in 19 houses in my 40 years of life, yet I have lived in our current house for 10 years. Shows you how much we moved as kids, plus quite a few six month lets when I was post student life bumped up that total.
I am married, two kids, one girl, one boy. I work part-time to balance family life with work life, it's a juggling act like it is for everyone and sometimes I feel I am barely clinging on, but we always seem to survive.
I love where we live, it's just an hour to London on the train but I drive past animals of nearly all kinds on the drive to work, including grouse and emus!
I am a Brownie Guider, which you should have worked out from the header of the blog! I've been doing it since 2004 when I started so my daughter could be a Brownie, she has long since moved onto Guides but I still do it because I really enjoy it and I like that I am involved in our community. We are a very adventurous pack, with sports, and trips, and sleepovers.
Thanks to Guiding (and me winning a competition), my Brownies and I got to meet JK Rowling at the midnight launch of the last ever Harry Potter book
I love making cake pops
I took up running last year and really enjoy it, although I don't manage to squeeze it in quite often enough around everything else, I am finding my weight is going down very slowly and surely, and I definitely keep up better with the kids
Family is all to me, you'll never find me happier than when I am with my husband, kids, my parents, my two brothers, their wives and my nephew.
My kinda bad habit is too much TV - husband and I went to the cinema a lot before we had the kids, and we've replaced the cinema trips with evenings in with DVDs

That's me, hope to see you around on the Commenting Challenge!

Comment crazy

2011-07-03T17:48:00.000+01:00

I've been following Jenna's blog for a couple of years now, since she was pregnant with her first son. She leads what seems to me to be a real All-American life and I find it fascinating. I comment occasionally but mostly I just enjoy the pictures of her two wee boys and her amazing craft skills.

She's running a Commenting Challenge, starting tomorrow (Monday 4th) you try to comment on 10 blogs per day for 7 days, using the linky at the bottom of her post about the challenge. It gives you a chance to look at blogs you might never come across any other way, and maybe find a few you might like to add to your blogroll.

I'm going to give it a try - though 10 a day for 7 days might be hard, we'll see how the week goes. I thought it was something a bit different and you might like to try it too!

Such a good day

2011-07-01T17:49:00.000+01:00

I know I'm supposed to say how, as a working parent, I was incredibly inconvenienced by the teachers strike yesterday. Indeed, if there are more strikes in the autumn, it will be a real hassle to juggle work and kid/s off school. But this one time?

Heaven.

I had brunch out with a group of lovely ladies including a friend from Germany who was here for just a few days.

I went shopping with daughter to sort out little things we hadn't had time for like changing her pin number to one she can remember and ordering her school uniform for September - because there's a whole new uniform for next school year. Watched The Apprentice with her on iplayer.

And in the evening, our Brownies, Guides and Senior Section went to the local Scout campsite and foraged for firewood, sang songs, played games, cooked sausages, toasted marshmallows and made smores (well, the UK version using chocolate digestives) and jelly smores.

It was quite simply, a lovely, lovely day.

Weekend away

2011-06-24T17:29:00.000+01:00

Envious though I am of Kelloggsville's recent weekend in London with her Brownies, and fondly remembering the great weekend we had doing similar activities just 15 months ago, our Brownies have just had their turn to go away and we had a fabulous time at Blackwell Court near Birmingham.

Us leaders went over on the Friday night and had a takeaway, then were up in plenty of time to set up and be ready for the girls arriving on Saturday morning. Normally we race to where we are going, set up about an hour before the girls should arrive but inevitably someone arrives early etc. This time we were completely on top of things, plus it was really nice for us to hang out and spend a bit of time together without chasing after Brownies as we usually are.

So then the girls came and the weekend included:

zipwire
grass sleds
orienteering
nightline
swimming
loads of yummy foods
crafts

We had 17 Brownies, divided up into 3 rooms, 2 of 6 and one of 5. Then during the day, they were divided up into 2 groups of 10, including the 2 Guides and 1 Young Leader, for the activities.

We had no homesickness - I stand by my theory that all the homesickness we had last year at camp was because we were so close to home - and no bad behaviour despite having a couple of our more challenging girls away with us. They even went to sleep quite quickly after all that fresh air and exercise, though they were awake early too, but you can't have everything.

I definitely recommend Blackwell, although we had a few glitches along the way they always worked to help us and resolved all that they could.

Maybe the tented village next year???

Feel Closer

2011-06-20T17:37:00.000+01:00

I really love this blog post my fellow Guider Kelloggsville did on Closeness or Falseness recently, inspired by the Nivea Million Moments of Closeness campaign.

I've been mulling this over myself, particularly the debate question Has new technology brought us closer?

I think technology can be incredibly useful: I researched all the options for our recent Brownie weekend online (details of that will follow in a few days!) and was able to share with my fellow leaders by email, making planning much easier for us.

And as someone who lives 326 miles away from her parents - can you tell how many times I have driven up the M6? - I love that I can email them quickly, send them a Facebook link to pictures of their grandkids or text if I need to ask something but know they are too busy at that exact time for a phone call, given that our phone calls tend to last for about 45 mins! My inlaws live just an hour away but aren't online and never turn on their emergency mobile phone and I confess they miss often out on the pictures as a result.

And technology can bring you closer to people you would never ordinarily meet: way back in 1999 I joined a group of online mums whose children were born in the same month and another for a craft I was keen on. For much of the time, it was all talk about whose kid was walking, whose kid was talking, who had made what recently, but in a very supportive and non-competitive way. I had no reason to believe I'd meet many of the women in either group, but in 2001 we were stuck in America after 9/11 happened and I was inundated with offers of help to get us from Boston, where no planes flew for about a fortnight afterwards, to wherever in the US or Canada we wanted to go to get home to the UK. We ended up driving to Ottawa, staying with one of the women for two nights, she just opened her home up to us, fed us, even had Canadian Thanksgiving early for us because she said if she couldn't be thankful at a time like that when could she be? Then we made it to Toronto and eventually home.

Since then, I've made very close friends with three bloggers in particular and we have our own secret place we go off to online to chat, support each other and thrash out the problems of the world. I've only met one of them, twice; she has been lucky enough to meet all of us, and one day I will meet everyone but in the meantime, they are among my closest friends even though we haven't all met.

So can technology bring us closer? Absolutely!

*Disclosure - the company I work for has been working with Nivea on the Feel Closer campaign, but I haven't been paid to blog, I did it because I had strong feelings on this topic. You can join the debate at http://www.nivea.co.uk/Experience/ext/en-GB/mmoc and you can enter the competition to win one of 100 prizes each worth £100 - I can't, but you can!

What a fantastic Brownie weekend!

2011-06-16T12:44:00.000+01:00

I hope these Brownies know how lucky they are to have such keen leaders!

Penguin on Twitter

2011-06-10T18:30:00.000+01:00

I'm on Twitter now: can't say I'll be full of insights that will rock your world but I'll give it a try! If you want to follow me, I am Penguin2005. If you are reading this on my actual blog rather than in a reader, you can click Follow me on Twitter on the right hand side.

sad Brownie not so sad

2011-06-10T18:11:00.000+01:00

We seem to have made a breakthrough with Sad Brownie and she is now Happy but Timid Brownie - which is the girl I was expecting from knowing her for seven years!

Kelloggsville got it spot on with her advice to me, I sent her and the other new Brownie outdoors with the rest of the Brownies last night (I was inside with 17 parents running a parents meeting before our weekend away, details of that will follow after we have been away in the next few weeks) and she was much happier being in the mix of it.

I do still think the nub of the issue wasn't so much the two Guides but more what she expected Brownies to be, but as she seems happier now, and integrated, we have hopefully assimilated her (sorry for the Borg reference, you can take the girl away from her science fiction but you can't take the science fiction out of me).

So, we have 25 happy Brownies - yes, not 26, the 26th flatly refused to return and would not tell her mum why, she said she loved the week she came, but she didn't want to go back thanks. Not fretting about that, just getting on with it.

This term we've been working on the American Challenge from Guiders.co.uk (need to be a member to see that one) and the Outdoor Challenge from Anglia Region, we are in Midlands Region but they let anyone do their badges. So, bit more of both of those for the next couple of weeks and then we hit summer.

Bring it on!

sad Brownie

2011-05-28T16:06:00.000+01:00

Other Brownie leaders, some advice? One of our new Brownies is struggling, she has been dreading Brownies all week according to her mum and was in tears just before the meeting.

When she is at the meeting, she seems to enjoy it. But away from us, she works herself into a state.

Specifics: she found the two Guides working with her on Becoming a Brownie were intimidating and upsetting. It was the first time the two Guides had worked with the new girls rather than our two Young Leaders so I had made sure I was with them for much of the time and I actually felt they were doing really well. This particular Brownie has a big sister that was in the same class as the two Guides up until July this year and is still in the same class at secondary as one of the two Guides so she knows them quite well, so I was really surprised.

I took note of what mum said and I worked with the new girls myself this Thursday instead, but if she's still finding it all intimidating I am not sure what to do next. She knows her promise, she's gone off to practice lending a hand, I've made sure her buddy is a girl she really likes, she seems to be embracing it all, but I am worried she will get upset again.

I don't want to lose this Brownie, her sister tried us and another Brownie pack five years ago and chose the other Brownie pack, which was of course her choice, but I kind of feel like if I can't get it right for this girl, I'm doing something wrong because then both sisters wouldn't have joined us.

Anything I can do? Other than hope?

Cake pops for the school fair

2011-05-17T20:16:00.000+01:00

Remember I made cake pops, just for fun? Well, I'm going to make them again, but this time for the school fair. I've promised to make 100. Gulp - hope they sell!

I've done a little experimenting in the meantime; I tried buying white chocolate and tinting it to reduce the cost of coating the cake pops, but it does seem that the candy melts are the best thing, I couldn't get as strong a colour or as good a finish with the tinted stuff. I wasn't making cake pops, just cupcake bites, and when I picked them up, to do the top coating, even after they had been in the fridge for a few hours, the chocolate was still a little soft so I think I will play safe and get the candy melts from Hobby Craft again. I've ordered pink, yellow and blue - pictures will follow when I make them.

It's not oh so quiet...

2011-05-13T17:51:00.000+01:00

We currently have 26 Brownies. A whopping NINE of those are Year Fours at a single school and were on a school residential this week. Couple that with one girl missing and we had just 16 girls last night!

The hall seemed very empty, but all bar two of the 16 were Year Three and Year Two girls, and they were quite giddy and silly and didn't concentrate very hard on instructions - a game of Octopus was completely chaotic, lasting forever and with seaweed running about when they should be standing still.

Fun though - and I know it will seem noisier and fuller next week!

Back to Brownies

2011-04-29T14:27:00.000+01:00

A very busy night back at Brownies, not least because we won't meet next week as all the girls are off school (again!) for the local elections and AV voting.

The girls took part in a royal wedding challenge, and judging from the shrieks from the hall - I was in the outer area dealing with subs and other finance stuff - they had lots of fun.

We also had lots for them all to take home. Everyone there last night got a royal wedding challenge badge - we had 23 out of 26 girls there last night which was quite good as we only had 24 badges! If they had all turned up, we wouldn't have given the newbies a badge, we'd have told them they could start earning them from next week, but as we had 3 missing, we were fine.

There were also Japan badges for all the girls who helped to fundraise last term, we didn't distinguish between who had raised what, so all the girls who were with us last term got one, the newbies didn't get one as this was their first night.

On top of those, they were also receipts for the girls who had paid up their subs, five interest badges given out to four girls who had earned them over the last month, and the china most of them had painted one night last term, one of the nights when I was ill.

The china was beautiful, there were plates and mugs and they really were excellent. The YL and the two PLs took them out to the gate where the Brownies leave so that they could take them carefully straight to their parents and not give them a chance to drop them when they had so much to carry already!

So, a week off next week, then back the week after, though our numbers will be down as quite a few girls will be on a school trip. The week after that we should see the full strength 26 girls back, we're trying out 26 this term with a view of either going to 28 in September if we can manage it or back to 24 in September if we find the girls are too noisy/uncontrolled. We want to be able to give the girls individual attention and although we have a large leadership team, we want to be sure that still happens. We'll see how it goes!

Even the royal wedding has a Guiding connection

2011-04-26T17:14:00.001+01:00

Check out Hello Magazine, the Brownie in the back in the centre is Kate Middleton.

My Brownies will be doing a Royal Wedding Challenge this week - not led by me, I'm not much of a royalist, don't mind them but don't get excited by them.

Guiding has long had a royal connection: the Queen, her sister and Princess Anne were all in Guiding; Margaret and Anne as Brownies, Margaret and Elizabeth as Guides and Rangers. The current president of Girlguiding UK is the Countess of Wessex, Edward's wife. And now the newest member of the Royal family also turns out to have been a Brownie.

It's often said that Americans are more excited about our royals than we are, I found out about this picture courtesy of the Girl Scouts of America's blog!

Quilts for the Olympics

2011-04-23T08:01:00.000+01:00

Anyone done this? Am thinking it might be a fun project for the autumn with the Brownies and start to get them excited about the Olympics...

I can't quilt, though I could ask around to find someone who could. I wouldn't be afraid of doing it as two layers sewn together round the edge, which looks acceptable. The deadline is December 2011, so plenty of time to do it after the summer.

Cake Pops

2011-04-17T15:58:00.000+01:00

Inspired in equal measures by Bakerella and Working Mum on the Verge's cupcakes, I decided to make cake pops today. I need to refine it a bit, but I am pretty pleased with them.

I took the laziest possible attitude to them, in that I didn't bake my own cake or make my own buttercream - they took long enough as to make as it was.

I managed to make 38 - if I had rolled the balls more evenly in size I might have made it to 40 but if I'd made them much smaller and ended up with lots more, the choc covering wouldn't have been enough so it's a good number.

I used:

2 x Tesco madeira cakes (600g total - I would have used any un-iced cake but this was all the little Tesco near us had this morning)
2/3 of a tub of Betty Crocker icing (300g - this is where I will modify next time, I think the cake is too smooth and sweet, I think a bit less icing, but that might make it too crumbly which it definitely wasn't this time, so it may not work)
Almost a whole pack of red Candy Melts (normal cooking choc would work fine too, and is about 1/3 of the price but I saw these at the store where I bought my lolly sticks and thought I would give them a try)
Lolly sticks - Hobbycraft didn't have any 4" ones in so I bought 8" ones and cut them in half - managing to slice into my ring finger on the very first cut, my wedding ring mostly protected me but I now have a plaster on and my ring on my right hand!
tiny little choc hearts - not a necessary part of it but they were cute

Instructions

Crumble the cakes in food processor. Mix in the icing (can't be exact about amount, as I said, I need to work on that bit). Roll into balls, put on a baking sheet on greaseproof paper and chill for 1 hour. If the balls are crumbly, add more icing to mixture.
Melt a few drops of choc. Dip lolly stick in choc, then push into ball, about 90% of the way in, this definitely helps keep it on the stick when you are adding the chocolate later. Chill again for 15 mins.
Melt half the choc in as small based a dish as you can so that the choc is quite deep and it's easy to dip into. I microwaved for 30 secs at a time, took 90 secs total for me.
Dip the ball into the choc, help it go over with a small spoon if needed, try to cover all of the ball. Let excess drip off, add a heart if you want then either:

put back onto the tray with the greaseproof paper, this works perfectly but does leave a straight back on the ball as the choc settles
stick the stick into an oasis, I got one from Hobbycraft that fit 11 sticks, the choc drips a little but not too much if you got the excess off, and this keeps the ball round. The first is easier, the second is neater.

You'll probably find the first ones will have set as you finish the first half, melt the second batch of choc and do the remainder, return to the fridge for as long as needed. Bakerella warns to put them into an airtight box to make them last more than a couple of days.

London Olympics 2012

2011-04-15T08:21:00.000+01:00

Not Guiding, but my family have now applied for tickets for London 2012 Olympics in the public ballot.

You have to choose what events you are interested in, what locations if there are more than one (such as in the case of football) and what dates. Then you have to say the maximum you are prepared to spend and you will only be entered into the ballot for tickets that are that much or are less.

One really nice aspect is that under 16s pay their age. So for our two kids, we would pay £13 and £8, no matter how much our adult tickets cost.

We have to wait now, find out if we have been successful, but we have applied for:

Cycling (track)
Cycling (road)
Tennis - at Wimbledon!
Football
Taekwondo

I reckon we should be successful with the football (as there are lots of stadia to choose from, all with thousands of seats) and the taekwondo (as it is a minority sport). Hubby really wants the track cycling and I really want to go to Wimbledon. With the road cycling, if we don't get tickets for the grandstand we may go anyway as the route is through London so there will be a lot of vantage points.

It's exciting! What it does mean is if we get tickets there will be no foreign holiday for us next year, we can't afford both plus those events are across three of only six school holiday weeks. We should be able to manage a week in the UK though, so we will get a holiday, and hey, it will be worth giving up abroad for a year to be part of London 2012, we want to be part of the Olympics in our own country.

Shelterbox and Japan

2011-04-08T16:27:00.000+01:00

I'm much much better from my kidney infection and made it back to Brownies for the first time last night, just in time for our Japan fundraising evening.

Our girls have been working hard for weeks, not just my Brownies, but also the Rainbows that meet before us, the Guides that meet after us, and the Senior Section run by two of the Guide Guiders.

They raised loads of money by filling jam jars with change, some girls did sponsored events, lots of girls did jobs round the house for money, and the older girls ran bake sales at their schools.

Then we finished off last night with an origami evening where families came, bought the templates, and we supplied thin paper, scissors, glue and pens to make whatever they chose. We also sold drinks and home baking, ran a Guess the name of the rabbit, and one of the Senior Section Guiders made beautiful flowers out of Japanese fabric.

All those efforts together, plus parents of Brownies and Guides agreeing not to have subs refunded for a night back in March where we had to call off the meeting at short notice, added up to...

£803.73!

We will be sending £651.73 of that directly to Shelterbox, it will pay for one Shelterbox plus £60 left over for the charity to spend as they need. The other £152 has already gone to Shelterbox via an initiative set up by a couple of Guiders to raise money for the charity by selling badges - we bought badges for every girl and leader involved in our fundraising, a great way to say thank you but still have the money go to our chosen charity.

If you're a Guiding or Scouting leader (there's no trefoil on the badge so it is not exclusively Girlguiding) and might like to purchase the badges too (or even if you are not!), the details are in the Help Now image. If you can't click on it to make it bigger, the contact is bevdunn@rocketmail.com and the badges are £2 each plus postage with all profit going to Shelterbox.

Still here / Japan

2011-03-29T19:07:00.000+01:00

I am still here, I've been laid low by a kidney infection, I will be back!

In the meantime, my Brownies, together with the Rainbows who meet before us and the Guides who meet after us, have raised over £400 so far for Japan and are still going...details to follow once I have more energy and time to blog properly.

What can Brownies do for Japan?

2011-03-12T15:32:00.000Z

It's not even two months since my Brownie pack did the Japan Challenge, and maybe that's why what has happened there has touched me so deeply.

What can my Brownies do to help? We can't just take the good bits of Japan that we did in the challenge and not help out when they need us immediately afterwards.

Well, I have sent an email out to our sister Brownie, Guide and Senior Section unit because I have a plan. I want to buy one shelterbox to send to Japan. It offers shelter, cooking facilities, warmth, even colouring items for kids to keep them busy. It's not cheap, it costs £590, which is why I want to enlist all 4 units to work together, it would mean raising around £10 per girl that way.

So far I have heard back from the Senior Section leader and she is on board.

Ideas so far:

An origami making evening and parents buy the origami their kids made, we'd sell juice and baking as well
Buy cheap fans from Baker Ross and have a stall at our school fair selling them for £1 each, that would be 60p profit per fan.
A Japanese wish tree, 5op to write out your wish on a slip and tie to the tree.
The Senior Section leader has loads of Japanese style fabric and she is happy to make fabric roses we could sell.

I really want to do this - any more ideas that would be low cost for us but income-generating for the cause?

Sharing

2011-03-06T13:14:00.000Z

First we shared Thinking Day with the rest of the division - we went to a nearby zoo, and apparently there were over 400 of us! It was great fun - very very cold, but overall the girls had a good time.

Now I'm sharing Brownies! Our waiting list has got just horrendous, right now we have 24 Brownies, only 4 of whom are 9 and therefore would leave within the next year to go to Guides. But the waiting list had 13 girls who are either old enough to start or would be old enough in the next year.

I had started trying to encourage mums on the waiting list to think about setting up a 2nd X Brownies, that's what we did six years ago when our daughters couldn't get a place locally. But then I found out that one of the packs in my district, and another nearer pack in another district are both actively looking for girls, so I wrote to the parents of all the six year olds on the list telling them where they were on the list, and what the anticipated date of them starting with us would be. I also added contact details for the other two Brownies packs.

And so far, at least three have taken up places with the other units - which means all the others on my list can move a little bit further up, and three girls get to be Brownies way sooner than if they had waited. I'm hoping another four or five will do the same, which will get things on a more manageable basis.

Nonny!

2011-02-21T08:39:00.000Z

See the doll second from the right? That's Nonny!

For my daughter's first birthday she was given that doll, and she carried it everywhere with her for the next four years. We went on holiday, so did Nonny. She went to the loo, so did Nonny. She went to pre-school, so did Nonny. There's pictures of her at weddings, at her grandparents, always with Nonny hanging off her hand.

Luckily, we quickly realised her attachment to Nonny and were able to snap up a second Nonny, known to us as Evil Twin Derek so that our daughter wouldn't realise what we meant when we referred to it each time it was time to switch them over so Nonny/Derek could have a wash. (Why Evil Twin Derek? A short-lived obsession with the Sunday omnibus of Sunset Beach in the late nineties)

Oh, and why Nonny? We think she was trying to say Dolly.

Once she started school she started to leave Nonny at home, but she was always next to her in bed at night, till she was eight or nine, then she became one of many stuffed toys at the end of the bed, still beloved but not constantly needed.

We even felt last year that she could know about Evil Twin Derek and not be too traumatised, and indeed, she didn't really care (she's 12 now!)

Anyway, all of this has nothing to do with anything other than I stumbled across these five dolls on Ebay, truly stumbled because it's not like I can search for the word Nonny.

Sadly, these 5 dolls have only ever sat on a shelf, according to the information. Those dolls haven't lived like Nonny has. Maybe the new purchaser will love this Nonny like our girl loved hers.

Thinking Day 2011: Bolivia

2011-02-19T16:03:00.000Z

The girls chose Bolivia as the country for Thinking Day, not the easiest of countries to learn more about, for example if we are learning about a country I usually line up some food but boiled lamb brains and dried llama shanks are not that easy to find in Tesco.

But I was able to find a craft - God's Eyes - that we had never done before and that isn't just Mexican, but also Bolivian, so that was fun to do, and had very varying results! Here's a link to a sheet to make them, from the fabulous Ideas4kids site.

We also learned a little about life in Bolivia for girls and women, and had a look at participation in Guiding in Bolivia.

Division day out soon, and a break for half term!

Thinking Day 2011: lemons and limes

2011-02-08T08:01:00.000Z

Have been using my spare time to prepare for our two weeks on World Thinking Day at Brownies.

Don't know what Thinking Day is? Here's the explanation.

And here's some of what we have done over the years:

We will be attending a division thinking day event, and in our meetings we will be doing the WAGGGS 2011 challenge pack, so I have been:

writing Brownie names on lemons and limes
writing Brownie names on large envelopes
cutting up paper so each envelope has 23 pieces of paper
putting together a plan for the first week that involves those things and more

For the second week, I am throwing it out to the girls to make the decision, the second week will be based around whichever of the 5 WAGGGS named countries being supported by the Thinking Day fund this year:

Nepal
Cyprus
Bolivia
Yemen
Democratic Republic of Congo

Not easy choices for me but I know I'll come up with something, whatever country they choose! There's a sheet on each in the WAGGGS pack and I'll use those as the starting point. I am hoping they don't choose Cyprus, probably the only country any of them would have been to, I think the more unfamiliar to them, the better.

Brownie Chinese New Year

2011-02-06T11:10:00.000Z

The Brownies celebrated Chinese New Year this week, with food - those girls do love their food! - Chinese lanterns and lovely scratch art animals from the Chinese calendar.

Lots of excitement too as we appointed two new sixers and three new seconds, very happy with the sixer appointments, the seconds seem quite young but I wanted to give each a chance for different reasons.

One is very quiet but has grown so much in her time with us so I am hoping being a second will give her more confidence.

One is new to our unit but was a Brownie in another unit, I am hoping being a second will make her feel included, accepted - she is very giggly and I think that may be nerves about her new situation.

And the third is very forward, always asking questions before we get to the end of the sentence, butting in when we are explaining, even when I appointed her, she yelled "Yes!" So I am hoping being a second brings a little maturity for her, the need to work together to support her six should be good for her I think.

I think they will all make good seconds, if I have judged them correctly!

PS: the badge above wasn't actually given out, we ordered them when we did Chinese New Year two years ago and they are lovely but right now we can't afford little extra badges like these, our funds are being directed towards our adventure weekend in the summer as much as possible. Not to the detriment of our weekly meetings, just directing the "nice extras" budget towards the weekend instead.

Swift change of plans

2011-01-30T15:04:00.000Z

At our last Brownie meeting, we were supposed to be out and about in the neighbourhood where our Brownies live, looking at the local community and deciding what aspects of it we wanted to capture for a local challenge.

The Brownies were very excited, particularly because of course at this time of year it is dark by the time we meet, so they were all told to wrap up warm and bring a torch or lantern.

But when I went to collect my son from school, the school most of our Brownies attend, several mums came up to me and asked if we were still planning to go out, because it was bitterly cold, and with girls either coming down with colds or getting over them, they were thinking they might not send their daughter. Once the third mum asked, I realised we were going to be way down on numbers, so we moved to plan B.

In the summer term we were going to do the Healthy Heart badge. It's one of the newer Brownie badges, although we did it as a unit as soon as it came out back in 2007, so we had done it as leaders before even though none of the current Brownies had done it. I already had everything we needed, as I had run a 5K to raise money for Heart Research UK and they had been kind enough to send me some resources specifically for the badge: balloons, stickers and a worksheet to work through.

So we swapped to Healthy Heart for the night, and it went well, the girls were amazed by some of the facts, like the distance your blood travels round your body every day (over 11,000km!) and were very inventive coming up with their own games. They didn't complete the badge on the night, they still have some work to do at home if they want to finish it.

Incidentally, any other Brownie leaders thinking of doing the badge, it is worth contacting the charity to see if they can spare some worksheets, they were originally brought out in 2008 and they don't advertise them on their site any more so I don't know how many they have left but even if you only get a few you could copy them for the meeting. They didn't say I had to raise money for them in return, though they are of course a charity so everything helps, I raised £143. Often when people think heart they think British Heart Foundation, these guys are much smaller but no less worth supporting.

Love where I live

2011-01-24T17:13:00.001Z

Yesterday, daughter and I went to the O2 Arena to watch a show. Train takes about an hour, then half an hour across London.

Today, while Londoners were crammed in like sardines on the Underground heading to work, my drive to work took me past a grouse (walking across the road just like in the Famous Grouse adverts, google them to see the ads, I like the rugby ball one best) and two emus - they live next to some stables, no idea why!

I love where I live - easy access to the big smoke, but a commute with rare birds of a morning.

And we won't mention that on the way home, about 500m up the road, I am pretty sure I saw a dead grouse and it's likely the same one.

Japan, China and the rest of the world

2011-01-22T11:33:00.000Z

All done with Japan, the girls made some amazing origami and tasted some Japanese food to finish off. We're moving onto the first of two weeks on a local challenge next week, then Chinese New Year.

After that, it's my turn, two weeks on the WAGGGS Thinking Day Challenge, should be good.

We had two more new starts this week, one was a Brownie in another pack before and she slipped in seamlessly, the other will work with the other new Brownies towards her promise.

We have a horrendous waiting list right now, we have lots of seven and eight year olds and hardly any nine years olds so I actually only have three girls due to leave during the whole of 2011, but 11 girls on the waiting list old enough to start in 2011. Every time someone joins the list, I give them details of other units and suggest they try there, but my waiting list never seems to get any smaller! Someone needs to start a 2nd X Brownies - but if you suggest that there's always 100 reasons why parents don't want to step up and be leaders...where do they think we magically came from? Our daughters couldn't get into the local Brownie packs so we started a unit, that's how it has to be sometimes!

Konichiwa

2011-01-14T09:00:00.001Z

Back to Brownies last night, and we are doing the Japan Challenge, created by a Senior Section girl who went on a trip to Japan with Guiding and needed to fundraise to get there.

The girls loved it, they all came out chattering away, and this morning I saw several carrying their fans to show off at Show and Tell. Even better, this evening was led by Robin, who has shared leading a meeting before but has never run one entirely by herself (with other Guiders to do as she says, of course). She was a bundle of nerves beforehand but she clearly pitched it very well as the girls were very enthusiastic about what they had learned. I am very proud of her.

While she led the meeting, supported by Otter and Puffin (back from maternity leave, yay!), Parrot and I were in the hallway, taking in subs, census and more. We have a 12 week term this term, and we also have to pay the annual subscription per girl and leader in the next few weeks, so there was quite a lot of money (mostly cheques fortunately) coming in.

On top of that we have an adventure weekend planned in June and we needed to get numbers and send off the deposit for that, so there were parents paying either £10 and the next two £10s over the next two months, or paying the full £30. Coupled with two new girls who paid a neckerchief deposit as well (our Brownies wear neckerchiefs with a massive unit badge on the back, we've had trouble getting them back in the past so now we take a £5 deposit when they start and give it back when they return the neckerchief when they leave), there were five different possible permutations of money coming in depending on what the girl was paying for.

We managed all that, sorted out the admin for the adventure weekend, worked out which girls had completed their Seasons badge and even managed 10 minutes as part of the meeting! Just one set of subs to chase next week, plus Thinking Day consent forms, and then we are all set for the term.

Leftovers

2010-12-27T15:20:00.000Z

Daughter is not impressed that we're having leftovers AGAIN today.

I, however, subscribe to the theory that I cook so much on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, that I get until the end of the 27th before I have to do anything other than warm stuff up.

I even specifically cook a ham on Christmas Eve while preparing everything else, that is then set aside for Boxing Day onwards.

I don't think I am that big a meany, after all, she is able to choose from:

turkey
stuffing
ham
pork pie
Stilton
smoked salmon
filo prawns
mini quiches
Jacobs Crackers (why do we ALL want the digestive ones when they are the only biscuit in the box you cannot buy separately)
bread

Not like I am thrusting a turkey sandwich in her hand and telling her to lump it!

Hope you had a good Christmas and have a great Hogmanay!

familiar? oh yes!

2010-12-14T16:49:00.000Z

So, this time last year, I took part in Jen on the Edge's Holiday Homes tour. I'm taking part again, but for those of you who saw our decorations last year, this is going to seem eerily familiar. I take pride in the fact that our house looks the same (mess) every year.

This year, the only changes are centred around the tree:

the tree is slightly smaller which does at least mean we don't snag on the branches as we walk in the room
we have a new stand, the four plastic legged stand that we've had for years had a leg snapped off in the tree-putting-up, so I have acquired a circular one with a foot pump that clamps onto the tree. It seems much easier but I am reserving judgement until we get through the next couple of weeks without the tree going splat
and finally, the tree was wholly decorated by the children this year. This has resulted in what can only be described as a melange on the front of the tree and a single strand of tinsel on the back. From the street, it looks like we couldn't afford baubles. From the living room, it looks like Christmas threw up on the tree. Love it!

Here's the guide to what you can see:

The paltry decorations in daughter's room, thanks to an ill-timed strop which means her brother got all the spare Christmas lights for his room...
...as you can see here!
The Daleks on top of the bookcase - actually they are there all year but they inevitably end up being played with at Christmas so I am counting them
My Christmas glass bells, bought in Austria in 1994 - they predate even meeting my husband and are precious to me because they represent "adult" Christmas, ie Christmas not at my mum and dad's house. Every year I am thrilled to take them out and find they are still intact, long may that last
The Christmas Minis Tirith - came with a DVD boxset years ago, immediately became our Christmas table centrepiece for every year to come
The heavily laden tree
The star for the top of the tree
The Christmas barbed wire - bought with my then boyfriend now husband to decorate the shared house where we lived, and put up for the 15 subsequent Christmases! Mangy, horrible looking, a crucial part of Christmas
A reindeer card with baby son's feet and a Christmas wreath with baby daughter's hands - both are big galumphing school kids now and love seeing just how tiny they once were
The string of candy canes is one of my favourite decorations, this year on our Paul Klee print
Merry Christmas - I made this, back when I did cross stitch, I don't do it any more but this is one of the pieces I was most proud of. I didn't frame much, but I am glad I framed this.
The thing that hangs along the mantlepiece - don't know what it is called!
Our nativities: a Playmobil one, a painted wooden one and a solid wood one, plus a star Christmas tree, Santa and his sleigh, a few others bits and pieces...and son's apple juice!

That's our Christmas, apart from a few strands of tinsel round all the pictures, a cuddly snowman next to the tv, and a wreath on the front door. But it's dark now, so I can't get a picture of that!

Tiny taste

2010-12-03T21:37:00.000Z

Here's a tiny taste of what we have planned for Brownies from Jan to July, incorporating all the things they love like new skills, making things and food!

Japan
division challenge
Chinese New Year
Thinking Day
Movies
Ceramics
Chips
the Royal Wedding
Healthy Heart
America
lots of outdoor stuff

Plus a division thinking day zoo visit, first aid training for the leaders, a district masked ball and a sleepover

More details will follow!

Last Brownies of 2010 tonight

2010-12-02T09:34:00.000Z

Finishing early I know, but next week is the school nativity which means we lose our hall and although none of our Brownies are in it, many have younger brothers and sisters who are (and I have a son who is in it for the last time before he moves to the Juniors section of the school *sniff*) so no point running the meeting elsewhere. The week after, the school breaks up that day, so we don't meet either.

So this will be us until 2011! Time to say goodbye to two Brownies off to Guides in January, with two newbies starting then too. We haven't planned next term yet, our meeting is tomorrow night so there's more to come!

Kitted out

2010-11-26T20:09:00.000Z

I took my daughter to the dentist to have six teeth out today as the first step towards having a brace, it actually went pretty well, much quicker than we thought and she admits it wasn't as bad as she thought.

For various reasons, our dentist is an hour away from us, in so we left in plenty of time for the appointment. With a very smooth run through, we ended up there half an hour early so I took advantage and slipped into the Guide shop in that city...for locals its the one in Princess Road East, I know at least one reader will know where that is!

Our local Guiding shop is run by volunteers and only open 6 hours a week and you have to order pretty much everything. This one? Based in county office, open for hours at a time, plenty of stock, it was heaven! I bought the things I needed: 10 Hostess badges, 2 Brownie leaving badges and 4 Sixer badges.

I also bought things I didn't need so much but have been coveting!

a zip up Guider hoody - so comfortable and warm
a formal Guiding shirt, I've got away with not owning one as the old formal shirt was this awful awful stripey number but a new version has just been brought out and it's lovely - fitted and flattering...sadly, no pic of it from the online shop, it is that new but it is a pale blue slightly stiffened fabric with a pink insert on the collar
and an I survived 20/10/2010 badge

I got daughter a little monkey keyring with a Guide t-shirt, she clutched it throughout having her teeth pulled!

Blast from the Harry Potter past

2010-11-19T20:04:00.000Z

With the launch of the Harry Potter movie, here's a blast from the past: when my Brownies met JK Rowling.

(This memory was brought to you by the letter S, for Smalltownmom, who has her own special Harry Potter story)

Remembrance Sunday

2010-11-15T17:54:00.000Z

13 Brownies + 4 leaders + 1 Guide + 1 Beaver Scout = our showing for Remembrance Sunday - I was very pleased with the turn-out.

Of course we weren't the only ones there, the village we are part of the district of had Beavers, Cubs and Scouts there (our token Beaver Scout was my son, he goes to a different group in a different district but because my daughter had a taekwondo tournament my husband had taken her so my son had to come with me), plus there were a few Brownies from the village with their leader, plus all the veterans, Royal British Legion and quite a lot of regular church-goers.

As well as my daughter, we were missing one leader and YL, they attended a ceremony at the leader's godson's military college.

It was cold, threatening rain, and the girls huddled together like penguins. But I told each one how proud of them I was for turning out.

So simple and so much fun

2010-11-13T15:55:00.000Z

Before half-term, we looked back through the scrapbook of everything we have done in the Centenary Year. It was meant to be a 10 minute time filler but turned into 40 mins as the girls recalled the fun and said what they had enjoyed the most.

Most popular answers to that question?

Horse-riding
London
making chocolate Daleks
everything!

So we decided to give the parents the chance to see everything too, it was meant to be an evening where we set out all the pages, and parents could come and look, and chat...it didn't pan out like that but it DID pan out very well.

Some girls wanted to turn it into a chance to do their hostess badge, so the first week we planned. In their sixes they decided who they would invite, what entertainment they would provide, and what refreshments they would offer. Then we discussed it all together in pow-wow (we just call it circle though) then back to the sixes to make the invitations.

Not everyone wanted to do their hostess badge, those that did were told they had to make a table decoration on the theme of 100 between week one and two. About half did.

So, week two, we set out tables and seats for 70 people, the girls had a quick practice of their entertainment and laid out the drinks and snacks. Then 30 mins later the parents and siblings came back (out of the 23 girls present, 21 sets of parents and siblings came, one didn't come at specific request of their daughter, haven't established why the last lot didn't send someone).

Each family was welcomed into the hall by their Brownie, thanked for coming, shown to a seat and offered refreshment. Then the entertainment included playing Red Letter (parents too) and Musical Statues, a rendition of Jingle Bells on piano, flute and bells (with a solo from one newly-enrolled Brownie who was the only one brave enough to sing), When the Saints Go Marching In on the clarinet and a dance to the Black Eyed Peas!

Finally the girls cleared up and we were done!

A few parents did flick through the scrapbook (with so many people in the room and needing space for games we couldn't put it out as separate pages) but the original aim didn't really matter, what mattered is that the girls planned, executed and cleared up the whole evening and their parents were very proud, as were we.

Deleted an actor

2010-11-10T21:19:00.000Z

Remember I posted about this news story?

Check out this BBC News story: [that actor bloke] turned up at a London primary, dressed as [that character], after a nine year old wrote him a letter.

And what was that nine year old wearing while chatting to the news reporter? A 2nd Greenwich Guiding sweatshirt, did you spot the trefoil right in the middle?

Ever since, I've been getting thousands of hits a day - flattering, but simply because the pic I used turned up on the first page of Google Images when people search for him. It's made it hard to keep an eye on how the blog is doing, so I've deleted the post, but wanted to keep the story link.

Are you a Guiding unit? Do you use easyfundraising?

2010-10-29T08:01:00.000+01:00

Because if you don't, you really are missing out on free money, ignore this if you don't help at a UK charity but do read it if you do!

My Brownies have been given just over £500 over four years and seeing that amount on our total made me want to make sure all the leaders from other units that read this blog are signed up too. I know I sound all salesy, but seriously, £125 a year is a boon for the unit.

By using the links on the easyfundraising site to visit online shops, a percentage of whatever your supporters spend with each retailer goes to you as a donation. So, when a supporter spends £100 with M&S online, they’ll raise £2.50 for you without it costing them any more than if they had gone directly to the site. Some donations can be as much as 15% of the purchase price. Purchasing with insurers like Direct Line, Churchill, More Than and Aviva will generate a one-off donation, I switched our house insurance a couple of years ago and earned £50 for our Brownies, but that is the single big amount we've had, mostly it is 20p here, 75p there but it all adds up.

It’s much cheaper for retailers to sell goods online than in the high street so they’re happy to pass part of the extra profit to your organisation as a donation.

Use this link http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/referral/679 to sign up for free. When you sign up via this link my Brownies will receive a thank you from easyfundraising for referring you. Don’t worry, this won’t affect the amount you raise and when you’ve signed up, you can introduce new groups and benefit in the same way.

Save the planet...

2010-10-26T08:12:00.000+01:00

350 pounds of carbon were just offset in my name.

What am I talking about? Have a look on the left hand side of my blog and all will become clear...

Officially 100 - time to move forward!

2010-10-22T09:10:00.000+01:00

The nationwide end to the Girlguiding Centenary year was Wednesday night - and we had a blast!

Across the UK, members of Girlguiding got together and made or renewed their promises at 8:10pm - more than 500,000 of us in one go.

We went to a division-organised event and the ladies that put the night together really did us proud.

The girls took part in (chaotic) Scottish Country Dancing, then there were drinks and little buns - two of our Guiders took it upon themselves to make sure the Trefoil Guild members were supplied with tea and coffee, usually the Trefoil Guild are seen manning the tea urns at events so that was a lovely gesture. Trefoil Guild is open to anyone over 18 who wants to stay connected with Guiding, generally it's retired Guiders etc, and that was certainly the case with those there on Wednesday.

Then the Vision CD was played, every event had a copy and was told what time to start it, it was 10 minutes of uplifting photos and videos of events that have taken place over the Centenary Year, with a countdown every minute: 9 minutes to go, 8 minutes to go etc. By the time we got to five minutes to go, every girl in the place was yelling it out! It ended with the Chief Guide leading the promise, followed by the Rainbow promise as this is slightly different from the rest of the organisation.

We had 5 new Brownies make their promise as well as 15 who renewed it (out of our unit of 24 we had one who didn't sign up to come, one who didn't turn up with no contact to us, and two who were ill and were able to make their promise in front of the Community Channel at home instead as the same video was broadcast on there.) so we spent the next few minutes pinning on the beautiful 20:10, 20/10, 2010 promise badge that only people who renewed their promise at 8:10pm should get.

Then we made it outside and were able to see 100 Chinese Lanterns being sent off into the sky (wholly biodegradable ones, I checked). It was a beautiful sight seeing them drift off across the valley. And that was it: back in for a quick wrap up of the night then exhausted girls off home to parents.

I was so impressed with the organisation, yes there was chaos, and queues, and milling about, but there were hundreds of people there, that's going to happen! And the organisers had thought of so many things, like there being 2 screens to see the video so that no matter where you were, you weren't "at the back" and unable to see.

Our girls really enjoyed themselves and it was a lovely way to wrap up the centenary year. Half term for us next week, and just 5 more meetings after that in 2010.

That's my daughter holding her hand up to block the camera by the way! Other 20:10 posts include:

Vision 2010 Girlguiding Glasgow by Bad Jokes and Oven Chips
October 20th What We Did by Kelloggsville
20 10 20 10 20 10 by Working Mum on the Verge
I am so glad I moved by Tawny
Vision of the next 100 Years by Compo Guide (a new blog to me, thanks for the link Tawny!)
Vision by Guiding in Surrey West

Here's to the next 100 years!

Wednesday's the big night!

2010-10-17T08:01:00.000+01:00

The centenary year of Girlguiding UK ends on Wednesday night, with a big celebration across the UK. Hundreds of thousands of Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Senior Section, Leaders, other adult members and Trefoil Guild will be making or renewing their promise at ten past eight.

Why then?

It's 20:10, 20/10, 2010 - a memorable moment for us all.

What have my girls done since the centenary year began on September 5, 2009 (100 years since girls first asked Baden Powell for Scouts for girls)? Well...

Attended the launch party
Made suncatchers, dreamcatchers, puppets and other crafts
Learned First Aid including helping people having an asthma attack
Helped the following charities: Marie Curie, Send a Smile, Heart Research UK
Attended Remembrance Sunday
Pretended they were Doctor Who
Broadcast on the local radio station
Learned about World Guiding
Visited a fire station, a vets surgery and an observatory
Holidayed in London: London Eye, Centenary Maze, Platform 9 3/4, Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (inside the gates), 10 Downing Street
Learned to dance and climbed all over an outdoor playground
Played games in the dark and jumping games outdoors, and had an Olympic Games with medals
Made their own ice cream sundaes and dark desserts
Learned about Germany and Scotland
Attended One World One Beat with thousands of other Guiding members
Met unusual animals and ridden horses
Learned about endangered species, and water
Planted daffodils
Went to the pantomime
Rehearsed and performed a show
Joined in a giant 100 and made 100 out of all kinds of materials
Made racing paper boats
Camped in pouring rain with the rest of the division's Guides
Took over an airport
Went to two campfires
Joined a wedding Guard of Honour
Celebrated Rosh Hashana

What a year it's been!

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

2010-10-15T08:01:00.000+01:00

Sneakily, since the Blog Action Day topic is water, I'm reposting a post from May!

It cost all of £6, but tonight, as part of Adventure 100, we did water-tasting!

I was kind of surprised it went as well as it did.

But the girls really seemed to enjoy it!

They tried six different waters (you can see them all here); some fizzy, some not, some flavoured, some not.

They each picked a favourite and in each case, tried to guess the flavouring (or not) and the country of origin.

The waters I chose were from Wales, Scotland, England and France. The girls guessed the Caribbean, Africa, Canada and more! We had a wee talk about how much Africa needs water and how very wrong it would be to take their water!

We also talked about pumps (some of these waters involved fundraising for pumps in Africa) and how we can save water - and how we can't: as 90% of our girls live in houses under 10 years old, we already have low flush toilets so can't add water-saving devices, for example, as they use so little water already.

A success, and all for £5.42.

Scrapbooking our meetings

2010-10-11T08:01:00.000+01:00

I started a scrapbook for the unit last September, I've posted about it before.

The plan was to have at least one page for every meeting, event and sleepover during the centenary year - and I've actually done it!

Now, since it was planned to run

from September 2009 to theCentenary end on 20th October this

year, I have just two more pages to add! This week's meeting and the Centenary end party.

Then I shall tie up the ribbons neatly and have a great reminder of a fantastic 14 months. While I think I will do more scrapbooking, I won't be producing a page per meeting again!

Blog Action Day 2010

2010-10-06T08:17:00.000+01:00

This year's Blog Action Day topic is water. Are you going to join in on October 15th?

Change.org|Start Petition

Just what did we do last night?

2010-09-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

Well, we THOUGHT we were going to visit some stables, see some horses, clean some tack, maybe stroke a few horses...

No. All 26 girls (24 Brownies and 2 Guides) got 30 minutes horseriding each, courtesy of the stables. Can you believe it?

You've never seen 26 happier girls! Or 5 more panicked adults - we had to ring 21 sets of parents and ask for permission for their girls to actually ride, all we had asked for was permission for them to attend!

We managed to reach a parent for every girl, so we were sorted. Half the girls rode for the first half, while the other half were halved again and either cleaned tack or groomed a horse, then swapped.

Horse-riding lessons round here are £15. £15 x 26 girls = nearly £400 worth of horse riding last night! It was amazingly generous of the stables - yes I know most of the girls will now be pestering their parents for riding lessons and that stables is of course where they will now turn, but still. There were 10-15 girls and adults helping our girls, giving up nearly two hours of their time for us. It was fantastic!

Update: Some kind of miscommunication happened when this was arranged, and it turns out that we have now been invoiced for nearly £200 by the stables. A bit of a shock! Fortunately, we had claimed Gift Aid from the government that we can use to cover that without affecting the rest of our term's plans, but it does mean we won't have that money to use for a trip or overnight in the January term. We feel we have to pay, we can't argue we didn't get that money's worth last night, but it was definitely a shock, and explains why the girls were actually riding rather than just meeting and grooming the horses. It has taken a wee bit of a shine off it for us adults, of course we're not letting the girls know, and since we can cover it by adjusting our plans, we're not telling all the parents either.

Drama v her smartly-dressed mama

2010-09-21T08:01:00.000+01:00

Jumping back to daughter for this one post - she was waaaay happier yesterday, so far she has been willing to concede that each day is 1% better than the day before but yesterday it was 5% better. I wondered if I over-dramatised just how bad she felt those first few days

but I read my post back and I still feel a/ her pain and b/ the fact that she's happi-ER but still not happy.

So we're getting there but wow - it's been a tough few weeks!

Now, partly to compensate for home-based misery, partly because I had a 30% off voucher and partly because I'm trying to 21st century my wardrobe (those t-shirts that end on or near my waist have all gone), I spent quite a lot in Gap yesterday. I bought:

Can I confess I already own this in a burgundy and now I own it in this grey and also a navy?Despite me being nearly 5ft 10, this dress was closer to my knees than this. So this model must be about 6ft 2 I reckon! I'm thinking with a long sleeved tee underneath?

Again, this dress was longer than this on me. It looked very smart. Although I work in a very informal office, I'm thinking this will be good for when I train clients externally, and also for parents social stuff at school rather than my same old jeans-and-nice-top.It's hard for me to find a cowl neck that doesn't make my boobs look enorme. This fit the bill.This was like wearing a hug. Goes well with the smart dress too.

I drew the line at leggings under the dresses, not quite ready to make that 21st century leap but I did feel drawn...

Part daughter part Brownies

2010-09-17T10:30:00.000+01:00

Thanks so much to everyone who posted helpful tips to help my daughter adjust to secondary school, we're still a long way off happy with her but there's signs that she's beginning to adjust, the odd smile, the first refusal of a lift so she can walk home with some girls. There's still tears, and feeling ill through nerves, but we can see the light even if she doesn't and your comments and emails have really helped us.

Brownies went back last night, we had a full house of 24 as ever but even more shocking - every girl paid up their subs (dues for non-Brits) for the term! No chasing subs this term! Yaaaaay!

We had a meeting about Rosh Hashanah (yes a little late but we missed our meeting last week as the school needed the hall) and sorted all the consent forms for the events this term: a visit to a stables and a vet plus the 20:10, 20/10, 2010 end of the centenary year celebrations.

So back to normal for Brownies and finding a new normality for my daughter - September is all about getting into the routine, right?

Ideas to boost my daughter

2010-09-13T10:43:00.000+01:00

Not Guiding I know, but I’m asking for help from you guys, especially those who may have been through it.

Daughter is finding the transition to secondary school tough. Nothing major has happened, but the stress of lots of little things has combined to make her say I hate secondary school this morning – and she LOVED primary school so this is very new.

The little things:

• The friends she goes with walk slower than her, she worries about being late in the morning (alternative is walking alone, which I will let her do rather than worry but I’ve told her to stick it out with her mates until she actually is late as it is better to be in a group)

• The software that registers the kids for the canteen and library keeps breaking down, she was given a penalty by her registration teacher for staying in the queue as the technician told her to, thus making her late for a lesson (this was later retracted due to the obvious injustice, but it was really upsetting for her)

• Her instrument lesson is scheduled during another lesson, so 20 mins out of the 60 mins class. She is worried about a/ not being there at the start of the main class and therefore getting a penalty (I told her her classmates will say she is at her instrument lesson) and b/ the fact that this lesson is a new subject and there is only one per week and she will miss 1/3 of it each week (can’t do a lot about that, I have told her if she finds it very hard, we can withdraw her from instrument tuition at half-term and we’ll look at having instrument tuition after school somehow)

It’s been bad enough that the school have actually rung me one day to say she was not well, she was flashing hot and cold. I am 100% certain she felt ill, but she felt ill because she was stressed about these things.

This is before we even add homework etc!

I keep telling her in a month’s time, she will be in the routine, it will all make sense to her, she will wonder why she was getting so stressed about these things now. And that when she has a problem she can’t see how to deal with, tell me, and we will work out the solution.

What else can I do – all constructive comments welcomed whether you’ve had a kid start secondary or not but particularly from those who have. My brother remembers losing his money for pictures a week into starting and scraping together the money himself and forging a note from mum saying sorry the money was late, all because he didn’t want to get into trouble. His guidance teacher pulled him out of class, showed him the note and asked him what this was all about, he confessed, and his teacher pointed out he had already handed the money in. So he remembers how tough starting a new school is, but my daughter feels like she is the only one struggling.

Update: She had more highs than lows today for the first time, she got to school on time by marching ahead of the others (suspect she may just end up walking alone), she finally got registered for the software thanks to the lady on reception who looked after her when she felt ill and arranged for her to have it done today, her instrument lesson went well and she made it to the other lesson without missing too much. She did feel ill again but managed to stay in class.

Brownies round the world: Denmark

2010-08-24T08:24:00.000+01:00

Part 2 of a series about Brownies round the world, if you want to read part one, about Brownies in South Africa, click here.

If you were a Brownie in Denmark, you would be a Minier (as in a Mini Scout), a Smutter or a Grønsmutter depending on which group you were with. Unlike in the UK which has Girlguiding

and also Scouts that take boys and girls, in Denmark there are lots of different organisations, including:

The Danish Guide and Scout Association (Danish: Det Danske Spejderkorps = DDS, that's their logo, above)
YMCA Scouts (Danish: Kristeligt Forening for Unge Mænd = KFUM-spejderne i Danmark)
YWCA Girl Guides in Denmark - the Green Girl Guides (Danish: Kristeligt Forening for Unge Kvinder = KFUK-spejderne i Danmark - de grønne pigespejdere. Their Brownies (Grønsmutter) were formed in 1919.)
The Danish Baptist Guide and Scout Association (Danish: Danske Baptisters Spejderkorps = DBS)
Mission Covenant Church Scouts (Danish: Missionsforbundets Spejdere=MS)

Of these, only the YWCA (that's their logo, left) is girls only, all the others have boys and girls. DDS has over 25,000 members, YMCA is roughly equally popular, then YWCA has about 6,000, DBS has about 1,400 and MS only has a few hundred. In a country of just 5,000,000, that does show Scouting is very popular.

Like in the UK, Danish Guides are 100 years old this year, the DDS Scouts began in 1909 and Guides in 1910 - October 10th so their centenary is coming up very soon!

Danish Brownies would wear the same as Danish Guides, you buy a shirt and neckerchief and then just buy a bigger shirt as you get bigger.

You can see the DDS uniform, left and the YWCA uniform in the all-girl picture.

The YWCA promise is:

As a Guide I promise to do my best to honour God by living according to his will.

Therefore a Girl Guide should:

Speak the truth

Strive for peace

Share with others

Be a true friend

Cherish the living world

Be caring and help others

Show love and thoughtfulness in her home and community

(Spejderlov og spejderløfte

Som spejder lover jeg at gøre mit bedste for at ære Gud ved at leve efter hans vilje.

Derfor skal en spejder:

Tale sandhed

Stifte fred

Dele med andre

Være en god kammerat

Værne om naturen

Vise hensyn og hjælpe andre

Leve i hjem og samfund med kærlighed og omtanke

At høre andres meninger og danne sine egne)

Want to know more about Danish Guiding and Scouting?

DDS: http://www.dds.dk/

YMCA: http://www.kfumscout.dk/

YWCA: http://www.pigespejder.dk/

DBS: http://www.dbs.dk/

Trivial? No, life-changing

2010-08-05T10:19:00.000+01:00

Girlguiding UK has today launched a campaign to have airbrushed pictures labelled so that girls (and boys) don't have unrealistic expectations of how they can/should look.

Read all about the campaign here, including a petition you can sign.

Fellow Guider Kelloggsville posted on this already today, including some videos of untouched/retouched pictures.

Trivial?

Not when you consider these statistics:

50 per cent of 16- to 21-year-old girls would consider having surgery to change the way they look
42 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds admit to watching what they ate or cutting down on certain foods to excess.

This campaign chimes so perfectly with the GGUK principles of letting kids be kids but arming them with the information and skills they need to become healthy, well-balanced adults.

Brownie Guard of Honour

2010-07-31T17:17:00.000+01:00

So, the thing we were up to yesterday that I couldn't tell you about...

We were asked to be part of a surprise Brownie Guard of Honour for a Brownie leader in our district. This lady runs the unit with her mum and has just seven Brownies, and though the mum tried to arrange it using their own Brownies, because it's summer holidays she was only able to get two girls lined up.

So, she threw an appeal out to the whole district, and, despite the hols, we were able to come up with 5 Brownies, 3 Guides and 3 leaders. Two of the Brownies were mine, and the Guide was, of course, my own daughter.

It was a really nice thing to so, the bride looked really happy to see us when she came out. She did go in 20 minutes late, and we ended up having to wait an hour, so we did have some very hungry Brownies who'd put off having their lunch as they thought we'd only be there 15 mins or so but they were very pleased to be part of it.

(As most of the girls there were not mine, and I am not sure how they or their parents would feel about their pics being online, I have covered their faces in the pic. I also didn't include the bride, as I don't know if she would want her pics online.)

On holiday but STILL Guiding!

2010-07-29T17:57:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's the holidays here, but despite shutting down Brownies from the start of July to mid September, there's a busy few Guiding days ahead.

Tomorrow I am taking part in something very special that I have wanted to do ever since I was a little Brownie, more than ahem years ago. Details will follow after the event as it is a surprise for someone.

And this weekend my daughter heads off to Guide camp. Not to the same place as last year, this time it's an international camp, though rather handily within this country! So while she will meet Guides from all over the world, I only have to pay a UK camp rate. Woo hoo!

At the parents meeting we were warned to expect some quite smelly girls back. Although there are showers, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls there so shower time is likely to be so restricted it might be as little as once.

Nose peg will be acquired before she returns.

THIS is why we do it

2010-07-09T19:49:00.000+01:00

Five of our Brownies left last night. One gave me a bottle of wine (lovely!) and another one's dad sent me this email today:

Dear J and Company,
Just a quick note to say thankyou for giving K such a lovely time
at Brownies.Over the time she has been with you she has grown in
confidence tremendously.Your professional approach is refreshing and
your personal attention to detail is faultless.You have always kept us
informed about forthcoming events and given us regular and continual
feedback.
The Brownies are happy and content bunch and this is due to your
outstanding leadership qualities and skills.
With K, in particular, you have taken care always over nut
products and indeed beef products too and in so doing again, time after
time, your personal professionalism always shines through.
On behalf of K and myself a sincere and big thankyou to all the Brownies gang and the very best for the future.A voluntary job
without any form of remuneration just goes to show how committed and
understanding you are for the Brownie cause.I think we are all to quick
these days to criticise.So well done and keep up the very good work.

How nice is that? I feel all warm all over!

Finished!

2010-07-02T15:07:00.001+01:00

We started it last year and now we're finished!

What? Adventure 100.

The aim was to collect 100 points over 10 areas to get the badge.

Now, having wrapped it up, our 24 girls have points ranging between 340 and 170!

It's been a lot of fun, you can see some of the things we did if you search adventure 100 on this blog, many of which we would not have thought of if not for the ideas within the badge syllabus.

So what lies ahead?

One more meeting this school year, a campfire jointly with our sister Guide unit.

Then in September, a very animally term - we're going to do the Friends to Animals badge, and also Canada Brownies' Pet Talk badge, which a friend sent me ages ago in return for some UK badges. We're also fitting in some stuff on Jewish holidays (about the only religion none of our girls is a member of!), Healthy Heart badge, and a few other things. More details when we've sorted them!

Brownies round the world: South Africa

2010-06-11T18:57:00.000+01:00

I thought it might be both fun, and useful, to do a series on Brownies around the world - not least because I can go back and scoop up the information when I need it. I'll add to each country if I learn more.

So, to kick off, South Africa - because the football World Cup just kicked off there.

South Africa has a really strong Guiding tradition - like the UK they are celebrating 100 years of Guiding this year.

South African Brownies are called...Brownies!

They have a lot of similarities to Brownies in Britain:

Their promise:

I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to my God
And to my Country
To help other people
And to keep the Brownie Law.

Their law:

A Brownie is Truthful, Obedient and Cheerful

A Brownie thinks of others before herself

They have sixes, with Sixers and Seconds, their sixes include Bushbabies, Dassies,

Duikers, Hares, Squirrels and Tortoises. They can earn interest badges.

And they sing Brownies Bells to close - not quite the same as our Brownie Bells though, it goes:

O Lord Our God, Thy Children call, Teach us to love, Thee best of all.

Want to know more about South African Brownies? Visit their website here.
The Making Friends website has paper dolls with the South African Brownie uniform on here.

Dreamcatching

2010-06-11T10:37:00.000+01:00

Last night we made dreamcatchers (Baker Ross). We showed the girls what to do, but let them do it all themselves.

That resulted in a few finished, perfect dreamcatchers, a few finished but not perfect ones, a few that just ran out of time and a few that decided they would take theirs home unfinished so they could unlace them and try again to improve how it looked.

It was a good personality guide: the girl who rushed to be first then had to keep coming back for help because she was rushing, the girl who made perfect perfect flowers but took ages so didn't finish, the girl who steadily plodded through and achieved everything then helped others on her table, the girl who carefully colour-matched everything to her thread and feathers.

These cost around 50p each, you can make them for less, my daughter's Guide unit made them a while back with paper plates and a stash of beads and feathers, but this made it easy for us since we knew we had everything.

And the results were great!

What lies ahead

2010-05-31T17:45:00.000+01:00

It's half term, so just a few more weeks of Brownies now until the summer holidays.

Our plans:

An Olympics night, for Adventure 100 (22/24 girls have completed this now, but we still have a few things left to do)
Making dreamcatchers and necklaces, also Adventure 100
Hanging around - meeting at a local adventure playground, yes, you guessed it, for Adventure 100
Making puppets and putting on a show, oh yes, Adventure 100!
Campsite night, joint with the Guides, as we do to wrap up every year.

So we're outside 3/5 nights, out of our meeting place 2/5 nights, but no extra events this half term. There is a county family picnic in June, but you don't have to go as a unit, so we're going to send out a flyer and let girls go with their families if they wish, or skip it if they don't.

We're getting a bit of centenary fatigue really, will be glad to wrap it up in October though it has been the most amazing year. But since it launched in September, aside from our normal meeting, we have:

attended Remembrance Sunday
visited the local radio station
been to the panto
travelled across the region for World Thinking Day
been to London for the weekend
camped with the division
taken over the local international airport

All that lies ahead now are normal meetings, the picnic for anyone who chooses to go with their family, and the centenary end at 20:10, 20/10, 2010. Time to relax a bit I think!

Brownies Takeover The Airport

2010-05-16T14:08:00.000+01:00

Remember this? Well, if you were at Birmingham Airport on Saturday, you would not have been able to miss 50 visiting Brownies!

We ran a Brownies Takeover for the district, travelling by train and monorail to the airport. We visited the Aviation Experience; apparently it used to be packed with interactive screens, now not so much but there were rows of airplane seats to strap into and have fun - way more leg room than any plane I've ever been on! - and the best view of landing and taking off planes in the airport now that security has been stepped up so much.

After that, we walked down to Departures and looked at security, quite a few girls had never flown so we talked about what you can and can't take on planes, about the x-ray machines etc. After that, we headed down to check-in, there was a whole row of desks not being used so we had a good look at those, including weighing several Brownies on the luggage scales! We even had one teeny tiny Brownie who got into the frame they have for maximum hand luggage size, she fit perfectly!

Then it was back on the monorail and train home, the whole thing took a little over three hours and I think most of the girls enjoyed themselves, mixing with two other Brownie packs was fun. There were a couple of girls in one of the packs who were condemning the whole thing as R-U-B-B-I-S-H (they spelled it out so we wouldn't realise?), but I got the impression that there wasn't much those particular girls wouldn't think was rubbish.

It was a good trip to do in large numbers, there was definitely quite a dramatic effect having 50 girls in brown and yellow marching through the airport!

Water water everywhere

2010-05-13T21:18:00.000+01:00

It cost all of £6, but tonight, as part of Adventure 100, we did water-tasting!

I was kind of surprised it went as well as it did.

But the girls really seemed to enjoy it!

They tried six different waters (you can see them all here); some fizzy, some not, some flavoured, some not.

They each picked a favourite and in each case, tried to guess the flavouring (or not) and the country of origin.

A success, and all for £5.42.

(Adventure 100 running total, highest score is now G with 270 across 9 of 10 areas, lowest is EG with 135 across of 10 areas)

Brownie camp

2010-05-03T15:27:00.000+01:00

We took part in a division camp this weekend - more than 200 Brownies and Guides camping for two nights plus I think around another 100, 125 Rainbows, Brownies and Guides visiting for the day.

We were in sub-camps, there were 38 Brownies and Guides, and 10 adults in our sub-camp.

We had sun, drizzle, lashing rain, thunder, lightening, wind - pretty much par for the course! So far I have camped 3 times, 2 nights each; the first camp was sunshine so hot we had to pull our cars alongside our tents so we could sit in the shade, the second was lashing rain and close to abandonment, so at least I had already seen the extremes!

Surprisingly, nearly all my Brownies got very tearful during the weekend and wanted their mums. Many of these were girls who had been away plenty of times with me before, both under canvas and to London, a big thing for them! I think it was the proximity to home, they knew their mums were less than two miles away and that made the parting harder than if we were two hours away by train.

Still, it was a good weekend and I'd do it again. (What IS wrong with me?) Though I'd never been happier to have a hot bath then a dinner put in front of me when I got home!

Marching Beaver

2010-04-25T19:05:00.001+01:00

On April 25th, Scouts celebrate St George's Day because as well as being patron saint of England, he is also patron saint of scouts.

It's the one parade of the year that every scout is asked to attend, and as you can see, my Beaver did, that's him, face turned towards me, the third of four boys in a row.

His Scout group led the parade today so after the flags came our Beavers!

It was fun to see him, and fun for me to be an "outsider", rather than in the thick of things, organising and arranging permission forms for the participants!

Adventure 100 - more than double!

2010-04-23T08:01:00.000+01:00

We're loving doing Adventure 100, and it's been great fun to plan and do.

We still have loads more to do, but we're getting very close to giving out the first badges - the girls have to get 100 points and all 20 of the girls who have been Brownies since September or before are already way past 100. But they also have to get the 100 across 10 zones...and now six of our girls have accumulated points in nine zones...all they need is Up High to finish off, which we have planned just after the General Election.

The Brownies with the highest number are G and E, who have 230 points! Then A has 220 and H and P have 200. None of the others has less than 125 points so it's definitely time to start ticking off the last of the zones.

It's been great though, has challenged us to take the girls places we'd never normally have gone, such as a radio station and an observatory, play games in the dark, and so many other things. It's been a blast!

And next? A division camp and a district takeover.

Boo! Yay!

2010-04-19T20:39:00.000+01:00

Not Guiding but...

Downside: My parents can't get their week away in Rome because they can't fly due to the volcano ash.

Upside: They are fine about it, will reschedule later in the year and in the meantime, they're going to spend a few days in the Peak District and then a few more with us!