25th January 2011

This term at Brownies we're doing the Healthy Heart badge and as part of that we made smoothies this evening. The Brownies all brought some fruit and then chose what they wanted to put in them, there were a few interesting ones - banana and blueberry, and apple, strawberry and melon - although the majority had a strawberry and banana theme!

23rd November 2010

Today has been a busy day - work, sweet-making with the Brownies and the running club AGM. Bed is looking even more inviting than usual!

16th November 2010

Today was the day that we all took our knitted squares into Brownies. However before Carol collected them all up, we laid them all out to see how big a blanket they would make.

19th October 2010

Each autumn at Brownies we prepare charity Christmas gift boxes for underpriviliged children around the world. This year our boxes are going to local charity Smile International.
Here is my box for an 8 year old boy which includes, amongst other things, pants and socks, toothbrush and toothpaste, soap and flannel, colouring pens and pencils, notebooks, sweets, a mini football and some lego.

14th October 2010

Having un-picked my first attempt I am very pleased to have finally finished a knitted square for Brownies. I'm now going to try another one with some thicker wool!

5th October 2010

We had a very busy evening at Brownies tonight - first off we had a trainee sniffer dog called Rick come to visit. As part of his training he needs to experience lots of different situations and so he did a couple of exercises where he had to find some drugs that had been planted on a couple of the girls. His reward each time was to play with a tennis ball and then when he'd finished working he got some cuddles from the Brownies! Afterwards the girls got busy making Christmas cards for this year's Blue Peter appeal, which involves making cards for Tesco to sell in aid of Whizz-Kidz. Here are some of their efforts...

21st September 2010

In a couple of weeks we are having a knitting evening at Brownies in order to produce lots of squares to be combined into large blankets for charity, however as I haven't knitted for years I thought I needed some practice if I'm to be any help to the Brownies.  I bought some wool and needles whilst we were at the table sale on Saturday and then tonight I took them along to Brownies to get some tips from Carol (Brown Owl) on how to cast-on, etc.. I've knitted about 2 rows so far, it's taken me about half-an-hour and to be honest I'm not particularly impressed with my efforts.  I'd like to blame the wool but in reality it's probably me and I think I'll need a lot more practice in order to produce something that could be used!

14th September 2010

Having missed last week because we were on holiday, this evening was my first time back at Brownies since before the summer holidays.  Lots of cute newbies and some who make us chuckle without even trying.  Tonight they were making mosaics with lots of little pieces of coloured paper which reminded Carol of a previous child who in order to pick up pieces of paper from the floor decided to put glue on the bottom of her shoes and run around - it worked apparently but neither the shoes or the carpet were in such a great state afterwards!

24th August 2010

Tuesday night is running club night, but sadly tonight was my last evening run of the summer as we're on holiday for a couple of weeks and then it'll be back to helping out at Brownies. It's not quite as sad as it sounds though as the nights are starting to draw in and so there is less time for fun off-road adventures and it is back to pounding the pavements again as the winter approaches. Sometimes when it's cold and dark I'm very grateful to have Brownies as an excuse not to run!

12th July 2010

Girl Guiding is 100 years old this year, which is great as there are loads of fun activities for our Brownies to take part in. We've been to a kick-off party in Crystal Palace, where we got lost in the newly renovated maze, spent a term looking at different decades from the last 100 years and some of the girls have just been away for centenary camp weekend. The only depressing thing is that I must be getting old as when I was a Brownie I remember getting a badge for the 75th anniversary - how time flies!