Saturday, October 31, 2015

Shake Your Groove Thing!

A few weekends ago I attended the Edmonton Area Guiders Conference out at Tangletrees and I thought I would share a few pictures from the event. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed spending time out in nature with some Guiding friends. 
Friday night was filled with a round robin of crafts including this mini lava lamp. A full blog post about it can be found here.


To keep with the 1970s theme of the event we made record bowls! The first step is to pick a record.


Next, put the record on a bowl of your choice of size and shape.


Put the record and the bowl into the oven so it can begin to melt into the shape of the bowl. 


When it is melted enough into the shape you want, wearing oven mitts, pinch the corners of the bowl together.  


Let it cool and then you have a bowl! 


The next craft was a mini disco ball using another kind of music item- a CD! These were very hard to cut, you need to have a strong pair of scissors to cut the CDs into little pieces. 


All you have to do is hot glue the pieces onto a styrofoam ball and voila! A cute little disco ball!


This water bottle holder was the final craft of the evening. I remember making them as a Guide and being so frustrated with how hard they were- it was a lot easier this time! If you are interested in a full tutorial- let me know! 



I participated in the outdoor cooking session and helped create a number of delicious desserts for lunch. We used methods of cooking like a fire, Coleman stove, buddy burners, box oven, and clay pot BBQs. Pretty much all of the desserts turned out great and I would happy to share the recipes if asked. :)











I couldn't help but take a few pictures of the beauty of autumn, especially out at camp! 



Another one of the sessions I did was archery, it was so much fun and I really enjoyed doing it- I might have to take it up as a hobby! 


In the tents and tarps session our group made a lean-to (spelling?) using just a tarp, some rope, and a few trees. I definitely want to sleep in one of these at a camp this year! 


Our night games included glow stick ring toss-that just looked too cool to not take a picture! 


My favourite part of camp is always campfire. At this camp we were lucky enough to have Guider Dusk (Dawn Nowicki) lead us in song, it was so fun! I love doing campfire with people who actually know the songs we are singing. 




Overall it was a great weekend full of fun, relaxation, and learning some new things to do in the outdoors. Thanks to the organizers for all of their hard work to put together a great weekend! 


Monday, October 26, 2015

Make it Monday: Mini Lava Lamp

Have you ever wanted to have a lava lamp on your camp hat? Well now you can with this really easy craft! I went to a Guider conference last weekend and we had a craft round robin where we made a lava lamp, a disco ball, a water bottle holder, and a record bowl. You can see all of those on this blog post! 


All you need for this simple craft is a small jar with a lid (the ones we used were small glass bottles with a cork in the top from the dollar store), vegetable oil, an eyedropper, and coloured water (dyed with food colouring). 



1. Fill the jar with oil almost to the top.
2. Next take an eye dropper full of coloured water and put it into the oil. 
3. Squeeze the eyedropper to put the water into the oil. Be sure to not let go of the squeezed eyedropper because it will suck up some of the oil. 
4. Put the lid on the jar and shake it up!
I put a layer of hot glue on the cork just to make sure that it wouldn't leak and you could attach a string and a safety pin to it to make a unique hat craft. 



Thursday, October 22, 2015

Girl Guide Cookie Witch Hats!

With Halloween fast approaching and cookie season winding down I thought I would share an easy little treat that I learned how to make when I was a Pathfinder! This would be a great addition to a unit Halloween party or just a treat at home. Enjoy!  


All you need is some Girl Guide cookies, icing, Hershey's kisses, and food colouring (not pictured).


First I used a little bit of food colouring to make some Halloween coloured icing.


Then I used a Ziploc bag with a hole in the corner to pipe the icing onto the cookie. 


The last thing you have to do is pop a Hershey's kiss on the top and you have a little witch hat. I only wish that the kisses were a little bit darker to match the cookies. Oh well! 


That's it! It takes about five minutes to make and they are so cute! Let me know if you make these! 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Tipi Camp Tales!

Somehow I chose the coldest weekend we have had in a long time to take my guide unit out to tipi camp... I have to say that I am so impressed with my girls- there was no complaining, lots of smiles, and a lot of fun had at camp! Fall is my favourite time of year for a number of reasons- one of them has to be that it is so colourful and beautiful. I enjoyed being out in nature with a great group of girls! 

Here was our home for the night... I have tipi camped as a girl, but never as a leader. A few of our girls had never been camping at all let alone in a tipi in negative temperatures! I was so proud (I will probably say that a lot in this post.) 

These mushrooms were everywhere! How can you not believe in faeries when you see things like this! 


The girls played a few active games to keep warm- this is one they made up themselves. I have no idea what they were doing, but they seemed to be having fun! 


In keeping with the tipi camp theme we made parfleches, a traditional pouch for carrying things, out of vinyl shelf liners, yarn, and coloured Sharpies. If you are interested in a tutorial for this craft let me know!  


Onto the nature walk.. so many beautiful fall colours, and the sun came out! The girls were so excited they were wearing only t-shirts in 5 degree weather. :)













The girls were having such a good time tromping through the woods! 




A few of the Guides made their own tipi out of sticks, I liked the contrast between their tipi and the real one. 


How perfect is this photo? Girl Guides at its finest... would be great for PR (just saying!). 



I didn't really take a ton of pictures in the evening and the next day, but it was a great camp! What a way to start the Guiding year! :) 



Thursday, October 8, 2015

International Day of the Girl 2015

My Guide Unit did the Girl Guides of Canada International Day of the Girl challenge this week and they loved it! I was so impressed with how amazing their gender neutral toys were I thought I would share them with you! I would highly reccommend doing the challenge with your unit- it is very well done! Check it out here

We made the toys in patrols. The Lily of the Valley patrol decided to make robots. Here are a few pictures of the planning process, the building of, and the final presentation of their Goybots (Girl/Boy Robots)








The Daffodil patrol took a different route and decided to make a board game that everyone would like to play! They made a game called Snowman Mania where the object of the game is to build a snowman (cue Frozen?) They were so proud of it they wanted to keep it at the hall so we could play it another meeting.




(I love the warning- it says "Warning choking hazard don't let children under 5 play or get close to small pieces) So clever!


The Swallow patrol took a completely different approach and made a stuffed animal toy sitting on a cat cloud... :) They didn't do any planning but worked through their challenges as they were trying to make their toy as a team and they were happy with the final product and that is what counts! 


Not only is the program awesome, the crest is so pretty too! :)