Scout Tuesday

I’m all over Scouting this year. I’m my 5 year old DD’s Daisy leader, my 7 year old DD’s co-leader/cookie mom and my 9 year old son’s assistant (to DH) den leader and pack treasurer. Since I spend every Monday and Tuesday coming up with projects for some type of scout or another, I thought I’d share one of my projects each week. Coincidentally, our meetings are also every Monday and Tuesday (the girls alternate Mondays, the boy is every week). I don’t think I could do it if I couldn’t procrastinate.

This week is our service unit’s cookie kickoff – which means it’s Cookie Time! Girls from all over our county will be at a party to start the cookie selling season. I thought it would be nice for my Daisies to have a troop shirt to wear to the party. The Brownies might actually do a version of this shirt later.

This project can easily be transformed for any use. My 7 year old's preschool did a similar project for Earth Day - they took white shirts and drew circles to represent the Earth in the middle and gave the kids blue and green paint.

Preparation:

I bought a pack of t-shirts in a size I thought would fit all my girls (all three of them). It actually is probably a little small for one of them, but as her mom pointed out, the next size up would be enormous. I picked out plain, old acrylic paints from my craft stash in each of the colors of the Daisy petals. I had to buy a few to fill in, but I had most of them from a project my older DD’s troop did as Daisies.

I also grabbed some old t-shirts for smocks to keep their clothes clean. I used a combo of paper plates and old plastic lids for paint palettes.

Step one: The Design

I printed out the Daisy petals from ScoutingWeb (scroll down a bit). Then I cut out the petals (I figured out that if you only cut out half, you could flip it to do the rest – saved my hands from cutting so many tiny petals – yay for the lazy way!). If my printer wouldn’t freaking jam every time I try to print on cardstock, I would have done this on nice heavy paper.

Then I went into Word and played around with WordArt to get a curve and found a font that was nice and thick, but still fun. I cut out the letters the first time and destroyed the outside. You can certainly trace around each letter, but then you have line them up and I’m lazy. So I reprinted and cut out the insides and made sure the surrounding paper stayed intact. It was much easier to trace the inside of the paper.

Step Two: Preparing the Shirts

I took a sheet of cardstock and put it inside each shirt, so my Sharpie wouldn’t bleed through. I left it there when I was done tracing so it would be ready for the girls to paint later.

Step Three: The Meeting

At our meeting I set up drop cloth on the tables we use. We have a very nice church that allows us to meet, so I don’t want to mess up their space. I put out one color for the first girl, she filled in the right petal (actually some were wrong, but that’s because I got my book out to check if I had all the colors I needed and left it on my table – I’m good like that) and passed her paint on to the next girl. We continued until they were all painted in. Then I let them fill in our troop number with whatever colors they wanted.

This is my DD’s. I think it’s adorable. The messy petals and letters give it a charm that can only be achieved by little fingers.

Final Cost:

I only have three girls, but this is still an inexpensive project – or at any rate, much less than having troop shirts printed somewhere.

I bought:

• A pack of 5 undershirts - $6.67.
• Four packs of 4 sponge brushes - $4.00
• Dropcloth - $3.50
• Paints - $3.00 (I had the rest on hand or mixed them at the meeting – this could cost more if you don’t own any paints)

So for under $20, we had troop t-shirts. And the cost wouldn’t have gone up if we’d had two more girls. So $4/girl. A little more than I like to spend on a regular meeting, but for troop t-shirts, a fair price.

It's that day...

The most wonderful day of the year. Well, not really for me. I'm not one of those people who's anxious to send her kids off to school. I'm jealous that their teachers get to spend so much time with them. I miss them already and they've been gone for an hour. Miss G started kindergarten today. I can't wait to hear how her day goes. She's a school-type, if you know what I mean. She just loves everything about it. Mr. T struggles a bit more - he's very smart, but sort of socially behind a bit. He gets better all the time, though.

So a new school for them and Tom, who's teaching general music this year (he hates that). I hope we all find a way to make it in our new life here. The change from suburban to rural small town is probably hardest on me, since I'm a suburb girl born and bred. The kids have known the farm since they were born, at least on visits. Tom grew up here, so it sort of works for him, even if in part he's grown a little too sophisticated in some ways. He still retains the small town farm boy inside, though, just with an orchestral exterior.

This day is probably hardest on one little person in particular - Miss S, who is losing her playmates. I'm planning to put her in a gymnastics class or something so she meets some friends and gets out a bit, but the fall parks and rec book isn't out yet, so that will have to wait a while still.

A fun start to the new year...

And a motherhood first for me - a trip to urgent care. In 6.5 years, none of my children had needed anything other than well checks and two - yes, two visits among the three kids - sick visits to the doctor. Well, our streak is broken. Today I had to take my 2.5 year old Miss S to have her foot x-rayed. A fun two hour New Year's Day trip to the off-hours medical place only to find out that it's not broken, or at least isn't showing up as a fracture on the x-ray. In the meantime, she still won't walk on it and keeps forgetting that it hurts and stands up to run and then screams "my foot!" I'm told she'll be fine in a few days. Meanwhile, I should keep her off of it. Said by someone who's never tried to keep a two year old still, obviously.

And while this might seem like an inauspicious start to 2008, I'm trying to look at the bright side. I hate streaks. When my team is on a streak or a favorite player is on a streak, I get all tense and nervous every time they make a move on the field. Streaks add an unnatural element to the game, be it football, basketball or motherhood. When March Madness closes in, I always hope my favorite team gets a loss right before it starts. A win streak (which adds a bit more tension than a losing streak, because, well, no one minds if a losing streak ends) puts your mind in a different place. You don't lose yourself to the moment, you start thinking about every little move.

So our streak is broken. May it be a fresh start for the new year.

My favorite....

I've been feeling guilty lately because I think I have a favorite child. And not in the "each one is my favorite for a different reason" sense, which I also believe. No, I've really felt like one of my children over the other two was my favorite. But this morning I've had an epiphany. It's not that Baby S is my favorite. I mean, she's just so freaking cute and sweet and loving and mischievous that it would be impossible not to love her. But my thinking of her as my favorite is not because of who she is.

It's her age. She's two and a half. My favorite age with each of my children. So I probably don't have a real favorite in the long-term, just a child who happens to be at my favorite age. I feel better. There's just something so incredibly fun and amazing about this age. She talks all the time and you just never know what she's going to do next.