10 Words

Today's Challenge is to sell yourself in 10 words (or less):

• passionate
• creative
• thoughtful
• caring
• stubborn/determined
• faithful
• compassionate
• quirky

My Saturday morning stared off in my favourite way: Coffee, Everything Bagel wtih Herb & Garlic Cream Cheese and catching up on blogs. In an hour I'm leaving to go sell Girl Guide cookies with my Brownies for a couple of hours and then go through camping gear before taking a group of Girl Guides camping next weekend. Our last Brownie meeting is Monday night so we're having a pizza & ice cream sundae party which means I also need to make a trip to the grocery store. And finishing crafting end of the year gifts for the girls, and find some cute 'Thank-You' gifts for my two co-leaders. And have I mentioned I leave for camp a week from tomorrow?  Which means a whole lot of packing needs to be done, plus finish planning sessions for Staff Training...I feel like my to-do list is multiplying by the second. It will all get done All of the important stuff will get done and if a few things don't get crossed off the list then it's not the end of the world!

Happy Monday!

My Monday got off to a really great start thanks to the Blog World!

On Friday when I linked up with Kelly's Korner for SUYL she shared a link from Beth Moore's blog that prompted 20-Somethings to post a comment about ourselves and our worries and in return a Non-20-Something would reply to the post and volunteer to pray for the 20-Something. I thought it was such a sweet idea so I commented and refesed the page for an hour in anticipating of somebody replying. After an hour I realized I was being crazy and decided to leave it until Monday.

Which brings me to this morning when I went through my usual morning ritual of checking e-mail, Twitter and blogs and remembered to check back with Beth Moore. And I was greeted with this comment. I was so happy to see that and I love that the lady who commented was kind enough to also leave her e-mail address. Things like this are such a refreshing change from the usual cattiness of girls and are such an encouragement!

For those of you wondering (which I'm pretty sure is nobody, but I digress) Operation Homemade Lipgloss with the Brownies went really well! The only hiccup was for some reasons the girls who used purple Kool-Aid to colour their gloss ended up with a grey-ish colour. So that's a lesson for the next time. But other than that they were all pretty happy with how they turned out, which made me happy too. 

The last week of April/first week of May is off to an excellent start!

Weekend Update

I had a pretty low key weekend, but in an attempt to update more often I'm going to blog about it anyway. 

Saturday I baby sat the Tiny Human from 9-5, being in a rush to leave her Mom forgot the bag of toys she usually brings with her, so we had to improvise. We spent a lot of time playing with fridge magnets followed by some good ol' fashion wooden spoons and plastic bowl time. Between make-shift toys, naps and lunch we manged to pass away the day.

Camp is less than a month away and now that 99% of the staff is hired I spent some time this crafting fun door signs for everybody. I used the Create-A-Critter Cartridge and kept with the animal theme for everyone. At first I tried to stick with campy animals...but with a staff of 22 and usually have a couple of volunteers each week too that plan ended quickly.

Tomorrow night at Brownies I'm attempting to make homemade lip gloss with the girls. It's one of those situations where I have high hopes and low expectations.

20 Somethings Link Up

Today I'm linking up with one of my very favourite bloggers at Kelly's Korner for College Girls/20 Somethings Connect Day!

Since I'm participating in a Link Up today I thought I'd do a post with a little more about me!

My name is Donna, I'm 23 years old and I live on the East Coast of Canada. I studied recreation and religious studies in university and hopefully someday I will be able to work full time in camp ministry. For now I work as the Assistant Director at a summer camp for children, youth and adults with physical disabilities and cognitive delays, which is still a pretty fabulous job!

When I'm not at camp I'm a Brownie leader with Girl Guides of Canada and spend a lot of time babysitting some big personalities in tiny bodies.

I confess to watching too much reality T.V., consuming more caffeine than I should and always forgetting to take pictures.

I love good conversations, cerulean blue crayons, my cat, summer, wearing rain boots, God and all things neon.

Somebod's Singing Lord, Kumbaya

I spent this weekend at Brownie Camp with my five favourite Brownies. I am such a proud Brown Owl, I feel like I could brag about how awesome they did for days. In the beginning none of them wanted anything to do with camp but then all five of them decided they would give it another try. (I'm not exactly sure what went down at last year's Brownie Camp but my girls did not have a good time.) Some of the Moms were pretty nervous too so I had given them my number and told them to feel free to text to check in to see how things were going. As I was getting the girls ready for bed I got a text from a Mom checking in and when I let her know what was happening (girls were getting PJs on, getting facials and then going to bed) I got the sweetest message back.

Little things like that make me feel so much better about life and I consider them a reassurance that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing in life.

The second (and maybe the most important) highlight of my weekend can be summed up in these 3 pictures.

For a little back story the camp that we had rented for Brownie Camp was one that I had been at before, the last time about 6 years ago when "my" camp rented it for a few weeks right after we lost our camp. So before I went I selfishly/secretly hoped and prayed for some sort of 'sign' that we had been there before. That 'my' camp had existed and in some small way continues to exist. I wasn't really expecting to find anything, I mean it has been six years. And if I did find anything I didn't expected it to either be super ambiguous (oh, I bet this random cup in the cupboard was "ours"). And I was proven wrong. The first thing I 'found' was a piece of painters tape with the name of a former counsellor/director written on it and taped to a griddle in the kitchen. I can guarantee that piece of tape has been there for six years. And then I found a mug that was clearly a relic. And the cross just served as a reminder that I love camp, specifically I love camp ministry.

I left camp Sunday afternoon feeling so much better about life.

And best of all with a new "Five Year Plan" taking shape in my head. And I have no idea how it will unfold, but it's there and it wasn't before and it's a feeling that can't be explained with words.

Snow & Sneezes

This is the THIRD Monday in a row that the combination of snow/rain/freezing rain/wind has cancelled school - which means it is also the third week Brownies has been cancelled. Someday I will get to celebrate Valentine's Day with my favourite 8 year olds. This week we had planned to celebrate Guide/Scout Week with the other Girl Guide units in our area with the traditional torchlight parade followed by cupcakes & hot chocolate. As disappointed as I am that I haven't gotten to distribute Valentine's Day treat bags, or make Valentine's Day themed picture frames and feed the little ladies cupcakes and watch their eyes light up with excitement as they learn to play a new game; I'm thankful for today's weather cancellation.

Saturday morning I woke up with a cold and have felt totally miserable ever since. I'm feeling a little better today but I have no desire to move from the couch for any length of time. My plans for the rest of the day & evening include nothing more than drinking cups of peppermint tea in between drinking lots of water while watching silly day time talk shows.

The whole not feeling great has really put a damper on the "I'm going to do yoga every day for Lent" plan. I have been doing a good job remembering to read the Verse of the Day, so that's something. Fingers crossed that by tomorrow or the next day I'll be feeling better and can really get serious about my plan.

Pancakes & Snow Storms

School was cancelled yesterday, which means our usual Monday night Brownie meeting was also cancelled. So instead of spending yesterday evening playing games, making adorable Valentine's Day picture frames and consuming unhealthy quantities of red food colouring I watched TV and made a feeble attempt to organize my crafting supplies.

Today is Pancake Tuesday, which means tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Instead of the traditional 'give something up for Lent' idea the last few years I've tried to start something new and do good. This year I played around with a few different ideas; at first I was going to try and read a book of the Bible every day then I came to my senses and realized as good as it sounds in theory right now I 'm doing good if I remember to read the 'Verse of the Day' on my phone's Bible App. For about five minutes I thought it would be a great idea to do something food related, try out the vegetarian thing, really go hard core and go vegan and then I remembered how much I love pepperoni & cheese pizza. Next I debated giving up pop but that didn't seem like that much of a commitment since it's not like I drink bucket loads of it everyday.

With all that being said I finally decided I would commit to doing yoga everyday. I've gone to a few yoga classes but never really stuck with it so I've invested in a few DVDs that were on clearance after the rush of January Weight Loss resolutions and will start with them. I'm anticipating that I will have to take some days off and give my body some time to rest so for those days I'm gong to take advantage of all of those free Meditation Apps & YouTube videos.

The over-arcing theme for the next 40 days is "Body, Mind & Soul", taking up yoga is one step but I also want to be more intentional about the things I'm already trying to do like picking up a book instead of the remote and clicking the "Read Full Chapter" button as I skim the Verse of the Day.

Crafting Up A Storm

The last two days it has snowed non-stop, resulting in 41 cm of snow and making me a little shack wacky. I took advantage of all the downtime to get Valentine's Day treat bags made for my Brownies. This was my first real project with my Cricut since I got it at Christmas, I've played around with it lots but this is the first time my creations have been distributed to others. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, I cut the frogs & saying from the Create-A-Critter 2 cartridge and the only difficulty I had was the glue stick I was using was too big. I definitely need to invest in a smaller one for assembling smaller cuts.

I spent the afternoon painting puzzle pieces for our Valentine's Day craft but they're still drying. It's one of those Pinterest projects that I saw, thought was cute and then forgot to pin. So I don't have any actual instructions to go by, fingers crossed it will all work out. It's still storming outside which means it's also possible there won't be a Brownie meeting tomorrow if school is cancelled. In which case we'll just have to celebrate a little later on in the month!