Summer Meeting News

We had a productive meeting yesterday.  Maria, Brittany, Karen, and Evie worked on getting their patches sewn onto sashes and vests.  Christina is making a braided rug for her dorm room, and Diana finished up her Gold Award Project Proposal.  We talked some about plans for next year and organized some dates, which are below.  The Interest Project Patches that we’re starting with are Photography and Textile Arts.  Our trusty Advisors also want us to do Emergency Preparedness, since only Karen is certified in CPR and First Aid.  Laura and Callie have not finished the Creative Cooking IPP, which was so much fun that we want to do a Japanese meal to help them finish.  Other IPP’s that look interesting are Backpacking, Writing for Real, The Food Connection, and Outdoor Survival.

We want to help Maria, Laura, and Crystal with the preliminaries that they will need for the Gold Award, and we need to get Laura and Crystal to a Gold Award Workshop as soon as we can.  The Senior Leadership Award and the Career Exploration Pin are things that all of us can work on whether or not we’re interested in completing the entire Gold Award Process.  Some of the Career Exploration ideas are attending the UGA Vet School Open House next April, inviting a professional writer friend of Mrs. Gargiullo’s to talk to our troop about how you make a living writing, and finding out how we can explore the field of forensics.  We also are thinking about attending the Atlanta Opera production of Porgy and Bess in November.

Service opportunities include the Focus Family Camp for families with disabled children in August, all the Brownie and Junior Weekends at Timber Ridge in September and October, helping out at the Empty Stocking Fund distribution center in December, and cooking for the Nicholas House Shelter for Women and Children to celebrate the MLK holiday.  Some of our girls have also volunteered for Special Olympics in May, and we may want to do that, too.  It sounds like a busy year!

Preliminary Calendar for 2005-2006

These dates are the framework for our year.  We will add or subtract as needed.  When we want to do projects or make visits, often we will plan them in addition to these dates.  Be sure to check the website regularly so that you don’t miss anything.

Quilts for Kids

 When we talked about service projects for the Textile Arts IPP, none of the suggestions in the IPP book were very interesting.  We know that EMT’s and firefighters need teddy bears in their emergency vehicles to give to injured children, and we thought that making some of those would be fun.  There is also a project called Quilts for Kids which, if we get interested in quilting, might also be fun to do.  You can read about it on the web at www.quiltsforkids.org. 

 We don’t necessarily each have to commit individually to making a whole quilt.  We could make squares.  We could involve younger troops in making squares that we could assemble.  We don’t want to kill ourselves with too big a project, but we would want to do good work, so we might need to be creative in our planning.  Sometimes quilting clubs will quilt the tops that people make.  There are more than one or two ways to do things like this.

Note to our Adult Girl Scouts

Right now our troop has more adults than girls!  Our College freshpersons and sophomores are very, very, very welcome to join us in various activities as you are able and interested.  We love to have you come with us when we camp.  If we do Quilts for Kids, you may want to contribute a square or even a quilt from your distant college.  We will love to have you anytime for anything, which is, of course, why we registered you. 

If you’re not a lifetime member and you are a college sophomore, you need to register with the troop by October 1 to be covered by Girl Scout insurance when you come with us somewhere.  We registered you last year at troop expense, and we’ve done that for the new freshpersons (Steph, Rossie, Tabby, Diana, Liz, and Jenny) who are not already lifetime members.  To register, just get the form from Mrs. Lott and send it back with your $10.  Don’t forget about College Girl Scouts, too.  If your school doesn’t have a chapter, you can easily start one.  Pat knows how.  You can always Email us from the website.