Life Crisis

It has been so long since I have posted something.  Life has a way of taking all your worst fears, balling them up together and then throwing them straight at your chest.  I was engaged to what was suppose to be my second husband.  Thankfully, the wedding never happened and I learned a horrible truth about the type of person he is.  It's crazy really that my gut was giving signals about him and I just plan ignored them because here he was, taking care of four kids someone else fathered and being there for them like a father should have been.  In reality, he was just as bad, if not worse, then their biological fathers who eventually stepped out on them.  While the decline of our relationship took a toll on me, I gave up a lot of things I love, this blog being one of them.  When I met this guy, I was about year out from a terrible and violent relationship.  I fell right into his narcissistic trap and wasted almost 6 years of my life.  I am carrying a lot guilt about everything that has come to light and I just hope that despite the craziness, my kids are going to come out of this okay, better people, more aware of society and caring for the people they love.

As I work to find myself once again, I return here, my fun and safe place to be who I really am.  I hope that despite my absence, my readers and followers will welcome me back.  I will be updating and re-vamping and planning once again to share with all of you.  

I want to also note, that just because he/she doesn't hit you, doesn't mean it is domestic violence.  It doesn't have to be physical to be abuse.  Talk to someone, reach out, create and KEEP a circle of people who you can trust to help you be safe.  I have just hung my hat up on an abusive relationship that was not physical and I stayed and lived with it because I had already been through the violent craziness of another type of abusive relationship and I didn't let my heart see this was just as bad.  

I will be making a tab for Domestic Violence resources and will at first concentrate on my local area.  If you live in a different area outside the Kansas City, Mo metro area, please comment with your space and I will help you find the resources to leave, be safe, or learn about what you are dealing with.

I love you all!  The fun and amazing things are coming back.  I will be here and I pledge to never leave you again!

~Happy Life, It's important

Brandie 

Edible Bird Nests! (3 Cheers GS Daisy Journey)

During the 3 Cheers Journey for the Daisy Girl Scout Journey, the sessions make snack suggestions for meetings.  One of the options was an edible nest made out of veggies.  On the particular day that my daughter and I did this session, we were doubling up on sessions.  Therefore, to my daughter's delight, she got two snacks!  The other snack was veggie related so I wanted to switch it up and give her a sweet treat.

I remember from my childhood, making edible nests out of Chinese noodles and chocolate!  I searched Pinterest for a recipe that matched what I remember and lucked out big time!

My daughter was so excited to make these and since the session we were working on included nests, we were able to further the conversation about nests and animals that use them.

Here you can find the recipe!
We omitted the nuts, simply because my daughter didn't want them.  They do make cute little eggs tho!


Here is what our mixture looked like:

We plopped them on wax paper and put them in the fridge:

and here is our finished product!

There were soooo good!

~Happy Scouting!
Brandie

Daisy Girl Scouts 3 Cheers Journey Activities!

In our adventure into Girl Scouts independently without a troop, my daughter and I have found many fun ways to make up for the lack of a troop.

I love that the GS store allows me to purchase the troop leader information so that I can help Danielle successfully move through earning her badges.  Our current adventure is the 3 Cheers Journey for the Daisy level scouts.

The leader book has session lined out to help lead troops through the program.  A lot of these activities are developed for a group of girls.  When you are working with just one girl and at a faster pace, you've gotta do things a little different.

Below is a list of activities that are suggested in the adult book for the journey that my daughter and I changed to meet the needs of our situation.

Team Bird Bath

 The team bird bath is used hold drawings and sentences that capture their ideas on how to care for animals.  During the second session, the girls are prompted to create an All About Me Nest.  The All About Me Nest is used to hold all the things the girls learn.  Each girl will have her own All About Me Nest and the troop shares the Bird Bath.

All About Me Nest
Since the "troop" and the girl is the same for us, we changed up their uses just a little bit.  The All About Me Nest is used at each lesson and my daughter will write or draw something that we talked about that she already knew (for example, we did a field trip to our local zoo and we talked about habitats, she wrote about the penguin habitat in her nest.  She already knew where they lived thanks to movies like Happy Feet ;) ).  The Bird Bath we use to put information that she learns as we go.  If she discovers a new fact about the animals we are talking about or learning about, she writes it down and puts it in her bird bath.

Red Robin Project
The Red Robin Project is designed for the girls of a troop to show off what they have learned.  The idea is to complete a project that shows off their new found knowledge to their parents.  Since both her father and I are involved with her program, we were already aware of what she was learning.  From the beginning of her joining Scouts, I made her a journal so she could write down what she learns throughout the scouting program.  For the Red Robin Project, we had her write a short story about how to take care of animals and read it aloud for us.  This allowed her to meet the requirements of earning the Red Robin portion of the journey.

Tula Award
This is the final step to the 3 Cheers journey.  This project is designed to have the girls perform a game where they act out an animal they learned about and the audience has to guess what animal.  They go on to discuss how they care for animals.  For this project, we had Danielle tell us about the animals on her mural (see the adult handbook).  

Each week, the girls are prompted to create a specific animal for the mural and then they do a craft or read a story about the animal.  For the Tula Award, we had the girl point out the animals on the mural and tell us one thing she learned about the animal.  We finished with her writing in her journal again about her favorite way to care for animals.

This journey was a lot of fun to work through.  The girl's book companion has a list of recipes for snack ideas for the meetings during the sessions.  There are some pretty fun snack ideas and a couple of them have been added to our weekly after school snacks! 

~Happy Scouting!
Brandie

Minecraft Creeper Valentine's!

Valentine's with Boys can be difficult!  Luckily my boys have pretty fun interests and we were able to tie these into our Valentine's!

Creeper Valentine's were so fun to make!

Here is what you need to make your own!
Hersey's Snack Size bar (or other candy about the same size)
Creeper Wrappers
Blast Tags
Twine or String
Scissors (to cut out the wrappers and tags)
Tape for the wrappers
Hole Punch

Down load the wrappers and the tags below!
Creeper Wrappers
Blast Tags


Cut out the Creeper wrappers and tape them around your candy.  Cut out the tags,
punch a hole in the middle of the black section of the tag, tie a piece string around the candy with the tag attached.

If you have a Minecraft Fan, these Valentine's will be a perfect match!

~Happy Valentine's Crafting!
Brandie

Minecraft Birthday Party

I have huge Minecraft Fans in my house!  This past summer, my youngest son wanted a minecraft birthday.  I had a blast putting his party today!
Here you will find all the projects I did to get prepared for the party as well as links to the printables I created to accompany the party.

I scoured Pinterest for ideas (where else would I look!).  I found some really cool Perler Bead Patterns that are Minecraft themed!  Check out my board here!!  These were so fun because the Perler Beads make the design you are doing look pixel-ated which is what Minecraft is all about!

Here are my creations based off the patterns I found!  You are welcome to go dig through my Pinterest Board!

The kids and I had so much fun making these that we went on to make Princesses, Harry Potter Designs and more!  Look for more posts on those!

I created a "Happy Birthday" sign, which you can download in PDF form here!!

I also made invitations to match!  That PDF File can be found here!

I'm always big on having food available so I made food cards as well!  Check out a few of them below and download the PDF file here!

I bought a square cupcake pan (or individual brownie pan) to make the "cake" for this party!  I loved finding the square pan because it allows me to do all kings of fun stuff that is pixel shaped!

The goal was to make a Diamond Sword out of cupcakes....I feel like this was good!

For decoration around the banner, we blew up some Creeper Green balloons and drew Creeper faces on them!  I was really surprised how well they turned out free hand drawn on!  Squares are easy :D

The kids had a blast checking out all Perler Bead items we made and they each got to take home a necklace made out of a Perler Bead Design (they could choose a Steve Head, Ender Head, or Creeper Head....we then ran a string through one corner of the design!).

I hope you find some useful ideas here!

~Happy Party Planning!  Mine ON!

Brandie

New Year Resolutions!

This time of year is always full of new plans and promises to be a better version of our selfs, reach some goals and accomplish our dreams!  2015 was an interesting year for me and looking back, I didn't concretely accomplish too much. I did however, get myself on track to work on some really amazing things this year!

Top of that list:

Get Back To My Blog! 

I do not work outside the home. While this is not a choice I made, simply circumstances that is life, I need to be WAY more productive with my days!  I have a TON of info that needs to be here...and it's not.  That's changing!!

Next on my list:

Get Serious About My Businesses

I have two!  A bling/shirt/craft business I run through Etsy and a direct sales business with Younique!  I love both dearly but have not committed the appropriate time to either one of them! 

Lastly:

Get Back In Control of My Health

I've slipped quite a bit on staying on top of my medical staff to figure out what is wrong with me and that is just not okay!  I had surgery in 2014 and it's had me gun shy about discovering the other ailments that make my day to day a struggle.  I intend to overcome that fear and get my body back!!

There are of course some financial goals I have for myself, but those are no different then anyone else.  Get further out of debt, work on my credit score and improve my living status.  If I do the above, the rest will follow!!

I hope everyone who reads this had a wonderful New Year's Eve and holiday last month! 

Next Up On the Blog:  Family Binder and Command Center!

~Love You All

Brandie :)