Remembrance Day 2015

The 11th in Canada is Remembrance Day - where we honour our past, present and future soldiers.

Just outside of our town in October they raised 116 Canadian Flags along the highway - one flag for every 1000 Canadian soldiers killed in service since 1900.  It's amazing to think that we've lost 116,000 people.

The girls went to the local Remembrance Day ceremony.  If you've never taken your unit to a Remembrance Day ceremony, I suggest it!

Cupcakery Fun!

Last night the girls got to go to a local cupcake shop and try their hands out at decorating cupcakes.  They had a blast!

They got to tour the kitchen (the mounds of butter they use every day shocked them), and got a demonstration of how to decorate the cupcakes then got two cupcakes to decorate themselves.  They had plastic piping bags for buttercream icing, balls of fondant to roll out (and moulds to shape it in), candies, and a variety of shaping tools to use on the fondant like clay.

The shaker is for cornstarch - you need to sprinkle it over the mould and over the fondant as otherwise it can (and will) stick to everything.


A few tips for fellow leaders - ask the girls NOT to wear their sashes and scarves.  Either they get icing on them, or end up touching them to adjust them and then need to wash their hands again.  Also, the place we went has a lot of experience giving these kinds of programs for birthday parties, so they were really on the ball - but you wouldn't want inexperienced bakers with the girls.  Finally, make sure that you have a few skintight rubber gloves on hand.  We had a girl who had a band-aid on her hand and we had to replace it thrice!

All the fun of decorating on a tray!

My efforts :-)

Hallowe'en Party!

If you want to order this crest - click here!

Last night the Guides came to the Brownie meeting.  Guides have program areas where they have to create and run events for younger girls - and the Guides had decided to run a Hallowe'en party for the Brownies.  They charged each of the Brownies $4 for coming - they're trying to earn the money they'll give to the CWFF.  (We decided as Brownie leaders to top it up a bit and give the Guides unit money to cover their costs of throwing the bash.)

The Guides came up with 8 stations, each run by two Guides that the Brownies rotated through.

1) Face Painting
2) Colour/Decorate a paper bag for all their stuff.
3) Touch station (where they got to touch things like cold cooked spaghetti or peeled grapes)
4) Fishing for prizes
5) Cupcake decorating
6) Make a Hallowe'en themed suncatcher
7) Build a spider in a web
8) Hallowe'en game/song

The Brownies had an absolute blast!  At the end the leaders gave a small treat of candy/chips for each girl along with some juice, and all the Brownies and Guides went home with the Day of the Dead crest from e-patches (click just under the crest to go to their website).

The Guides came in a little early to get everything all set up.  Everyone was in costume.  It was awesome.


Feel free to comment with what your unit did for Hallowe'en!

A Garden Update

Well... the marigolds got run over by the petunias, and the morning glories have refused to bloom - but the garden still looks pretty awesome.

I'm moving!  I'll be joining a new Brownie unit in my new town (still Girl Guides of Canada Huzzah!)  Check back at the end of September for news of the new unit and what we're up to!

Planting Out

Yesterday afternoon we spent our meeting time planting a flower bed at the church where we meet.

The girls added the potting soil and peat moss, mixed them together, then planted the flowers and got them out of the pots by themselves!  The back row is morning glories, plus a small trellis to help them get up to the ironwork above the planter, then pink (for Sparks) spreading petunias, and the front row is marigolds.  Because deer hate marigolds and we're hoping they'll protect the rest of the plants!

Name Change

You may have noticed that the name of this blog has changed.  It's now Sparkling Sparks and Bouncing Brownies.  Next year I'll be leading Brownies, but we'll still be doing lots of stuff with the Sparks.  Anything we do with the Sparks will be so noted and added to the side bar, and Brownie stuff will be added as something you can search for.

For Brownie Keys, they will be noted as BK name of key.  Ex - BK Brownies
For Brownie Interest Badges, they'll be noted as BIB name of badge.  Ex BIB Be a chef.

I hope you'll like the new content.  Don't worry - I'll be back to Sparks soon enough.  I have another little person approaching that age right now!

Park Cleanup

Instead of staying inside today, the girls and I went down to the local waterfront/park property to do a cleanup.  I've found with the ages of Sparks (5-6), they need a reward after doing cleanups like that.  So after we picked up garbage for about forty minutes, we let them run around the playground after that.

For the trash pickup itself, I brought enough recycled bags for all the girls to have one, as well as plastic gloves (as I didn't want them getting dirty from the stuff they picked up).