Badge Clauses (2) - 7 day tasks

Back with the badge clauses in this post! Over the past week I have attempted to complete 3 clauses which needed to be kept over the space of 7 days. As a challenge I know for a fact that I was not successful in keeping on track. The clauses were:

• Plan a menu for 7 days including 5 portions of fruit/veg each day.
• Create a schedule to follow for 7 days
• Do a task around the home each day for 7 days.

*this is not the exact wording of clauses but my interpretation of them*

The first wasn't too bad. I created my meal plan, even wrote down the different components of my meals. Unfortunately I was not as proactive in having what I planned. Meals which required me to just pull the box out of the freezer were fine, but anything else was 'open to interpretation'... The less said about this the better although I will be planning my meals in general each week to try and stop my craving for biscuits and sweet treats. This is one thing that I need to get down properly as what you eat is more effective for losing weight than exercise (I have found), and I need to start losing weight again if I don't want to buy a whole new set of clothes!

For the second, here is my schedule:

6:30am - wake up

7:00am - breakfast

8am - walk

10am - daily task

1pm - lunch

2pm - active dvd

4pm - fun time (games, books etc)

6pm - dinner

7pm - washing up

8pm - relax until sleepy

I decided these sort of times were sensible for me. The early wake up call is to get me ready for whenever I go back to work - when that happens my alarm will probably be back at its old 5:45am wake up call. The early morning walk, again is to set me back up for work. I used to walk to work every day leaving the house at 7am, it's approximately 2 miles from my home to the centre of the city and for almost 6 months it's something I let slide so making sure I go for a walk for a minimum 2 miles. I decided to incorporate the daily task into the schedule to make sure that I did it. If I didn't you can bet that I would just sit on the sofa and say 'meh I'll do it tomorrow'. I need to up my fitness and work on toning up which is why I added the dvd in the afternoon, and giving myself a designated time to do a different activity like reading or playing on my PS2 helps to bring a change of scenery to my usual sofa/TV mix. Well it worked to a certain degree. I should have waited until the Monday before starting as on Friday mornings (currently) I go food shopping and then have to distribute items to my parents and my auntie, Saturday mornings I have a Zoom session for Slimming World, and Sunday mornings my alarm is permanently switched off as it is the only day I ever have a lie in (unless I go to Church, then I have to have the alarm on obvs!). So for 3 days out of 7 I did not follow the routine at all, I did as stated above and then spent the rest of the Saturday and Sunday creating face masks as written in my previous post. Most days I did not do the exercise dvd, sometimes I had an extra walk or I had some other activity to do. To be honest I'm ready to go back to work so I can get into a proper routine that I know I will stick to fully and it will get me back on the right track both mentally and physically.

The third clause of a daily household task was probably the most successful of the three 7 day challenges.

1 - clean the kitchen ☑️

2 - put all clean washing away ☑️

3 - batch cook ☑️

4 - clean the bathroom 〰️

5 - hoover whole house ☑️

6 - wash bedding and towels ☑️

7 - empty all bins ☑️

I didn't do a full clean of the bathroom which is the only reason this part was not a complete success. It did feel good to write down jobs for the house I k ow I need to do but just put off and put off, for example until I put the washing away as per my list I had a pile of clean clothing that had been waiting to be put away for a good 2 weeks. That's me just being lazy, and I really shouldn't be especially as right now I have no excuses for it.

I actually completed another two of the main clauses - do a good turn for someone, and learn how to wash your hands properly and thoroughly (I can't share with my family as we are in different households and they would tell me that they already know how to do it). The good turn was in fact the face masks I created for my family, I had already decided that the food shopping bits I was doing for them wouldn't count as I had started doing that pre-challenge however the face masks were something out of the blue at first and it was a challenge for me to create one for me let alone as many as I did make in the end. As for the washing hands, I already knew how due to posters at work and the videos which were showing everywhere at the beginning of lockdown however I took a moment to go back and re-watch all the information to refresh it in my brain - as more shops open up and you are allowed to visit family members (albeit in the garden) you will need to use the restroom at some point so remembering the right way to wash your hands helps you and everyone around you. The last of the main clauses is to say thank you to a key worker. This is probably the easiest, most awkward, unconscious, polite thing to do. Every time I go to a shop I always say thank you to any member of staff who assisted me or in the case of the supermarket as a way of saying bye. I don't get deliveries of groceries however the couple of parcels I have received, the delivery person has been fantastic so saying thank you to them was no problem. So from that, I have completed this clause of the badge. However if you take it to literally walk up to a key worker and just come out with 'thank you for everything you do', I'm not socially built to do that, I struggled to go outside and join in the clap for key workers - I did it a few times but it didn't feel natural to me. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything that has and is being done across all sectors and communities, I just struggle to convey that appreciation to people I don't know without it being an unconscious act that has happened naturally.

Yesterday while sat in the garden I started looking at my list of clauses I can do and decided to make a start on another 4. All of these involve making lists - things that I can/enjoy doing at home, things I would like to do with my unit when we meet again, things that I am grateful for, and 'silver linings'. I am still working on these lists as the instructions ask for a certain number on each and I have not quite reached the targets on a couple of them. These will all be in a post when I have finished writing them!

Badge clauses

It's been a little longer than planned between my last post and this one. Whoops!

So what have I been up to. Well without looking at my diary I can't really remember off the top of my head so clearly it hasn't been a memorable week. I made a start on the Brownies baking badge and the part of the Guides vlogging badge which I mentioned in my last post. For the baking badge clause 1 - I baked my favourite recipe for cookies. This was well received by a few parents who commented or liked the video. For clause 2 - I baked some muffins using a packet mix I found in the cupboard that was going out of date soon, then I decorated them using butter cream icing. I haven't yet been able to post the video from this session as I have been trying to edit it (speed up sections, and add extra videos at the start and end of the clip) but my laptop doesnt want to do that right now. For clause 3 - I currently have a chocolate cake baking in the oven for me to decorate tomorrow. This final decoration needs to tell a story of some kind so I need to have a think about what I'm going to do on that.

In terms of the challenge badge I have been umming and ahhing over the optional clauses. I finally forced myself to sit down and go through them to work out which ones I could apply to my situation (especially when it states things for the 'household' when I'm on my own!) and which ones will generally be good for me to do. From the 26 options there are 16 which I can do. So far I have completed 3 of these clauses. One I mentioned in my previous post where I coloured the rainbow, another was to make an edible treat and the third is taking part in an online meeting. I would say that the cookies and muffins are definite edible treats! I tried to share them with my parents but my mam told me to just keep and eat them myself... Each Monday the leaders from my unit have an online meeting, now as we are not doing online meetings with our girls I would view a meeting of leaders in this setting would count for this clause. Yesterday I started 2 more clauses which can be linked together, one to do a different job every day for the next 7 days (these are jobs I should be doing normally but severely lack motivation to do) and the other is to make a daily timetable and try to stick to it for 7 days, then reflect on it. I tried to do this weeks ago but failed miserably so I am determined to make it work. There is another clause which can tie in which is to plan a menu for the week. The only reason I haven't started this one is that I go food shopping on a Friday so there was no point in starting this one before I have the food in the house to use. I am going to look through my recipe books tonight to plan my meals from Friday (tomorrow), and with strong will power I will stick to it!

Once I have completed these three clauses I will upload images of my plans and will review what went well, what I changed etc. 

My next post should be up over the weekend and it'll be a crafty post 

Girlguiding challenge badge

Back in 2017 I did a trek on the Great Wall of China, raising money for Girlguiding. When I signed up I was celebrating my 10th year as a leader in my unit and wanted to give something back. Anyways, short history aside, one of the lovely leaders from this trek put together a group on Facebook for like-minded leaders who enjoy doing badges for themselves and not just with the children. The badges we do have been created by other leaders, units, divisions and counties from up and down the country. Our latest challenge badge was inspired by the current situation with the virus outbreak, social distancing and lockdown. We have 5 mandatory clauses to do and need to do a minimum 4 of 26 optional clauses. So far I have completed 1 mandatory clause and 1 optional clause. These were nice and easy to get done and ticked off: decorate the poster from the pack

Make or decorate the rainbow picture from the pack - I don't have the paint or materials to create my own rainbow but I did have the coloured pens to colour in the one from the pack!

One of the mandatory clauses is to complete at least 1 interest badge. It was recommended that we use the Ranger badges as we can access them on the Guiding website. I also have the badge books for Brownies and Guides as I plan to make some videos for Brownies and photo finished results of an activity for Guides as a way of encouraging our girls to try some of their own interest badges. Actually while I've been typing this I have just thought of a way to combine badges from all three sections: Brownies - baking, Guides - vlogging, Rangers - blogging. I had actually just planned on doing the blogging as I had started this blog but I think combining the three may be a good way to inspire me to do something different (although I won't be sharing the vlogs on here!). There are 3 clauses to each badge. I intend to do all three clauses for the Brownie and Ranger badge however I will only be doing 1 clause for the Guide badge as the Guides should be encouraged to work the activities for themselves whereas the Brownies can be encouraged with a bit more guidance or inspiration.

Well right now in terms of the Ranger badge, I completed part 2 of the badge by creating this blog in the first place. I'm working on part 3 and when I have created at least 5 posts that is complete (this may be the 5th post so thats 2 of the 3 done!). I just need to do a little research into part 1 then believe it or not that's the badge finished. 

I started looking into creating a blog at the start of April, before this challenge was suggested and before I knew there was an actual badge for it. I had chosen to use this blog as a way of showing all the crafts I was going to do during lockdown. Needless to say it took me a month to turn my head around and finally creating the blog although I haven't been creating the crafts as much as I had planned but posting about this challenge will help me to get back into the flow of things. 

Creations Pre Blog!

Before I created this blog, I don't know how many cards I've created. I have to say the majority have been Christmas cards (I still have quite a few of those!) but there have been birthday cards and a couple of other special cards thrown in there - some I don't have images of anymore. Since the lockdown began 6 weeks ago in the UK, I had said to myself I've got plenty of craft supplies so I'm going to make a mountain of cards. Flash forward to now and I've only created 2 individual designs but 34 physical cards. One I can't put here yet as its my nephews birthday card but the others I can share.

I am a Brownie leader and in the current situation we are unable to meet with our girls. I decided that I wanted to have some cards ready to send out for when we are able to invite the girls back to the unit or if we want to remind the girls that we are here for them during this time. I decided since we are members of Girlguiding, our logo the trefoil would be appropriate to put on the front. The issue was how to do it - its one thing to print it out and glue it to the front of the card (and look a bit naff) but to do something a bit out the box for me was going to be the challenge. 

I printed out a couple of copies of the trefoil so I had spares in case I messed up, wouldn't be the first time! I cut one out and carefully created a stencil using a craft knife to cut the little bits out. I've never used a stencil before when creating cards so this really was a first for me. I got one of my ink pads and a round blending tool to dab the ink over the stencil. It took a good few minutes to get a good covering of ink over the stencil and when I removed it I was honestly surprised at the effect it had created.As the test stencil was just paper I threw it out and got to work creating two new stencils - this time sticking the paper to card before cutting it and the centre bits out. 

Once everything was cut out, I used a small amount of white tack to hold the stencil in place on the card before I got to work. I used one stencil with gold ink to represent the Brownie colours, and I used blue with the other stencil to represent the Guide colours (I couldn't do one for our Brownies and not our Guides). I've put some pictures below from the different steps.

Overall for the first time using a stencil I've found the effect it created on this project was brilliant and I'm looking forward to what stencils I can find to use next!