Author Archives: mbajane

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,050 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,044 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Outpost/Rocks and Minerals Beginner Level Merit Badge, I needed to learn the difference between rocks and minerals.

Mineral collection, Nature History Museum, Vienna. Photo by Dr. Bernd Gross via Wikimedia Commons.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,050 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,044 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Out There Kids/Lean On Me Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, the lovely Piper and Nora and the intrepid whippersnapper, Andy, all decided they need a place in the shade. A little piece of heaven they could call their own …

“Can I have a piece of Earth?”
– Mary, The Secret Garden.

I had just the thing:

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he adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,050 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,044 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Make It Easy/Rethink Your Space Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Badge, I steeled my frazzled nerves with a nice cuppa chai with extra whip and sprinkles, and marched on over to my neighbor’s house, otherwise known as The Den of Fear and Trembling. No one calls it that but me, but that’s because they’ve never been inside Andy’s bedroom.

After he and I earned our Beginner Level merit badge in cleaning his room (you bet your patootie I earned myself one, too!) I needed some time to recover from my trauma (I was getting PTSD flashbacks and tremors), but now I was ready. Ready to supervise Nora earning her own Beginner Level badge, and ready to move Andy onto Intermediate.

“Okay, comrades,” I said, swallowing down the last of my liquid courage and licking the whip off my fingers, “Here’s the deal.”

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,050 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,044 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Make It Easy/I Did It My Way Young Cultivator Beginner Level Merit Badge, I decided to take under my wing a new hatchling, so to speak. My neighbor takes care of her granddaughter after school some days, and little Alice is a hoot. She was the perfect victim – er, I mean, guinea pig … er, I mean, accomplice for this badge.

And let’s be honest …

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Out There Kids/I Am A Survivor Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I gathered my hiking supplies and my courage and volunteered to take Piper, Nora, and Andy, and all their respective siblings out on a hike in the wilderness.

photo by Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons

Well, ‘wilderness’ sounds more life-threatening than our hiking trail actually is, but still. Ever take a bunch of kids hiking? It’s pretty life-threatening. And sanity-threatening. I wasn’t sure we’d all make it down alive, to tell the truth.

Since Nora was my Beginner Level Badge earner from her handy dandy, super cool, Survivor Packs she made with me earlier, I let her be the Guide Assistant.

Unfortunately, the power went to her head.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Food Allergy Awareness Beginner Level Merit Badge, I researched a common malady (at least these days, it seems to be) amongst the population: food allergies.

Being blessed with the constitution of a horse with a cast-iron stomach lining myself (I hate to brag, but ya know it’s true), I was appalled at my findings, and at what these poor men, women, and children go through just to … to eat.

Photo by Jameson Fink via Flickr

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Cleaning Up/It’s In The Bag Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I cautioned my young’un that this was a more difficult badge than what first meets the eye of the beholder. So to speak.

Getting in the habit of collecting and using reusable shopping bags isn’t as easy as it looks. I should know; it’s taken me approximately forever to get good at it. And I still occasionally leave them in the car … or the pantry. The guilty feeling I get when that happens and I am forced to take home a ridiculous amount of plastic sacks is not something I wish on anyone.

Especially cute lil’ Nora …

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Stitching and Crafting/Dyeing for Color Intermediate Level Merit Badge, I got myself a three-ring binder.

I heart binders. I long for Trapper Keepers. I live for file folders and I swoon over tabs and color coordinated dividers.

Wilson Jones supplies, Amazon.com

In short, I’m pretty much an Organization Junkie.

This particular binder—after I decorated it with glitter, collages, and stickers—I planned to use for my color swatches. After getting the hang of dyes earlier in my Beginner Level badge, I was ready to move on.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Cleaning Up/Water Conservation Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I thought teaching Andy to conserve H20 would be easy peasy, lemon squeasy. And I wasn’t necessarily wrong … he took to it like a duck to water, like a pig to mud, like … like a small boy given too much responsibility too quickly.

It all started when I suggested he make a list of ways to help him and his family conserve water at their house. Sounds reasonable, right?

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,962 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,905 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Organic on a Budget Expert Level Merit Badge, I harkened back fondly to when I knew Mr. Wonderful really had fallen for me. It wasn’t that sparkle in his baby blues, it wasn’t when he sat through an opera performance when there was a perfectly good football game on television, it wasn’t when he asked me to go camping and I sneakily turned it into glamping, it wasn’t even when he went to meet my Gramma Barbie.

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