The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,428 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,782 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Stitching and Crafting/All Tied Up Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I had Piper and Nora over for the afternoon. The last time I kid-sat for these two little whippersnappers, we had had an arts and crafts day, and well, let’s just say my living room will never be the same. Not to mention Piper and Nora’s laundry.

Artists are messy. I’m sure Van Gogh’s mother was beside herself on laundry day. Right?

photo by LearningLark via Flickr.com

Anyway, I couldn’t just ban arts and crafts altogether—I mean, that would be cruel and unusual punishment for two little farmgirls who love to create. So, we came up with a fabulous idea: earn a new Merit Badge, and design our own artist’s smocks to cut down on the mess of future art projects.

Note to self: making a mess while creating your answer to making a mess is … a messy paradox. Maybe I should’ve bought smocks for them to make their homemade smocks in. Ah well, live and learn, Janie my girl.

You can use a premade smock and do your decorating from that stage, or if you’re feeling super crafty and DIY-esque, you can make your smock from all sorts of things you likely have lying around the house:

• Pillowcases are the perfect size for most artistic munchkins. Cut a hole in the top for the head, and two smaller ones at the sides for their arms. Hem the holes, or use bias tape, to avoid fraying.
• An adult-size T-shirt also makes a great smock for littles. Cut off the sleeves if desired.
• A terrycloth towel (size depends on size of child; usually a large-ish hand towel is best). Attach a loop of ribbon for placing around head, and tie two more ribbons at the side for tying around waist.
• If you’re wanting a smock just for a day and don’t mind tossing it in the trash when your epic art afternoon is through, use a paper bag. Follow directions for the pillowcase smock above. These are nice for an entire classroom for a one-day art project.
• A man’s or woman’s button-down shirt put on backwards makes a great smock.
• Recycled denim overalls make great smocks. Keep the straps and the front part, and cut off the legs. These are extra nice because they’re sturdy, and they have pockets.

photo by Elaine via Flickr.com

Once you’ve decided what kind of smock you are using, have your wee farmkid decorate. Piper chose puffy paints, and Nora chose her button collection because she had recently learned how to sew on buttons. Other ideas for decorating your new smock:

• Handprints. We don’t recommend using red paint, though. Kinda looked like a crime scene … ahem.
• Tie-dye.
• Fabric markers or paint.
• Iron-on patches.
• Simple applique with shapes and embroidery floss.
• Ruffles and lace for hems.
• Pockets.
• Rick-rack.

By the time an hour or two had gone by, we had puffy paint in our ears and buttons between our toes, but we had two gorgeous and one-of-a-kind smocks for our next art project.

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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Cyndie Parzuhoski!

Cyndie Parzuhoski (cyndieparz72, #7407) has received a certificate of achievement in Cleaning Up for earning a Beginner Level Shopping Green Merit Badge!

“Per the requirements, I purchased 5 reusable shopping bags. I purchased 5 natural-fiber shopping bags: 4 cotton and 1 jute. I did this because purchasing “#5 reusable shopping bags” defeats the purpose or eliminating plastic, since they are made from polypropylene. Also, 4 of them benefit causes I believe in deeply—animal rights, saving the bees, and the empowerment of women in other countries.

I pledge to use these for every shopping trip from this day forward, and I also have 5 additional reusable bags on order at this time (also from causes close to my heart).

The bags are phenomenal and serve 2 purposes—shopping green and benefiting causes.”

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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Hadassah Schaap!

Hadassah Schaap (Mentoring Sister Heidi Schaap, #3752) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning a Beginner Level Birds Merit Badge!

“I researched birds in our area, and located several on our Provident Woods Farm. I made a “future birds to look for” list and found several! I have a book of birds, and a bird journal which I keep bird sightings and nests that I find around our house. We live on a foresty rural farm, so we get a lot of birds around these parts. It’s always so fun to see new baby birds and crazy breeds we have never seen before, such as the Scarlett Tanager or Blue Birds.

Later in the year, I put up a bird house that we had built years before (but never got around to it) and set that out for the Blue Jays, Chickadees, Goldfinches, Robins, and Finches.

I also went on a bird expedition with my camera and got several good pictures, including one of a BRIGHT RED Scarlett Tanager! 🙂

I learned a lot.”

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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Hope Johns!

Hope Johns (woolybunny28, #7249) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Sew Wonderful Merit Badge!

“Because I have been sewing for years, I put together a cute sewing kit for a fellow farmgirl who is just starting to sew. I used a quart-sized Mason jar and filled it with all the beginner essentials:

• several spools of thread
• pretty buttons
• rickrack
• ribbon
• small sharp scissors
• sewing needles
• straight pins
• safety pins

I made a little pincushion out of the Mason-jar lid with some pretty fabric and added a cute button on the bottom side (because why not!). To dress up the outside of the jar, I used some scrap yarn to crochet 2 granny squares to match the color of the pincushion and slipped it around the outside of the jar. Because I chose a quart-sized jar, there is plenty of room left to add more as time goes on.

My friend loved her sewing kit and plans to add to it, as she sews more and more! I had so much fun putting it together!”

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,387 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,656 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life…

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Table Talk Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I gave Nora the job of setting her family’s table each night.*

This posed a couple of problems, the first being that they rarely sat down to dinner together. Between sports practices and late nights at the office and different hungry bellies, it just wasn’t happening enough to make setting a table worth it. I pictured their dining room table looking like something out of Miss Havisham’s house … great for a Halloween scene, but not so inspiring for family life.

So I took Mr. and Mrs. Nora’s Parents out back and gave them a stern talking to. They promised to rearrange their schedules to accommodate seven nights in a row of family dinner.

Nora and I got crackin’.

photo by Alexandra Constantin via Wikimedia Commons

First, we went through the kitchen, looking for little-used dishes. We figured this was a special week, so no holds barred! We got out the good stuff, that’s usually only reserved for holidays, plus some even perkier perks: things like cloth napkins (we attempted some fancy folding, but evidently we need a whole ‘nother merit badge for that), tablecloths, wine goblets for ice water, and even a nifty candlestick holder, complete with candles. Who doesn’t love a candlelit dinner, am I right? You know I am.

It turns out our little experiment was a big hit. The whole family loved the atmosphere so much that the seven days flew by and extended into nine. Nora got even more creative and began making homemade placecards and even menus. Then, she picked themes for her dining-room restaurant: barbeque night complete with a picnic style on the floor, Italian night with a checkered tablecloth and background opera music (reenacting the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp was a must), and a breakfast-for-dinner night where she required everyone to dress in pajamas for their pancake supper.

After the nine nights of feasting, they must have realized how sad I was to be missing out (I think they saw me peeking through the front window) and they let me in for night #10. Too bad it was Chinese night—I was nearly impaled by a chopstick. But, no matter.

Life went back to almost normal for Nora’s family, and family dinner nights aren’t every single night anymore, but they are a minimum of two nights per week now. Hey, that’s two nights for everyone to look forward to—and two nights I don’t have to set my own table. Voila!

*Note: To earn this Young Cultivator Badge, your youngster only has to set the table one night per week for a month. Nora and I just like overachieving.

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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Cyrie Wilson!

Cyrie Wilson (Pixiedustdevil, #6941) has received certificates of achievement in Farm Kitchen for earning a Beginner and Intermediate Level Forage for Food Merit Badge!

“I went to my local extension office and asked if they had any resources about local edible plants. Sad to say they had no idea what I was talking about. So that was a bust. So I went online and found a little information.

I know that we have salmon berries, blackberries, plum trees, apple trees, cattails plants, and Oregon Myrtle Trees (leaves are used like bay leaves). I found quite a few berries and small fruits while working on my ‘Speak for the Trees’ badge last year. I waited to submit for this badge until it was time to collect myrtle leaves.

I’ve been collecting fruit and berries since I was old enough to play outside by myself. My grandma made berry buckets (old coffee cans and string). I swear we would eat 1/4 of our pickings and ALWAYS come home covered in poison oak. Good thing I’m more wary now.”

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Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Ginger Dawn Harman!

Ginger Dawn Harman (Ginger Dawn, #6451) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning an Intermediate Level Weather Merit Badge!

“April Showers Bring May Merit Badges!

On to Clouds. Now I am not talking about the computer cloud and how data is stored, but a less nerdy natural pastime. Yep. My head is in the clouds! Heck, Who doesn’t love lying in the grass looking at clouds and making up a story?

Clouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. There is water around us all the time in the form of tiny gas particles, also known as water vapor. There are also tiny particles floating around in the air—such as salt and dust—these are called aerosols.

Here are the types of clouds.

My favorite is the Cumulonimbus! The thunderstorm cloud! This web link has some great photos!

This week and all day tomorrow will be Nimbostratus! Yep … Rain, rain, and more rain. I am not complaining! A great day to stay indoors and read a book and maybe play a game with the family!” Continue reading →

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,387 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,656 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …   

For this week’s Each Other/Her-Story Intermediate Level Merit Badge, I got to pick another woman who was influential and powerful and inspiring (this time, living or dead) in my country. I had so many to choose from, it was hard to pick! It was like being in the line at the ice cream parlor … how to choose, how to choose? Which explains why I usually get three scoops. Which explains why my pants don’t button. Ahem.

But back to the badge, Madge!

I decided to go with someone I’d admired all my live-long days, and who I had originally thought of back during my Beginner Level badge earning: Audrey Hepburn.

Screenshot of William Holden and Audrey Hepburn from the trailer for the film w:en:Sabrina (1954 film) via Wikimedia Commons

After all, she seemed a practically perfect woman in every way (much like Mary Poppins, only, you know, real). She had style and grace, charm and wit, sure, but she did so much more!

screenshot of Audrey Hepburn from the trailer for the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s via Wikimedia Commons

In particular order, here are the most amazing things I found out about my dear Audrey:

• Audrey spoke fluently Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German, French, and English. I, myself, speak three languages: English, sarcasm, and whale.
• She is one of the few people who are a true EGOT, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards.
• She was sent away to boarding school at the ripe old age of 5.
• Once the Germans invaded the Netherlands where Audrey lived, she became a member of the Dutch Resistance, where she delivered messages and packages and performed in clandestine performances of ballet for fundraising.
• During the Occupation, Audrey would make cakes and breads out of ground tulip bulbs. This affected her health and she developed anemia, and also had a hard time gaining weight for the rest of her life. She was told she would not be strong enough to continue with ballet dancing, and began to concentrate more on acting.
• Despite her father being a Nazi sympathizer and having left their family when Audrey was a child, she reached out to him in the sixties and supported him financially until his death.
• The dress she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is considered the most iconic dress of all time, and is the inspiration behind the term ‘little black dress.’
• Cary Grant was quoted as saying, ‘All I want for Christmas is to be in another picture with Audrey Hepburn.’ Incidentally, I’ve been quoted as saying, ‘All I want for Christmas is Cary Grant.’
• She was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF and United States President George H. W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF.
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity, with her son accepting on her behalf. Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 1950s, starting in 1954 with radio presentations, this was a much higher level of dedication. Her family said that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life.
• In 2002, at the United Nations Special Session on Children, UNICEF honored Hepburn’s legacy of humanitarian work by unveiling a statue, “The Spirit of Audrey”, at UNICEF’s New York headquarters. Her service for children is also recognized through the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Audrey Hepburn Society.

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