Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Ann Gee!

Ann Gee (#7351) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert Levels for the Sew Wonderful Merit Badge!

“I went thru the 3 steps, Beginner through Expert. On the lst step, I took all of my supplies out of a plastic bag and put them into a nice sewing basket.

For the second challenge, I went online and found stitches and copied them onto fabric. Even though I’ve been a hand-sewer for many years, I found these to be very interesting.

For the 3rd, I made the carry-all tote, and it came out very nice, may have to keep it and make more for gifts. Made the chicken potholder for my niece, who raises chickens.

I was very satisfied the way everything turned out. I took a denim shirt and appliqued several fabric animal designs on it plus my Sisterhood badge and some buttons.

My new sewing basket is much nicer to take to classes and to be able to find things more easily.”

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

For this week’s Garden Gate/Get Buggy Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Piper and I wandered out to the front yard with our trusty notebook journals, magnifying glass, and a couple of glass jars with holes poked in the lids.

I think you can tell where we were going with this, righto? You got it, we were looking for some bug lovin’!

Furry, spindly, fat, eight-legged, four-legged, winged, cute, ugly (or bugly, as the pun-loving Pipes liked to say), we were all about dem bugs.

What we were not about was the anthill we accidently disrupted. Talk about ants in our pants. Okay, okay, I exaggerate, not so much in our pants as milling about our toes, but you get the drift. We apologized to the ant family (They didn’t even pause to listen though. Busy little buggers, aren’t they?) and moved to a different area of the yard.

For the Intermediate Level badge, you won’t really need the jars with lids, but we like to be prepared in case of bug adoptions. You never know when you might find a rare, exotic type lurking under your hydrangeas or scampering past your garden gnome! Why, just one of these finds of the Top Five Rarest Bugs in Nature would cement our notoriety in the world of entomologists:

• Euspinolia militaris (the panda ant): Oh, it may look all cute and fuzzy, with black and white patches that appear positively snuggable, but this ‘ant’ is actually a member of the wasp family. And we never recommend snuggling a wasp. Lest you think you can take this little guy on, we’re here to tell you his nickname is “cow killer” (and yes, they can!). Yikes. Luckily, these stinging devils are mostly found in Chile.

photo by silamtao

• Atrax sutherlandi (red-fanged funnel spider): Also called the Vampire Spider, this somewhat terrifying arachnid has red fangs. Gulp. Surprisingly though, for its fierce appearance, the atrax sutherlandi mostly just eats other insects, and won’t suck your blood.

• Lycaedes melissa samuelis (Karner butterfly): Finally, one that won’t keep you up at night with bad dreams, this vibrant blue butterfly can only be found near New York, where it sadly has nearly become extinct due to deforestation. It’s a particular and persnickety butterfly and wants its habitat exactly just-so (kind of like me, now that I think about it).

photo by Hollingsworth, J & K via Wikimedia Commons

• Titanus giganteus (the titan beetle): Back to the frightening kind, this beetle, native to the Amazon rainforest, can be 9 inches long! Let that sink in. Bigger than my whole hand. Or my favorite sub sandwich! Well, at least at that size, it won’t be sneaking up on me anytime soon.

• Dryococelus australis (the tree lobster): This ginormous walking stick insect (about 6 inches long!) only lives on Lord Howe Island, between New Zealand and Australia. Entomologists thought this amazing creature was extinct back in the ‘20s but luckily for bug lovers everywhere in the early 2000s, they began popping up again. Now, experts are breeding them so as to populate the island once more. How do the residents feel about this? Unsure. How do I feel about that? Glad I don’t live on Lord Howe Island!

photo by Granitethighs via Wikimedia Commons

Well, Piper and I didn’t find any of these remarkable bugs, but we did find some beauties to mark down in our journals. And a roly-poly named Earnest lived in a Mason-jar habitat for an afternoon before we let him go back to his family.

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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 Jennifer Chappell!

Jennifer Chappell (AdeleHale, #6346) has received a certificate of achievement in Cleaning Up for earning a Beginner Level My Fair Farmgirl Merit Badge!

“I researched the difference between conventional products and cruelty-free organic beauty products and shared it on my personal Facebook page. I replaced my toothpaste and all of my skincare products with organic alternatives. I made scented bath salts with Epsom salts and essential oils.

I like using the organic beauty products—they have improved my skin health immensely.

For the bath salts, I combined three pounds of Epsom salts with 3 drops eucalyptus essential oil, 3 drops tea tree essential oil, and 2 drops peppermint essential oil. The scent and the salts lasted about an hour and my fibromyalgia is better today than it was yesterday.”

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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 Kimberly Calvert!

Kimberly Calvert (KimmyC, #7479) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Sew Wonderful Merit Badge!

“I put together a travel sewing kit with straight pins, safety pins, needles, scissors, buttons, and five spools of thread, including one heavyweight. I also put a small retractable tape measure in there for the project that I plan to work on once we hit the road. I also put wide Velcro, reflective tape, and wonder clips. I made a bright, cheerful owl pincushion that was small enough to fit inside. I stuffed her belly with crushed walnut shells, as I read that it would help keep the pins sharp. Walnut shells are super dusty! I will do the stuffing outside next time.

As much as I love Mason jars, I needed a non-breakable container to take in our RV. I reused a bulk foods container, which is perfect! It’s transparent so that I can see what’s inside (and so that my little owl can see outside. hah!). It feels pretty sturdy and the lid will stay put, keeping my contents secure when we hit the bumpy roads.

I will be modifying dog coats for our three dogs while we’re en-route, so this sewing kit was just the thing that I needed. What a great idea! Thank you for the inspiration.”

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Be like the bee, always seeking the nectar of knowledge. Life is sweeter that way.

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is Kimberly Nelson!

Kimberly Nelson (kmnelson77, #3492) has received a certificate of achievement in Cleaning Up for earning a Beginner Level Shopping Green Merit Badge!

“For this merit badge, I had to acquire some reusable shopping bags. I’ve been using reusable bags for quite some time, but many of my bags needed replacing, so I picked up a few new ones so I had at least six. I also used a reusable bag I already had to hold all of my reusable bags and placed them in the bin in my car, so they are always with me on grocery shopping day.

Having the new bags has worked well. They are stiffer and stand up better for the person bagging my groceries. Having them all in one bag is easy to grab and having them in the car definitely helps to have them when you need them. No more, I forgot my bags at home!”

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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 Marlene Laverty!

Marlene Laverty (#7503) has received a certificate of achievement in Farm Kitchen for earning a Beginner Level Cheesemaking Merit Badge!

“I made yogurt using my goats’ whole milk. I had a choice between using a yogurt culture or plain store-bought yogurt. I have to start with a bacterial culture to get the process going. I made my yogurt with 1 cup organic store-bought yogurt as a starter. I made sure the store-bought yogurt had live culture in it. I heated up a quart of whole milk to 180ºF to sterilize it and placed the pot of milk in a sink halfway filled with cold water to cool it down to 80ºF. Using a whisk, I mixed the milk slowly into the cup of yogurt. I have a Euro Cuisine yogurt maker with jars. It’s really just a covered hot plate with jars, but it keeps the milk and starter at the correct temp to get the cultures moving and growing. I poured the mixture into the jars. Twelve hours later (the longer the time, the more sour) … yogurt!

It turned out a little thin. Nice and sour and just a bit sweet. Great for granola! I will drain some of my yogurt to make Greek-style yogurt. Using a fine mesh sieve and butter muslin, the yogurt can be drained of most of the liquid to make a much thicker yogurt. All in all, very happy with the result. It’s great with honey and peaches too!”

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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—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Each Other/Let’s Go to Town Expert Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Andy and I—you guessed it—went to town.

photo by James Steakley via Wikimedia Commons

If only earning Merit Badges were so simple …

Once we got there (several yard sales and snack breaks later), we headed over to our local library. Not for books this time, no siree, but to see what was thumbtacked up on the ol’ community bulletin board.

We saw:

• Services from a pet psychic (Yeah. That’s all my chickens need. They already think they’re Marie Antoinette if their diva behavior is any indication.)
• Tuba lessons (BYOT)
• Something called Pickleball
• Massage therapy for the ticklish
• A seminar on DIY world domination
• Matchmaking services for the romantically challenged
• How to cook with inedible ingredients (say what now?)
• Lost: guinea pig
• Found: weird-looking rodent
• Soccer for seniors
• Conquer your fears through total immersion therapy (please sign waivers, provided)
• Community theatre actors wanted
• Underwater basket-weaving classes
• Sign Language, Shakespeare, and You

There were probably lots more, but they were all stapled and scotch-taped and thumbtacked right over one another, all willy-nilly. I thought someone needed to offer a community class on the Proper Etiquette of bulletin-boarding, but Andy was all about … drum roll, puhleeze …

Pickleball!

To earn his Expert Level badge, Andy and I were going to choose three different after-school-type activities. He had already joined Band last week, and I wrangle him in to my Book Club meetings every third Thursday (I lure him with the scent of chocolate-chip cookies. Works every time. Little guy is cute, but he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to noticing things. Ah well. He gets cookies and some literary education, to boot. Although, he wasn’t real fond of The Bridges of Madison County, and when it was his turn to pick the novel, he chose Sir Farts-A-Lot Eats the Booger as revenge. How childish. Although, I have to say, I secretly enjoyed the book).

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Pickleball was to be our third activity! We were both really excited. Andy because he likes balls, me because I love a good pickle.

Sadly (and you may be one step ahead of me on this), there were no vinegary cucumbers to be found when we got to the arranged meeting place. Instead, there were paddles, nets, plastic balls with holes in them, and a tennis court.

photo by Stephen James Hall via Wikimedia Commons

I was instantly suspicious. This looked like some sort of *gasp* SPORT.

Suddenly, I knew how Andy felt every third Thursday.

Putting my fear of all things sports-related aside for the greater good, I attempted learning the oddity that is pickleball. Turns out, I wasn’t really so bad. It’s kind of like ping-pong on a larger scale. And I’m happy to report one of the sports moms brought juice boxes and crackers, so I made it through a happy camper. And Andy earned his badge. He put it right next to his dog-eared copy of Captain Underpants (I think I know what we’re reading next month).

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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 Teresa Roberson!

Teresa Roberson (carolinacateyes, #7386) has received a certificate of achievement in Cleaning Up for earning an Expert Level Recycling Merit Badge!

“My recycling system at home runs like a well-oiled machine! I have been successfully recycling at home for months now. In late July, I enlisted my granddaughter, age 12, to recycle. She has recently moved from the city back out to the country, where there is no garbage pickup, but a recycling/garbage convenience center is nearby. We set up four cardboard boxes on the back porch; one for newspapers, one for plastics, one for aluminum cans, and one for rinsed metal cans. Rachel also recycles plastic shopping bags to return to Walmart. No, I still can’t convince her to use fabric bags! I periodically visit and can’t help but see her progress; she tends to hyper-focus on things that interest her. She has even decorated a couple of her boxes! She also has recruited her aunt, maternal grandmother, and maternal great-grandmother to recycle as well. Occasionally, her dad will drop off a bag of glass items at my work location for me to recycle at my convenience center. I also collect the shredded paper and the cardboard boxes from work to recycle just down the street from my office.

As I travel from school kitchen to school kitchen in my county, I see so many items that could be recycled if anyone cared to listen and act responsible. When I retire next year, I think this will be my mission. My school district needs to set the example by recycling instead of collecting garbage for a landfill. At least Rachel is on the right track, and she has others doing the same. She talks about recycling with her friends and teachers at the middle school. Hopefully, the younger generation will get on board to save this planet one metal can, one plastic bottle, one plastic bag, one cardboard box at a time.”

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Jacey Titus (OnceUponaFarm, #7468) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Aprons Merit Badge!

“I made a half apron for a homesick friend. It is on its way to her. I have also made one for myself and wear it every time I am cooking or baking. The first attempt turned out great. I need to fix the tension on my sewing machine, but that is all. I may adjust the pattern and make some for my little kitchen helpers.”