Volunteer Appreciation - Lois Harris

http://blog.girlscouts.org/2015/04/volunteer-spotlight-cape-full-of.html

For volunteer week, the Girl Scout blog features Lois Harris and her famous cape!

Lois was a famous Girl Scout volunteer in Lexington and at the Dennet Museum of Girl Scouting in Cedar Hill, until she retired and moved to New Jersey, when she started all over again with Daisy Girl Scouts!  Happy Patriots' Day, Lois!

Pat Ross

Once again I'm sorry to have to tell you that Girl Scouting has lost a great friend.  Pat Ross died this week.  Pat may have known more about Girl Scouting than anyone else ever has - certainly more than anyone I've ever met.  Our Girl Scout museum at Dennet House at Cedar Hill is her monument.  I knew that if I showed up there at noon on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, Pat and Janet and perhaps other members of the museum crew would be there eating their lunch and ready to receive a donation or hear about what my Lexington Girl Scouts were doing.  I will miss her.

Pat attended our Girl Scout dance on February 28th at Brookhaven, where she had lived for the last 25 years.  Nothing could keep her from a Girl Scout event.

When we started Lexington troop 1775, Pat provided us with a chance to do spring trail clearing behind Brookhaven and showed us how to do it too.

Here's the obituary from the Boston Globe.  If you attend the memorial service, the family has requested that Girl Scouts wear full uniform.

Earth Day - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 4

You can get into the reduce/reuse cycle at Great Escape this year.  Sue's workshop will help you make beauty from trash - chipboard boxes such as those that hold your breakfast cereal.

http://gsgreatescape.org/workshops/  for more.

Earth Day - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 3

Or, my new dining room chairs.

Look what I found in the trash yesterday (there's one more of the green-seated ones.)

They are all sturdy and in good shape.  I happened to drive the back way to Cedar Hill and saw these.  If I had not picked them up they would have been thrown in the back of a truck and trashed.  There is no need for this to happen. 

Craigslist and Freecycle are your friends.  I'll bet someone would have paid for these if the owner had posted them on Craigslist.  Or, at the very least, an email to Freecycle would have resulted in someone coming to pick them up.  (See https://www.freecycle.org/about/ for more about Freecycle.)

The same homeowners had also thrown out all their wall art - hundreds of dollars worth of stretched canvases. I mentioned it to another buddy of mine who paints and she picked them up at 9:30 last night - her painting group will benefit greatly.

Why not reduce and reuse?  My GS troop is going to paint those chairs for me and earn their room makeover badge!  Win, Win, Win!

2015 Workshops - Sneak Peek!

http://gsgreatescape.org/workshops/

A sneak peek at our 2015 workshop schedule is at the link above.  We might have a few more to come!  Get ready for registration to make sure you get your preferred workshops.  I think the one below will fill fast!

Earth Day - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 2

Earth Day is April 22nd this year.  I remember participating in the first Earth Day, 40 years ago, by helping to clean up a vacant lot in Saratoga Springs.  I was aware of Earth Day because my Dad was a water and sewer engineer who was very 'into' ecology before most other people even knew what it was.  If you are a Girl Scout Leader, Earth Day and simple ways to reduce, reuse and recycle are perfect meeting topics.

It seems that we are bombarded by paper these days, although we were once promised that computers would make paper obsolete!  Handouts, junk mail, inserts; the number of sheets of paper that are printed on only one side will really surprise you if you start saving them up.  And cardboard packaging - with online purchases, the number of boxes that arrive at the door can be staggering!

So I save those blank or nearly blank pieces of paper and sturdy cardboard rectangles, add a binder clip or two, and make memo pads.  Full, half and quarter sheets are stacked on cardboard and held together with binder clips. Full size - great for taking notes or for planning - the one above has notes for a lesson plan for fourth graders.  Half size - good for keeping by the phone or in the kitchen - note the phone doodles on mine.  The quarter sheet size fits in my purse - great for grocery lists, writing things down for people, measurements when shopping, etc.  If the backs get beaten up, there's always another box to cut up (the red one is a bakery box....)  Organization is easier when there's always a pad of paper to hand!

Earth Day - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 1

Since the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day is coming up, I want to share a few simple things that I do to follow the mantra, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  We use so much plastic cutlery these days that we are hardly aware of it.  Food courts, Costco samples, ice cream shops, parties, meetings - everywhere!  Whenever possible, I lick the last delicious bits from the spoon or fork, wrap it in my napkin, and thrust it in my purse. At parties when the cutlery is very good quality, I've been known to collect other people's too!

I take it home, wash it, and sort it into this herb planter I stopped using when all the herbs died!  (One of the first ideas I ever got from Pinterest.)   If I have a party and want to use plastic, it's ready to go right on the table.  And I feel better, knowing that what I use has been used at least once before - yes, I will wash what I use at home, too.  After I took this photo, I took out 20 forks to take to a Girl Scout meeting - the dispenser is still full!

Saves lots of money, too!  I'll never need to buy plastic cutlery again, nor search my drawers frantically for enough pieces when packing lunches and picnics!