4th April - A day of painting

 Today I was up early, despite it being my day off, because I went for breakfast with a friend of my mum's. Lovely lady and it was nice to have a good catch up with her. The breakfast was nice too. If anyone is local to me, I recommend Dolly's, especially for breakfast!

We came home and I checked my Rebel Journal definitely had everything I wanted to include for the month. I had missed out a few things so that's up to date now. Hopefully. It's probably gonna be quite fluid though in case plans change. This Thursday for example. I think I've put stuff down to do after work, forgetting that I have a Cubs planning meeting.

Once I was all sorted, though, I decided to make a start on a painting kit I got myself with a birthday discount from Hobbycraft. I can't remember if it was the last birthday or the one before, but I'm 3 weeks away from my next one!! 😅

I'm going to put this towards my artist badge as the painting of a landscape. I know it's not quite the same, but this is my level of capability. I also already had this resource, I can't buy too much towards badges. I've already bought calligraphy books and plants so far.

This is the design I'm doing. I love the colours, they look really amazing and I'm rather fond of horses.

I find it amusing how as you paint one shade at a time, it just looks so random until the blocks start to fill.

This is how much I got done today while we watched NCIS. I had to down my brushes to go to my friend's house. I take her daughter to Cubs after her tumble class, but it was nice to see her boys too.

At Cubs, we played a version of Blind Man's Buff which is apparently Chinese in which instead of being blindfolded, everyone covers their face (we used Easter Egg shapes because it was the last meeting before the school break) and one person is chosen to speak. It was an exercise in recognising voices rather than feeling a face as in the traditional version.

Then we had an egg and spoon race using Creme Eggs (my team won!) where we also checked our pulse before and after, followed by making Easter cards and electric circuits.

So that's my day. Fire evacuation training at work tomorrow!

Five things...

1. My Cubs. They're a great Pack of young people and we had lots of fun. A few of them asked where I'd been as I missed the last two meetings because of my back. One of them said she hoped my back felt better. What lovely kids!
2. Painting. I might not be very good at it, but I enjoy doing it. It's nice and relaxing.
3. Breakfast at Dolly's. Forget Tiffany's, Dolly's does the best breakfast!
4. My bosses at work. I still struggle a lot with my back but my bosses are so good to me. They're reassuring and always help me.
5. Our Firestick. It's a bit first world of me, but I am grateful to have it for days when I'm off, especially when I'm off on my own. I put my favourite radio station on through the TV. Today we watched NCIS through Prime on the stick because it tends to work better than streamed through the Virgin

Rebel Update

 Hi all. I thought I'd stop by with an update on how I'm doing with my badge work.

My daily journal is complete for April and ready to be started tomorrow and I'm surprised at how much I'm looking forward to ticking tasks off!

This is a project I worked on for a while and I decided to give it to my mum for Mother's Day so I framed it. The cross stitch comes under the Craft Badge and gifting it covers an aspect of My Talents. Not only that, I've discovered it covers the Be Kind Challenge!

The next update is to share this. Another aspect of the Craft badge I want to try is Calligraphy and it just so happened that my mum bought this kit for me and I can't wait to try it out! I just need to locate some good tutorials, books or websites to learn from.

The Reader Badge appealed to me as soon as I knew there was one, but there's also a clause in the Codebreaker Badge that covers the reading of a book. This has been on my wishlist for ages so I decided now was the time to buy it. Firstly as one of my six books to read, but also to cover the Choose Your Own Adventure aspect. Let's hope I avoid that bizarre death they warn about on the cover!

I've also been out today and bought some plants for my Indoor Gardener badge. I need to look after five different plants, but I already have a little rose I was given for Christmas and there's an Oxalis Triangularis in our bathroom I look after too.

I was quite impressed that this little bundle, including the food and snips, cost less than £30!

Finally, last night I went for a meeting of our District Scout Adventurous Activities committee about joining and training up to become an instructor in activities like tomahawk throwing, climbing, rifle shooting, all the cool stuff. So it looks like my Adventurer Badge is on the cards.

Photographer Badge - Sequence

 "Create a sequence of at least 4 related photos"

I had intended to use some pictures I took today while out for my daily walk. I spotted a robin that had found a worm.

Unforunately, I'm having issues with cropping the images so you can actually see the bird properly. And they're not the best sequence either.

So with that in mind, I remembered a sequence I took of my friend's child while we were away on a camp. (Yes, I have permission to use her photo 😊)

Hopefully I can use this to cover this aspect of the badge. A previous post should cover the exhibition, but if not I have made photobooks.

Rebel Badge update

 

I was going to be all organised and write out the first three months of my journal but I think it's easier to stick with the first month and make sure I haven't added too much. They're all little tasks, but they add up.

There are also a lot of tasks to add that aren't going to be done on a daily basis but I can't add them until I know my rota for work. So far I've got next week and no further so it's hard to plan in things to do on my days off when I don't know my days off! Lol.

Hey ho, does feel like an achievement to at least have completed this much. Just need to stick to it now. It'll all start fully on 1st April (no, not a Fool's).

On another note, I decided to take a progress photo of my current project, Northern Lights. It's part of Dimensions' Sky Lights collection. The photo isn't the best one because it was starting to get dark when I took it, but the colours are amazing. I particularly like the use of satin threads to give that brightness in the green. There's also a purple and blue shade in the satin but they don't stand out quite so much.

Cross stitch is one of the activities I'm doing to cross off an aspect of the Craft badge, but then I've been doing them for 27 years! I will be trying new things as well.

My Completed Projects

 Hello again, everyone.

Lockdown gave me a good opportunity to try and work through the stash of cross stitch kits I've been accumulating. Problem is, I also kept buying them! Being signed off as well gave me plenty of time once everyone else was back at work. I spent a lot of last summer sat in the garden with a speaker for music, a ball for the dog, the fountain giving me that lovely sound of running water, and my cross stitch. Looking forward to doing that again this year, though hopefully not quite so frequently! 2 days off a week is enough unless I'm on annual leave!!

So here are the kits I've completed since I started cross stitching as a 10-year-old.