Guiders' staff room - tea, wine, chat and optional dancing around the toadstool

Hi Groovee sounds excellent.

Sadly the bank asked for a copy of the constitution etc. Happily I had the power of Google and called it up on the phone. This didn't go down well and they're asking for the signatories we can't find to approve. Despite District and County letters and contact details confirming that we need to access the money (CENSUS calls, I have the money but can't get at it ).

I've still got my blooming taxes to do too.

Had our first week back, was nice to be back. Got someone coming in to do the Scottish Country Dance badge this week.

Oh no. The unit bank accounts. We were buggered about for ages when we needed a new signatory because the bank couldn't get their head around the fact that an 18 year old didn't have the mortgage statement/utility bills in own name etc that they wanted as proof of identity. We opened an account with this bank because Girlguiding HQ said they had agreed a streamlined process for opening accounts, but as far as I could tell we had to jump through just as many hoops as anybody else opening a business account. So good luck!

I may need some myself by the end if the day.

Going to the bank to delete and then add a different signatory. After 4 months of forma and calls, I'm taking a book, snacks and not leaving till this is sorted.

Ah, yes. Ribena. Slurp.

Have some Guiders' Ribena

You're very kind.

I don't have the snip tool at home, but after grumbling to my DC I have an offer to sort it out at our next district training. This has touched a nerve with me, as what I dislike most about being a leader is having all these "little" admin jobs dumped on us that turn out not to be little at all. I will now put on a false smiley face.

Do you have the latest all singing version of windows?

If so, you can use the snipe tool to create a jpeg.

If you don't have it send me a pm and I'll sort it out for you if that would be helpful via email.

Yes, Rue, that option had already occurred to me, but I had discarded it as too much bl@@dy effort! As a tree-hugger, I try to avoid printing letters out and prefer to email them (especially as that's usually more reliable than expecting the girls to take them home).

Oh yes, an hour and a half a week. ::hollow laugh:: I've already spent much more than that faffing about with the letterhead, which I'm only doing as my conscience was pricking me as we were instructed about a year ago to switch over to the new letterhead and I hadn't got round to it. Sigh.

...and then you could scan it in and email it! Because that's a really simple way of doing things...

Did they tell you it was only an hour a week, too? :o

Bit daft way of doing things, but could you print out a load of pages with the letterhead on, then overprint them with your newsletter/whatever on top?

I've avoided the OLPC so far, and will be for as long as I can!

Should have said that I solved the saving/reopening problem, but this problem of not being able to put text into the letterhead seems more intractable!

Yes, I think that's how I constructed my old letterhead. This time, though, the OLPS has given me a PDF that I can't amend so, as something that I can use to create newsletters to email to our parents and carers, it's completely useless. Sigh.

I find the OLPS incredibly complicated - always takes me ages to work it out. I tend to save the logos as jpegs and then inserted.

Thank you. It's not that I'm especially keen to do food-related activities, just that we have the facilities to do them, whereas our facilities for active games (say) are rather restricted.

Does anyone have any experience of the online print shop? I have just made a new letterhead, which has been sent to me as a pdf, but when I save it and reopen it, it becomes a page of random graphics and certainly not a letterhead that I can use. What am I doing wrong?

Hi Maudant

We decided to take a few days rest this term and slinking back a week later than normal. 'Planning' meeting next week with team and .

Food My favourite thing in the whole world, how many hands do you have around? With my personal prejudices in mind, I always avoid biscuit or cake decoration - masses of mess every time. I find bread or similar always good.

Armpit fudge
Chocolate orange
Scones - plain, cheese and fruit
Flapjacks
Toasting star bursts
Rocky road
Flatbreads
Mug cooking

Tastings sessions: you line up several of the same item but in different price ranges and get them to pick their favourites. Good lesson that it's not always the branded one they like.

I would also ask them if there's something they want to learn to cook

You can also theme it:

Burn's Night - haggis, neeps, shortbread, iron bru

Traditions badge using a disposable bbq or the oven - dampers, smores, Proper popcorn, camp sandwiches: jam sandwiches dipped in batter and fried, pitta pizzas, baked bananas

Did I mention that I can go on about food for ages

Hello, Becles, and welcome. I have just spent a merry hour wrestling with Join Us and sorting out our roll for next term. Then it's just a small matter of doing the 2014 accounts. again.

All ideas for Brownie activities in a hall with good cooking facilities but little space for games (indoors or outdoors) gratefully received ...

Can't believe that I've only just found this thread.

Actually, given the opportunity to avoid the self imposed deadlines for sewing the remaining 20 badges on my blanket I'm going to have a large , break open more chocs and have a good read as prep for the next term's programme

Brownie GiC, Guide LiT, Rainbow OH, District gofer

Spoke to mum at our last meeting. Sadly it seems the prompt for this being raised was an email from brown owl inviting the girl to brownies earlier in the day!! We know we passed the names of upcoming brownie age girls to brown owl twice in the few weeks preceding.

Anyway, we've spoken to mum and said we genuinely feel she is more than ready for brownies. She is one of our older and more capable girls all round and whilst it would be a shame to lose her, she would get more out of brownies than we could currently give her. Mum also let slip that one of the girls she has made friends with (different schools) isn't due to go up for another few months and her daughter would miss her... We did suggest if she waited, there may not be a place at brownies if there were other girls already on the waiting list to start at that time.

we've given her until we have a Xmas trip to have a think and let us know. In the meantime we are planning how best to manage our parents and keep brown owl on the ball :)

In good news, we've roped in a couple more volunteers. One is a mum who can help every other week when her husband isn't working. She's been helping us out so I brazenly suggested she join in on a regular basis. She's going to let me know ahead the weeks she can help :)

Another is a friend of mine whose recently got back in touch. We drifted apart for a while. She wants to go down the whole assistant/unit leader route so is going to work out where she can help as an occasional helper to start with and then see if her employer will be willing to be flexible on our meeting night if she can make up her hours elsewhere.

Could you speak to your DC about it. I will keep girls in brownies, but it does depend on the child and we have a little unit.

But if you have a large unit and it's not possible then maybe she can try brownies out x

*looks not looked, sadly its still very much an ongoing issue

We email new parents when offering them a place and ask then if they have any questions, one of the leaders also chats to them for 5-10 minutes at the start of the first meeting then once a year we have a parents evening where they are invited to stay at the meeting, watch a slideshow of what we've been up to and chat to any of the leaders (we also have a raffle, guess the name of the bear and sell cakes and tea and coffee at it to raise funds for the unit).

This doesn't always work though as there will always be one parent who just assumes you'll change things for them no matter how many times you explain how things work, like one mum I have at the moment who keeps asking to send her 3 year old son with us whenever we have a trip/party/something special planned because 'he'd really love it and his sister could look after him' she always looked so shocked when I say no.

Need some helpful advice. I've just been informed by my AL that one of our mums has asked if her daughter can stay with rainbows until she's 7.5. She was due to move up in January and this is the absolute first we've heard of this. Of course, this would make us 1 over and we're a very big unit as it is. We've shut our waiting list until September as we're due to lose 10+ girls this year and would bring us down to a much more manageable size!!

She's quoting website at us. But I want to politely say this should have been brought to our attention much sooner than the day before the last meeting of term. Especially if she felt her dd wasn't ready/there were other issues. I suspect it may be a 'waiting for friend' case as brown owl can be a wee bit sharp (I took rainbows off her hands and have known her a very long time, old school, bark worse than bite but you have to get to know her).

The girls and parents are all told at the beginning of their last term with us that they will be invited to join brownies soon so really September, or even October half term, was the point to mention this to us. I'm considering putting together a unit handbook with this information available and suggested time scales for informing us of these wishes.

How do the rest of you manage parental expectations with such short meetings? Is it worth having a 'parent information evening' where we can explain what we do and they can ask any questions and us have the dedicated time to answer them?

Congratulations Quelle.

My dd is in SS and she says popcorn is a must. They meet once a fortnight, use a facebook page and they plan the following term on the last day of the term.

The idea at the start is that it's a chilled place to get away from exam stress etc.

Renewed my promise this evening, guess that makes it official then! Anybody got any tips for senior section? There's a group in my area in need of "direction" and I'm diving in to see if I can help. TIA!