What I Made This Week

What I made this week will not fill your belly.  It will feed a little piece of your soul, however.  I’ve mentioned that I’m a Girl Scout Troop Leader for my daughter and 13 of her 9-10 year old friends.  This week during our monthly meeting, we made birthday parties in a bag to donate to our local food pantry.  I was inspired to do this by a pin (of course) that I came across some time ago:

Birthday In a Bag Community Service  (GS of Kansas Heartland)    deliver to local food bank or children's Homes, foster child organizations, women's shelters/deliver on JGL's bday. Fill bags w/Cake mix, frosting, foil cake pan, cake decorations, candles, balloons, plates, napkins. can include: banner, invites, wrapping paper and ribbon, streamers, party hats, noise makers, small goodie bags items, table cloth, or small unisex toy or present (unwrapped)

Each bag contains everything you would need to have a festive birthday party.  The girls were responsible for sorting all of the goodies, setting up an assembly line and filling the bags.  Here are the contents of our Birthday Party in a Bag bags:

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Cake mix and frosting, streamers, balloons, candles, party hats and noise makers.  What more do you need for a party? And it’s the little extras like the decorations and the candles that to many people are just another thing to tick off the list, but for some they may not have even made the list.  Each year that we’ve been a troop we’ve made a donation to the food pantry.  One year while selling girl scout cookies, we asked people to buy one for the food pantry (yes, all of those people that said they were on a diet, we hit them with, “why not buy some for the food pantry” and the girls gave their best puppy dog eyes.  Worked every time) and donated a bunch of boxes of cookies as well as the standard pasta and cans of veggies.

I’ve never had to use the food pantry and I don’t think any of the girls in the troop have either, but I’m glad to say that they all  know what the inside of ours looks like. Our food pantry is run by some wonderful people and it’s stocked well with non-perishables, but it’s not a nice place to visit.  It’s actually in the basement locker room of the old high school gym.  I don’t know how it ended up to be placed there, but it’s dreary to say the least.  I don’t know what it must feel like to go there and pick out food for a family, but I hope that when some elderly person or some mom with kids gets their birthday party in a bag that it brings them a little extra dose of happiness.

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Alright, I promise, I’ll cook something this week and share it.

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