Bridging Ceremony For Our Multi-Level Troop

Food

We held a vote at our last meeting for what type of treat to eat and cake won by a landslide.  Our bridging ceremonies are planned during our year-end celebration, so I wanted the cake to celebrate the entire troop and not just the bridging Girl Scouts. I couldn't find a rainbow or GS themed cake without having to pay an additional $10 for a custom order so I decided to buy a standard balloon cake instead.  On Amazon I found a rainbow cake topper kit that can be used year after year, so a tradition has started!  My cake decorating skills are not good enough to write all their names, so I needed an alternative. The rainbow kit came with some clouds so I thought I could write all the names on the clouds, but there weren't enough clouds in the kit for the entire troop. I knew I would have a hard time matching the existing clouds so I decided to create all new clouds with my Cricut machine.  The Juniors have purple clouds positioned higher than the others since they were flying up, and the Daisy has a blue cloud. I thought brown clouds would look like pollution so the Brownies have pink clouds. I used my Cricut to print and cut the clouds and then hot glued them to the skewers. I broke the sticks shorter to get the right height on the cake. And here is the result...

Drinks

The troop voted to have soda for a drink, but I was able to sneak in a little bit of a healthy alternative.  Two of the Girl Scouts still needed to finish the slurp a snack part of the snacks badge. So I brought a bag of frozen mangoes, concentrated orange juice, concentrated apple juice, and Ginger Ale.  They combined the ingredients they wanted together in a cup and loved it! No blenders needed, easy to customize for picky eaters, and easy clean-up!

Decorations

I bought the tablecloth and rainbow backdrop from Michaels in their Pride section in early June.  They had lots of awesome rainbows and I wanted to buy more but we have other things in mind for our cookie budget.  The Girl Scouts are still in love with balloons so our "bridge" was made from 10 helium balloons attached to weights from the dollar store.  Some troops spend extra $$ buying party favors or presents but these Girl Scouts are happy just taking home the balloons and eating cake. Our ceremony was indoors so we didn't have to worry about the wind, but the AC kicked on and was blowing the balloons around so we had to move our bridge away from the vents (which made the lighting bad for photos but not a biggie).

Awards

     The Juniors received Junior Mint candy with their Brownie Wings and bridging arc.  They also received a bridging certificate and a Junior level badge tracker book.  We also celebrated three Brownies who earned their Summit Awards and received their certificates and pins as well.

Activities

After the bridging ceremony we continued to the main attraction...swimming party!  They voted for and had been excitedly awaiting for the trip to the local water park since February, and the weather ended up being perfect.  This event and the excitement from these Girl Scouts makes all the freezing cold cookie booths worth the effort!