My Girl Scout troop and I have been working on a Journey, called the aMaze Journey for the last few months. Journeys have replaced badges, in that they require more contemplation and take more steps to complete - each one building on the previous one - and culminates in a take-action project that solidifies the understanding of the concept and advances the goal.

So, the goal of the aMaze Journey is to think of ways to make the world a more peaceful place to live. It started with learning about the various relationships and relationship challenges we each experience on a daily basis, then moved to strategies and collecting tips for handling issues like conflicts, peer pressure, bullying, gossip, cliques, stereotyping and friendships.

Along the way, I kept reminding the girls that they are each unique in their own way and they can not let anyone tell them how they should feel. To have good friends, you need to be a good friend. Treat others they way you want to be treated. Expect success, encourage others to be their best and always, always, stay true to yourself.

Well, we are near the end of the Journey. My contribution to success of this project will be the gift of a music CD. I asked the girls to give me the title/artist for s song they feel is positive, puts them in a good mood, is encouraging and has an uplifting message - sorry Aliza, I don’t think "Can You Teach Me How to Dougie" will make the cut, although it is a fun song. I’ll be happy to share this list once I purchase them and download them to my computer to make the CD. At the end of each session, I read a poem to the girls to remind them of their greatness. This will be compiled in a scrapbook with pictures.

For the actual Take-Action Project, the girls have come up with a few ideas and we hope to settle on one or two of them and do them over the summer. One is to plant a peace garden. Another is to paint a room in a community location with peaceful colors. A third idea, one which we’ve actually started working on, is to make some public service announcements about how to handle the many relationship challenges we face. These girls are creative, compassionate and smart and it is my pleasure to say I am their leader.

Peace.

Kim Simms is a New York State licensed real estate salesperson and a residential real estate consultant with Houlihan Lawrence East Fishkill. She is also a Girl Scout troop leader. Contact her at ksimms@houlihanlawrence.com for additional information on Fishkill Girl Scouting, Dutchess County housing, communities, events, and general inquiries, or for information about troop openings and becoming a GS leader in the Fishkill Girl Scout community.

Posted by:  Kim Simms

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of spending the night with my troop and the entire Fishkill Girl Scout community at Sharpe Reservation in Fishkill, New York. What a great example of available outdoor venues for Dutchess County and the Hudson Valley. It’s home to the Fresh Air Fund which was created in 1877! According to their website, it’s an independent not-for-profit organization, created for the purpose of allowing children living in disadvantaged communities to get away from hot, noisy city streets and enjoy free summer experiences in the country. Sharpe hosts 3,000 kids each summer in the program.

In addition to being a Fresh Air Fund site, Sharpe Reservation is utilized for the remainder of the year by schools, clubs, churches and associations for meetings, conferences and retreats. Girl Scouts is one such organization. Every year, local Girl Scout communities hold weekend camp-outs and our community’s camp-out was last weekend. Camp Mariah, the Career Awareness Program site, is named after world-renowned R & B singer Mariah Carey, who generously supports the program which serves several hundred inner-city adolescents in the exploration of career paths and options. For as long as I’ve know about Sharpe, I always thought that Camp Tommy indicated that Mariah’s former husband, Tommy Mottola, was also a supporter, but Camp Tommy is named after Tommy Hilfiger, the famous designer. I could write a book on the amazing things that go on at Sharpe, but I’ll save that for another time. This is about Girl Scouting and camping.

The majority of my troop arrived on early Saturday afternoon with bagged lunches and their camping supplies in tow. The camping supplies list included everything from a mess kit to a sleeping bag, depending on if you were coming for just the day, or if you were braving the overnight high up on this mountainside in the middle of the woods. (For those of you who really go camping, I know this isn’t really considered "roughing it" because we did sleep inside the cabin and there were indoor bathrooms, but this was close enough to get the experience. I was never a Girl Scout but my previous childhood experiences involved a bunch of us kids sleeping outside in lawn chairs and blankets under the stars, waiting for the grown-ups to go to bed so we could raid my great-grandmother’s garden.) We resided at Camp Hayden Marks, although the girls kept insisting it was "Camp Nick," as in Nick Cannon, husband to Mariah Carey. There was a very kind security guard named Robert at the gate who, upon my inquiry as to whether or not he was the one in charge, gave me kind of a quizzical look before he started, "Well..." I let him off the hook by asking him that since he was in charge, if he could keep it from raining, which was the weekend weather prediction. He laughed and promised that he could pray but that once his shift ended at 10 p.m., all bets were off. (It did rain that night, but only after we were all safe and dry in our cabins. Thank you, Robert!)

The girls were given various jobs to do, everything from gathering twigs and small branches for a campfire, to filling buckets with water from the hose to wash the dishes in. In between chores, they went on a hike on one of the many nature trails, attended a day program of outdoor games, participated in a scavenger hunt, learned to build and extinguish a proper campfire, and practiced skits that they would perform that night around a giant campfire in front of the whole community.

They ate spaghetti, tacos and nachos for dinner, with the girls doing the cooking; it included cooking ground meat wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil over the open fire. They also roasted hot dogs and my co-leader, a passionate outdoorsy-type herself, taught them how to build a Dutch oven out of a box, some foil, wired hangers and duct tape, which she used to cook "monkey bread" in (aka cinnamon rolls). After dinner, we gathered around the campfire for an evening of comradery, bonding and Girl Scout tradition. We learned that there is a song (and dance) that accompany the retirement of flags and the Brownie Girl Scout troop who performed their first official flag retirement ceremony were so cute.

They took turns, troop by troop, from Daisies to Ambassadors, performing comedy routines, songs and short skits that kept us all entertained. The heat from the big fire felt good as the chilly, damp air settled on the camp with the darkness. We ended the night by singing the Girl Scout "Linger" song, whose lyrics contain sentiments of friendship, camping, and the wish to linger just a little bit longer together.

We retired to our cabin for the night where the girls chatted, giggled and told stories until only three of them were still awake. I fell asleep at about midnight to the sound of one of the girls (we’ll call her, "The Story Teller") telling yet another story but woke up again when I heard my daughter comforting another girl who was crying because of one too many scary stories from "the story teller."  It was necessary to suggest that it was time for everybody to get some rest.

A heart-felt shout out to all of the beautiful-spirted women and girls who make up the Fishkill Girl Scout community, for another goosebump Girl Scout memory that will be nurtured and fondly recalled, for the rest of my life. It was a sweet time...

Kim Simms is a New York State Licensed Salesperson and Residential Real Estate Consultant with Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate Brokerage in East Fishkill, NY, and a Girl Scout troop leader with the Fishkill community. She can be reached at .

Posted by:  Kim Simms

I don’t have a green thumb but I love fresh flowers and plants of all kinds. I admire people who grow plants so effortlessly and every year I aspire to be a better gardener. Last summer, I tried growing vegetables on my deck, like tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini. Although I harvested a few cucumbers, I was in competition with my then two-and-a-half year old boxer who would innocently walk by the planter and quickly take a bite out of each one she could reach. I know it was her because of the under-bite teeth marks and when I lined up the size of the bite mark in the cucumber with her mouth, it fit perfectly. The zucchini never really understood what I expected of it and I think everyone had a tough time with the tomatoes last summer.

So as the memories of my lack of gardening talent fades, and as I watch the Hudson Valley come to life with azaleas, daffodils, cherry blossoms and forsythia, I am inspired to garden again. I primarily stick to annual flowers because they are easy to keep alive and vary greatly in color and variety (plus, they always seemed to adapt to my rigid "everybody gets watered and nourished at the same time and in the same intervals and if you can’t stick with the program, you’re out of here!"). Actually, last year, I began to talk kindly to them, encouraging them and pointing out how the universe must be perfect in order to produce such beautiful specimens of nature - I’m not sure if it worked, but they didn’t die prematurely.

This year, I’m going a step further. I’m going to make my own seedling pots! In preparation for a Girl Scout event, whose Spirit Day theme this year was, "Girl Scouts - Forever Green," I came across a YouTube video on how to make these pots from newspaper that can be planted right into the ground or larger planter. It’s an origami fold so no staples, glue or tape are needed. It’s environmentally friendly and biodegradeable. I recently found some seeds that I thought I had lost, taken from some really strong annuals I grew two years ago - I think I correctly identified the seed - so this week I will make my newspaper pots, fill them with Miracle Grow (and it will be if this works!), and plant my flowers. Wish me luck...if all else fails, I will buy them from the local stores, like Plant Depot, William Tell Hardware (and Gardening Center), and Blue Seal Feeds & Needs, like I usually do. Happy Gardening!

Kim Simms is a New York State Licensed Salesperson and Residential Real Estate Consultant with Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate Brokerage in East Fishkill, NY and a Girl Scout troop leader with the Fishkill community. She can be reached at

Posted by:  Kim Simms

As a Girl Scout troop leader, you try to give the girls tools to help navigate the curvy road that will be their life and try to help them understand that life is so much more satisfying when you are passionate about something.  Few of us know what it is we are passionate about before the age of (let’s say) 40.  

One of the goals of Girl scouting is to instill a lifetime commitment to community service. The current economy has affected us all and many people find themselves relying on food pantries for additional support.  The girls in my troop, Fishkill GS Troop 10348, provided invaluable community service efforts while working on the fourth step of their Junior Bronze Award, which is the highest award you can earn as a Junior Girl Scout.  The girls were amazing! Thanks to the generosity of The Smoke Haus Deli on Rt 82 in Hopewell Junction, and Pet Supplies Plus,  located in the Shop Rite shopping plaza on Rt 9 in Fishkill, we held two pet food drives, collecting dog and cat food and cash donations. With the permission of both the East Fishkill Community Library and Blodgett Memorial Library of Fishkill, we placed collection containers in both libraries for pet food. They made homemade dog treats, chew toys and catnip socks out of old t-shirts and socks. We made signs and posters and wrote thank you letters. What a fulfilling experience for our girls to be able to be creative and learn leadership skills while making an immediate impact in our community. 

Our troop supports Beacon ARF, a no-kill animal rescue shelter and The Fishkill Food Pantry. It’s been a very good summer and my absolute pleasure to have worked alongside these future leaders to achieve the award.  I am so proud of them. We need more Girl Scouts like the girls in my troop and we definitely need more Girl Scout leaders.

For more information about troop openings and becoming a GS leader in the Fishkill Girl Scout community, contact me, Kim Simms, Fishkill GS Community Organizer, at .

Posted by:  Kim Simms