Garage Sale Notice:  The Altrusa Garage Sale is back! Look for us on Friday and Saturday, July 27 & 28, at our normal spot at 2659 Magnolia Street, Longview. We have lots of interesting items available for your shopping pleasure. Don't miss it!

In other news - we had a wonderful speaker at our meeting this week. Carly Monkman of the Melaleuca non-profit division came and told us about the Melaleuca products, why we might enjoy them (they're chemical-free) and how our purchases could make money for our club. The samples we tried at the meeting were great and it was interested to hear her reports of people who have been helped by using the chemical-free products in their homes. Melaleuca products are manufactured in Idaho, and they offer a wide variety of items for cleaning, skincare, etc. We'll let you know how we decide to be involved.


Upcoming Events - Our annual summer BBQ is set for Saturday, August 4 at member Betty's Trembley home in Longview at 3 pm. We're all looking forward to the usual - good food, good company, and lots of laughing. We're all invited to bring guests, so if you have a hankering for any of the above please feel welcome to attend.

Early Summer Happenings
The Breakfast Bunch has been busy these past couple of weeks! Our new club year starts in June so there's lots of planning going on, and we also added two new members.But first let's talk about our District Conference in May.

Conference this year was held at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, OR. There are 24 clubs in our district and each is eligible to enter a project in literacy or service categories. The really big news is that our club won 2nd place in the Letha H. Brown Award for Literacy with our Bertie Bear Reading Project! We were sooooo excited! Bertie Bear goes to the Head Start classrooms with us to read to the kids, and she is pictured above with her 2nd place ribbon.

Sue Yarbrough and Susan Brookfield were recently initiated into membership with an inspirational ceremony depicting Altrusa as an orchard with each member offering something unique. Attributes of membership were likened to different varieties of fruit and each new member received a basket full of fruit at the end.

At the start of each new fiscal year The Breakfast Bunch holds a planning retreat to discuss goals and make recomendations for service projects as well as ways to raise the money to complete those projects. This year attendees could purchase raffle tickets and hope to win one of the prizes members contributed. It turned out to be a lot of fun, with raffle items ranging from gift baskets to plants to dust buster supplies! The chocolate cake pictured above was one of the yummier items.

Featured Artwork ..... by our own Krista Mead
We have so many talented members in our club and luckily for us, they have a variety of talents! During the month of June the Backstage Cafe (next to the Kelso Theater ) is featuring Krista Mead's artwork!

The Membership Committee has invited everyone to a small gathering on Tuesday, June 26 at the Backstage Cafe at 5:30 p.m. Friends, spouses, members and guests are all invited. Wine and other yummies will be available for purchase.

Congratulations, Krista!

Spring?

One day it's sunny and the next it's raining so hard we can hardly see across the street. Must be spring in the Northwest! Our Altrusa club's new year begins in June, so officer elections and installation is always on our agenda in May. This year we had an installation dinner at a local restaurant, and had a fun, social time (plus a yummy dinner!) Here's a picture of our new officers. The bigwigs are President Adele Gowdy, VP Winona Smith, Treasurer Virginia Russeff, and Secretary Debbie Johnson. The supporting cast are committee chairs and board members.

One of the president's special awards is the Altrusan of the Year. This year Adele presented the award to Maggi Miollis, whose handles the graduation baskets we donate to graduates of the Emergency Support Shelter. As the women leave the shelter and establish their own homes, we provide them with a laundry basket full of housekeeping necessities such as cleaning products, sponges, towels, laundry detergent, and much more. As club respresentative, Maggi has delivered over 30 baskets in the last several months. Luckily, she is an excellent shopper!

Another springtime activity for Altrusa clubs all over our region is attending our district's conference. This year the conference was held in Silverton, OR at the Oregon Garden. Our district consists of 25 clubs in Washington, Oregon, Montana, and British Columbia. There were 150 Altrusans at conference this year! Conference includes leadership training seminars, times for meeting members from other clubs and exchanging ideas, and meeting our district's leadership in person. It is such an uplifting experience to be among so many women who are committed to service in their communities. Altrusan's rock!

Here's a picture of our club representatives going to the Awards Banquet - where our club won 2nd place in the Letha H. Brown Literacy Award competition. Wow! We were soooo excited. That's Gail, Adele, Virginia and Eleanor. Looks like they're having fun.

Our entry was our Bertie Bear reading program. We take Bertie, a very large stuffed bear, to the Head Start classes and act as guest readers for a story time. The club donates the book we read to the classroom, plus gives each child a coloring book with a story and coloring pages about Bertie Bear and her friend Tweeny Bee. The coloring book was designed by one of our members, Sandra Putaansuu. The kids LOVE Bertie and our members have a great time reading to them. It's a win-win. Here's a picture of Bertie celebrating her award.

 

Bertie Bear LOVES Literacy

Since literacy is a big part of Altrusa's mission, we felt so fortunate to be able to take our own Bertie Bear to Head Start classes at Broadway School recently. Our members (and Bertie Bear) participated as guest readers, reading a fun story to classes, helping them pick out books of their own to take home, and providing a Breakfast Bunch produced coloring book for each child. It's a fun (and enlightening!) day.

Spell-ebration 2012

Put Spell-ebration 2012 down in the history books! Last Friday, March 9, the Kelso Theater Pub was alive with costumed spellers, their enthusiastic supporters, Altrusans, costumed bees and a giant dog. What a fun night!! Thanks for all the support from our great sponsors and the community.Of course, it helps when it's a FUN fundraiser.

Our first place team this year was "The Queen Bees," representing the County Clerk's Office:  Beverly Little, Sheryl Moul and Leah Iverson. The battle for 2nd and 3rd places waged on for quite a while, but eventually the "Rightway Bees" claimed 2nd: Kari Pearson, Carl Wirkkala, and Dot Com, and 3rd went to "Totally Trendy" - Sarah Strain, Karen Case, & Michael Cowan. Good spellers, all!

There was lots of other fun. Best Cotume Award went to "Bee S.A.F.E." (Emergency Support Shelter); Best Name to "Ole Spellas" (Pioneer Lions); Most Creative Spellers were "Rightway Bees" (Rightway RV); and Best Team Spirit was awarded to the "Windermere Wordsmiths" (Windermere Real Estate).

Spell-ebration! It's coming up soon - March 9, 2012 at the Kelso Theater Pub - so it's time to get your 3-person team together. If you're worried about finding 3 good spellers, it really only takes one good speller and the other two can be moral support! It's an evening of great fun, wonderful Pub pizza, audience participation (prizes for the best cheering section), and of course spelling. Team registration is $75 for your team of three, including pizza. Audience tickets are $8, including pizza. Click on this link to get more information and a registration form: 

 http://www.poouster.com/altrusa/spellingbee-resgistrationform2012.pdf