Going Pink for October!

St. Petersburg Chain in White and Light Pink

Thankfully I've never had a close friend who's dealt with Breast Cancer, but I'm well aware that it's something that many women deal with at some point in their lives, and so every year I participate in Breast Cancer Awareness Month in my shops. Last year I donated $15!

Both of my shops (Etsy and Artfire) have Breast Cancer Awareness sections. Any items bought from those sections will result in a 20% donation to the Susan G. Koman fund! Also, keep your eyes open for special items that will be put up through out the month that will have 100% of the proceeds donated to the Susan G. Koman fund!

Last month was also my first month raising funds for my local homeless shelter. I'm going to be continuing that this month! All purchases made that are NOT from the Breast Cancer Awareness sections will still result in a 10% donation to Open House Ministries.

Now for the fun part - I raised $6.90 for the local shelter this month! Woohoo! I'm going to raise that to an even $10 to send in. I'm really looking forward to what October will bring. I'm doing a bazaar next week and I never got paid from my consignment shop last month, so that might be extra big too. I don't know for sure. The owner was gone when I was finally able to go in and check in because her daughter had emergency surgery.

Etsy Bloggers Carnival - Talking about OHM

The current Etsy Bloggers Carnival topics are:

1)Sept. 11 is the anniversary of a very tragic event. To make the world better what do you do? Charity donations or support, volunteering, living green or ?
2) Brag on yourself. What are you most proud of in your life?

I'm going to kind of combine the two. There are many things I'm proud of in my life, but my almost two years working at Open House Ministries (OHM) are high on that list! I was day care teacher, but that title doesn't really cover what I did.

(yes, that's me, younger and skinnier)

OHM is a long term homeless shelter. They provide a place to stay while people are getting back on their feet, not to mention lots of services to help them get back on their feet! Residents might stay for three months, or a lot longer, depending on what help they need.

As a day care teacher I not only took care of the kids while the parents were working to get back on their feet, I also ended up doing a lot of impromptu counseling, some chauffeuring, data entry, working in the donations center, and even cooking a spaghetti dinner for 50+ people! Pretty much, I just pitched in where ever I was needed!

That's what I did, what am I doing now? I'm not strong enough to even go volunteer down there any more, so I've decided to start donating a percentage of my sales! Starting this month I'll be donating 10% of all my proceeds to OHM. Each month I'll post up how much the previous month's donation came too! Right now...that comes to $0.20! ok, so that's not much, but I do have a custom order lined up so that will bring the total up :) And I haven't checked in with my consignment store yet for the month.