Time to get cookin!

Late last night, way past bloggers bedtimes, I came across a new charity which I cannot wait to dig into! Have you heard of Bake for Hunger?  Well, the organization I am talking about has paired with Duncan Hines to Bake for Hunger. I am talking about Share Our Strengths Great American Bake Sale. No Kid Hungry.

Basically, you form a team (or you can do an individual event) and together your team plans a huge bake sale. Then you pre-heat your ovens, bake up a storm, and sell baked goods – all proceeds going to After School and Summer Reading program grants.

Share Our Strength is a leading organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America. Here are some ways the funds you raise can help: (this came directly from thier website)

·         $25 Can help feed one child three healthy meals every day for a month.

·         $50 Can help connect one child with healthy meals throughout the summer.

·         $100 Can help provide 25 children facing hunger with backpacks full of healthy food to feed them and their families over the weekend.

·         $200 Can help buy grocery bags of healthy foods for 50 families in need.

·         $500 Can help reach twelve low-income families with a life-changing, six-week nutritious cooking and food budgeting course.

To find out more about their efforts, please visit: Strength.org.

Obviously, this is going to be a “continued later” post. But, I do promise that I will be working for this organization as closely as possible. God is so cool. For a week or so now, I have been talking to God about creating a Food Pantry that services SWKS. See, there are several food pantries around but here are 2 major problems:

1.    Most are only open every other week. Well, this could mean that families may run out of food before the pantry re-opens.

2.    Gas. Prices. The higher they climb, the less likely families will be able to travel to pantries once they open.

It really doesn’t take much for a human being to purchase a couple extra cans of veggies or an extra box of rice when they make a trip to the store. You’re feeding your future. Kids need to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think that they should even have an option for snack. They shouldn’t feel guilty when they eat. “If I eat, my mommy won’t get dinner.” Kids have so many other things that they should worry about while they still have a childhood. We all know too well that once your childhood is over – it’s over.

You know, I think about my children and pray that IF we ever need food assistance that my children won’t have to carry the burden. How unfair.

Please stay tuned, and please let me know if this interests you as much as it does me!! Maybe, together we can make an impact on ending childhood hunger.

Today’s my birthday! I’m loving my day! So many blessings!! :D

Bucket List

Alright, So I have been gone for a while .... but I promise I am back!!!! Woo hoo!!

I really needed to share this: So here we go!

So, once upon a time… I told everyone to start working on a bucket list. I still think you should create a bucket list, but now I have new advice.

First, let me back track a bit. So, once upon a time… I had a bucket list. I was able to cross a couple things off this bucket list in that first year that I had it. Then, we flew to Florida, where I would be able to check off a few more items on my bucket list. But I lost the bucket list in the hotel room. I have called and reported it missing. It has broken my heart, shaken my ground, and rocked my world. I still don’t have my bucket list. But today I’m not sick about it.

Every night, I walk between 2-4 miles. Tonight, I told God that I am very upset that I don’t have my bucket list anymore. I told him that he knows I function best when I have a list no matter what the occasion (grocery shopping, weekly menus, to-do’s, and bucket listing) …..

You know what I think I heard tonight? I think he wanted to tell me that the bucket list I made, that made so much sense to me, that lead me in the right direction, that helped me stay motivated, that continuously focused me – wasn’t as important as GOD IS.

You know, thinking back to when I wrote that bucket list. I was in the lowest of the lowest part of my life. I had no hope, no direction, no idea where we were headed.   I decided if I had goals, and I knew where I wanted to go in life I would be alright. Well, the bucket list helped – but it wasn’t what pulled us through. God was.

I got caught up in the moment, and never asked God if any of my bucket list items were in his plan. Does he want me to swim with dolphins? Or would his list for me have something more like “fund a school in Africa and watch it be built?”

I’m going to make a new bucket list. One that God guides me to write. I am not saying that this will work out his master plan for you or anything like that… I really think it’s important to know what you would like to do in your short life you have – but don’t add things that may be more for you and less for others.