Toys for Tots Year 3: Update

I will have the Toys for Tots post with pictures, final total, etc up (HOPEFULLY) on Thursday or Friday. I was going to do it last night but I spent all day busy and doing stuff. I was going for about 13 hours yesterday then I got home and was having issues transferring the pictures to my netbook. I was feeling too tired/stressed/drained to figure it out and just ended up frustrated and decided to just leave it alone for the night. Today will probably be busy but I plan on watching hockey and being lazy in the evening time. So, I should be able to work on it and figure out what the hell the issue is with the pictures not transferring. And if I can't, I'm sure the boyfriend will figure it out for me since he's awesome at things like that.

I do have one I got with a camera phone during one of the two shopping trips I did for the fundraiser....



Sorry it's kind of small. That was near the end of one of my shopping trips. I tend to break it down into multiple trips so I can take advantage of different deals and also so I'm not in line for an hour waiting on several hundred dollars of toys to be rang up. The boyfriend was amazing help this year and helped me on both trips and did the toy drop off at the Toys for Tots warehouse with me this year. I do have better pictures and plenty of them. Once I can get them onto my damp computer. Anyway, enough whining and bitching about that. :) I wonder how many people notice me randomly taking picture of the shopping cart as I fill it up with toys and wonder what I'm doing. In the three years I've done this fundraiser, I either toy shop later at night or early in the morning. Though, I've caught people staring and then looking away quickly but no one has ever asked me why I'm taking pictures of the cart as I shop. I'm such a curious person at times, there's no way I'd see that going on and not ask about it, haha.

I'm so thankful for everyone who donated this year to help me be able to get so many toys. And I appreciate all the help from people who put buttons on their sites, made posts about it, tweeted, put up links on Facebook, etc. So many people were such a great help and I really do appreciate it. :)

Happy Wednesday!

Two days left for Toys for Tots donations...

There's only 2 DAYS left to make a paypal donation to my Toys for Tots fundraiser.

I'm so close to hitting $500 in donations so I'm hoping I can get a couple more donations via pay pal or maybe some of the people in my real life will be able to follow through with their promises to help. Even if $500 doesn't end up getting reached, I'm super happy about the amount of money I've managed to raise so far. And of course I'm excited about getting to go toy shopping and then delivering them all to the Toys for Tots drop location.

December 16th is the last day I'm taking donations via paypal. :)

So come on, $5 or $10 isn't that much and it's for a great cause. Please help out if you can. Thanks to everyone who has donated and all who have helped spread the word thus far. It's greatly appreciated.

Even if you don't donate anything to my project here, I encourage everyone to give a little something back where ever they can. Be it donating a little cash to a good charity, picking a child off an angel tree, dropping a few cans of food off at your local food pantry/shelter, donating some old warm clothes you don't wear much or at all anymore. There are a lot of ways to help out the lest fortunate and most don't take much time, effort or a large amount of cash. Some are easy as making some extra room in your closet or kitchen cabinets. :)

Happy Wednesday!

The Blogger Toy Fundraiser

*THIS POST WILL REMAIN AT THE TOP OF THE BLOG UNTIL THIS IS OVER. Please scroll down for new posts after you've read this one.*

I didn't think to do this soon enough and the cut off date for being able to drop off toys is December 14th. That gives y'all until the morning of December 12th to make donations for Toys for Tots if you're going to. Saturday the 12th will be the toy shopping day and then Sunday the 13th will be the toy delivery day.

Any donations made later than December 12th will go to the Genesis Women's Shelter in Dallas, Tx. There are, of course, children staying at the shelter as well and they're doing a holiday gift drop off that last until December 22. As with Toys for Tots, I will take pictures for proof for anything that gets put towards the GWS.

UPDATE: GWS Mission Statement: "To provide quality safety and shelter to battered women and their children through crisis intervention and short term crisis therapeutics and to reduce the occurrence of violence against women and children in the greater Dallas area. We are also committed to raising the level of community awareness regarding the pervasiveness and effects of domestic violence."

If you go to their website and read about their holiday program, you will read about their "adopt a family" program for the holidays. I sent an email to the Assistant Director of Outreach & Volunteer Coordinator at GWS to find out if I would be able to just bring a bunch of stuff in without adopting a family for everything. Of course I can! Any new unwrapped gifts I get to buy for them through the help of the fundraiser and my limited pocket funds will be distributed to families who arrive to the Shelter after everyone has been adopted out.

If you want to donate to the shelter NOW instead of donating for Toys for Tots, let me know so I can put the donated money towards that instead.

Happy Holidays!

Every year I donate some toys to Toys for Tots. I pick and choose other things to donate to as well through out the year. I don't think I can make a big dent of change in the world but I can do little things to make things a little better for people. Be it with toys during the holidays, money for food, donating clothing, etc. I bitch about things that I wish I could fix but really, all that bitching does nothing if you're not willing to step up and do something to help make it better. So, I do what I can when I can to help out. It makes me feel good to know I've done something good and I help out with a lot of different things.

I got an idea to do a Blogger Toys for Tots Fundraiser. I got it damn late it the year though so there isn't much time to work with this for Toys for Tots. Don't know what that is? Let me inform you.

Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, an IRS recognized 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity is the fund raising, funding and support organization for the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program. The Foundation was created at the behest of the U. S. Marine Corps and provides support in accordance with a Memorandum of Understanding with the Commander, Marine Forces Reserve, who directs the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program. The Foundation has supported Toys for Tots since 1991.

The mission of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.

Like I said, I donate something every year. Sometimes in toys and sometimes in money. Sometimes more and sometimes less. Sometimes I don't have much money to spare but I do a little bit anyway because I know even if I'm hurting a little, some little kid and their family is hurting more. I prefer doing toys though. I like going in to a store and picking out toys that I know will make some little kids happy. I never see the kids who get these but I always wonder if they liked what they got or if they were just happy for something. See, I may never want any kids of my own but I love and adore children.

I want to propose to y'all doing a Blogger Toys for Tots Fundraiser.

On the left side of this blog where all the junk is there is a PayPal donation button there.

If you want to donate money to help buy toys for Toys for Tots, just use that.

I will take all the money that gets donated and go buy toys. For proof that I'm doing what I say I'll be doing with the donations, there will be pictures of the toys as I buy them and pictures/video of all those said toys being loaded into the car and more upon being delivered to a Toys for Tots location.

I know with the economy being what it is, things are rough for a lot of people (myself and my boyfriend included) BUT if you can spare $10 that would be enough. With $10 I can buy an action figure, toy cars, Legos, a stuffed animal, various kinds of dolls, PlayDoh sets and various other things. $10 will buy a toy and in some cases more than one toy. I can get 8 or 9 Hot Wheels cars on $10 so no amount would be too small. You can do something to help and leave all the work up to me.

I'm not expecting a huge outcome from this because like I said, I know life financially sucks for a lot of people right now. If you can give just a little bit though, you'll be making some faceless nameless little child happy.

And yes, I know Christmas isn't about the toys and other presents but imagine being 7 and not looking forward to waking up Christmas morning because Santa couldn't bring you anything this year. It's a bummer.

If you want, please feel free to post about this on your blog with links and send people over. I would appreciate that quite a bit. If you do pimp this post out on your blog, email me after you do so with the post link so I can include you in a post that's to come later on.

The Blogger Fundraiser: Toys for Tots!

The Blogger Toy Fundraiser Toys for Tots portion was a success! I want to thank each and every one of you who donated money. Whether it was the person who donated $3 or $5 or $10 or more than that... THANK YOU!!!! I'll tell y'all the total number of toys and total amount of money raised somewhere in this post. You'll have to read along and check out the pictures to find the numbers though. =o)

Here is me getting my toy shopping on for the first day....










That was Day 1 of the shopping. I got over $200 worth of toys that day. =o)

Now on to Day 2. I took less pictures in Target because honestly, it was busy as hell and loud as fuck in there and I was concentrating more on getting around all the parents, screaming kids running around and trying to concentrate on not going over the spending amount.





That might not look like much but there are more toys in there than there were from the Wal-Mart shopping trip. I also spent over $200 in Target as well.

The Wal-Mart bags & Target bags. Plus, a Toys R Us bag filled with stuffed animals.





We took all these bags and loaded them into the backseat of the car. The backseat was full, the floorboards were full. It was getting dark so I didn't get a fantastic picture of the full backseat but you get the idea I hope. =o)





Then we were off.

It took a while to get there. One, I don't live in the city we were going to. Two, the person I first talked to on the phone gave us the wrong directions and we went in the opposite direction but luckily figured out our mistake, called again, got someone who gave really good directions and the right address and made our way back to where we needed to be. Finally, we were there....







They put all the bags into cardboard boxes. For those who don't know, they inspect the toys before wrapping them, boxing them up and shipping them to where they're going to be handed out. I couldn't get more pictures or video because my cell phone battery was close to dying and it wouldn't cooperate with me.

The Toys for Tots people where quite happy to see we brought in so many toys and we were thanked by several different people. We had so many they thought we had come from a business or some organization. I said I wrote a blog and had taken up a collection online to help raise money to buy toys. The guy helping put the bags in the box said that was awesome and thanked us again. Then we watched as they pushed the heavy box across the floor and then left.

This started as a fundraiser I was doing in the blogging community. It poured over into my real life though because after going two days in a row with no donations from any bloggers, I worried that there was no way I was going to reach the goal I wanted to reach. My goal was $300. I reached $300 with the help of bloggers and people in my real life. Then a few more bloggers donated more and several more people in my real life donated more. The grand total was $533. For those who wanted to know how much of that was blogger raised vs real life people I know raised... just say it was damn near even between the two groups in my life and leave it at that. I don't personally think it matters which spectrum donated more and I've tried to politely say as much to all who have asked so far. I'm sorry if you find that rude but it doesn't really matter who donated more. What matters is every single dollar that was donated to Toys for Tots to help get a toy to a child who otherwise wouldn't anything. Those bags had a total of 83 toys in them.

The shopping was a bit more difficult then I thought it would be actually. I tried to get a decent equal amount of boy toys and girl toys in all the age appropriate categories. Without spending more than $10 on a single toy. I was thrifty and tried to get the most out of the money that was raised. ;) I planned out my shopping based on what sales were going on where and it worked out fantastic for the cause I think.

Again, THANK Y'ALL SO SO SO SO much to every single person who donated anything at all to the Fundraiser. Thank you to every person who tried to help spread the word, retweeted links, made posts on their blogs, etc. I appreciate it so very much. I plan on doing this again next year so hopefully y'all will join me again.

If you weren't able to donate for Toys for Tots & still want to help, you can always donate to the Toy Drop put on by the Genesis Women's Shelter (click the link to read more about GWS) if you're able to. I clearly don't expect the success that Toys for Tots got but every little bit helps! Last day to donate for that will be the 19th or 20th at the latest. Thanks y'all!

Happy Tuesday!!

Treat Exchange!

Thanks to the wonderful people who have donated money for the fundraiser. I appreciate your help very much. Whether it's $3, $5, $10 or more than that, any amount is enough to help buy a toy so a kid will have something to open on Christmas morning. If you want to donate, please do! I edited The Blogger Fundraiser post with more information on Genesis Women's Shelter so please check that out! I promise, next year if (when!) I do this again, I'll start much sooner. ;) If you want to see picture proof of the toys I've got already, click here. Toys for Tots shopping will be finished tomorrow! Anything that gets donated tomorrow until the 17th goes towards the Toy Drop at the Genesis Women's Shelter for battered and abused women.

Moving on! Veronica of Another Suburban Mom has organized a treat exchange! I'm a little late getting my post up today so sorry about that. I stayed over too late at my mom's hanging out with her and YB last night then got home and was wiped out so I just went straight to bed. This was a little after 4 AM, lol. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of chocolate. I like dark chocolate because it's not as sweet but that's about it. Something I love? Chocolate covered pretzels! A lot of people don't know just how easy they are to make. So for my treat today, I'm going to put up my chocolate covered pretzels!

Here's what you'll need:

* 12 ounces chocolate chips, any variety!
* 2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
* 20 old-time style (thick, not thin) pretzel twists

*Variety of holiday sprinkles and/or chopped walnuts
(Optional ^)

I like to use dark chocolate for mine but I also use a mix of semi-sweet and milk chocolate morsels for other people. My boyfriend hates dark chocolate but loves almost every other type of chocolate. For these in the pictures, they're 3/4 semi-sweet morsels and 1/4 milk chocolate chips. You can also use white chocolate and those turn out really well. Or do the semi-sweet/milk chocolate mix and then drizzle with chocolate.

What you do:

Line two large cookie sheets with waxed paper.

Combine chocolate chips and vegetable shortening in a double boiler stirring until smooth.
If you don't have a double boiler (like me!) you can use a pot of water and then use either another pot or a glass bowl to place inside the pot of warming water. Don't let the water actually boil because if it gets too hot, your chocolate will harden. Also don't add water to thin out the chocolate, that will make it clump and you won't be using it. If you want it to thin out more, add a little more shortening until you're happy with the consistency.


With mine, I like to leave a loop free of chocolate and I use that as a handle to dip the pretzel into the chocolate. If you want the whole pretzel covered in chocolate, use a fork, dip each pretzel into chocolate mixture and gently tap off excess. Place on the wax paper lined cookie sheet.


Sprinkle on whatever toppings you like or just leave plain.

If you want to drizzle with white chocolate, a fork dipped in the white chocolate works well.

Leave pretzels undisturbed until completely set. I put mine in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.

If you don't want to use pretzel twists, you can use sticks or rods and they work just fine and turn out just as yummy.

Since I made these with my Christmas goodies, I used holiday sprinkles, red sugar and walnuts to decorate my chocolate covered pretzels with. Enjoy the pics!

Happy Friday!!

The Blogger Toy Fundraiser: Toys & HNT

A lot of y'all already know that I'm doing a fundraiser to buy toys for Toys for Tots and also to provide for the Genesis Women's Shelter in Dallas. If you don't, PLEASE take the time to read the original post about it. There have also been more details about GWS added as well if you want to check that out.

I decided that for The Blogger Toy Fundraiser, I would take some of the money that has been donated and go early to buy some toys. That way anyone with doubts about if I'm really doing this or not might feel more assured about donating $5 or $10. I'm a cynical and un-trusting person myself so I understand the skepticism some people have (openly) had towards me asking people to help give me money for this. So, I went early Wednesday morning when I knew the toy aisles would be completely re-stocked and there wouldn't be anyone else shopping hardly. Here are pictures I took and sent in to Twitter via TwitPic Wednesday morning to document my toy buying fun.



Now, I said I was only going to spend X amount of what was earned and I ended up spending quite a bit more. I didn't spend it all and I will still have some to spend when I finish the shopping tip up at Target on Saturday. You still have time to donate money if you want to. I've had people donate $3, $4.50, $5, $10 or whatever. Any amount helps in some way. Some of those toys you see such as the footballs cost only $2. The little tiara's that some little girl will hopefully enjoy cost $4. The Toy Story Memory game cost $5. You don't need to donate a lot to be helpful.

The fundraiser isn't just for Toys for Tots either. The donations are also going to the Genesis Women's Shelter for their holiday toy drop so that the kids in the shelter will have something to open Christmas morning. Most of the women and children that wind up there don't get there with much. They're victims of domestic violence and abuse and they're trying to get away, trying to find a safe place, trying to start over and make a better life for themselves. One without violence, threats of violence and abuse or the possibility of it towards their children. That's not an environment you want to be in and certainly not one you would want your children to grow up in. The shelter does a lot of great things to help the women and children who stay there and the holiday toy drop is just one of these things. I edited the original Fundraiser post to add more information on GWS if you're interested in seeing that. If you donate and would prefer you money to go towards GWS instead of Toys for Tots, that's fine, make sure you let me know and I'll do that.

I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who has helped me out with this.

Thank you t all the people who have pimped my cause and links out on their blogs. (If you have, let me know so I can check it out and tell you thank you!)

Thank you to the (so far) 14 wonderful bloggers who have made donations for this.

Thank you to my boyfriend, my family and my real life friends who have helped try to spread the word and who have also donated to the cause.

I know the economy is rough right now. As I said, I've been affected by it as has my boyfriend and his family. Life sucks for a lot of people right now but any little bit you could donate to help would be enough to make a difference in some kiddos life. That's worth it to me. Hopefully that makes it worth it to you as well.

Now, on to the Toy Fundraiser pictures.

Happy Thursday!

An update, half naked news & a giveaway to come.

There's nothing much here to see right now but....

Later tonight, around 10 PM Central time, there will be a snazzy update on The Blogger Toy Fundraiser and a special holiday HNT. ;)

Thanks to the wonderful people who have donated money for the fundraiser. I appreciate your help very much. Whether it's $3, $5, $10 or more than that, any amount is enough to help buy a toy so a kid will have something to open on Christmas morning. If you want to donate, please do! I edited The Blogger Fundraiser post with more information on Genesis Women's Shelter so please check that out! I promise, next year if (when!) I do this again, I'll start much sooner. ;)

Also, the Boyfriend & I decided that after the fundraiser is over, we're going to give a little back and do my very first blog giveaway. We'll be giving away a gift card and possibly a few extra little goodies as well. You don't have to have made a donation to enter the giveaway but there will be something you have to do so we can pick a winner. ;) More details for that will be coming soon though.

Also.... y'all head over to see Essin' Em and tell that lovely lady HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Wednesday!

I need something more, to keep on breathing for...

Hello there!

I want to say THANK YOU to the 9 very wonderful people out there in internet land who have donated to The Blogger Toy Fundraiser. I appreciate y'all giving what you can. In one case that was $3, in other cases it was $5 to $10. In a few others it was quite a bit more. No matter the size of the donation, I appreciate it because every little bit will help in what I'm doing.

My Youngest Brother is 14. He is such a sweet, caring kid with a big heart. He gave me some money for the fundraiser too. I didn't ask him because he's 14 and doesn't get a regular allowance and I would never ask a kid to give me money, lol. I didn't have to ask, he just did it because he wanted to help too. The kid has probably $20 to his little name unless he's spent some of it, lol. I thought it was so sweet honestly.

My little sister also donated some money for it. As did my parents and four of my real life friends.

One of my boyfriend's nice co-workers gave me some cash to buy a few toys for the fundraiser. Not only did she give me the cash, she also supplied me with the first toy for the fundraiser!

How awesome is that? I'm no fan of Barbie personally but I hope that whatever little girl ends up with this toy enjoys it.

I was out and about yesterday with my mom and YB. We were in Target and then Wal-Mart shopping for some gifts to mail out to my dad in CA since his birthday is coming soon. It was under $20 While in there, I was checking out all the toys and mentally calculating everything I was looking at. I'm going to have so much fun going toy shopping on Saturday. I normally hate to shop but this is different. I'm excited for Saturday when I'll be doing the Toys for Tots shopping. I also can't wait to get the goodies home and take pictures so y'all can see what your wonderful donations helped buy. =)

I know the economy is rough. Trust me, I can relate and I'm in the same rough spot a lot of other people are in. Whether it's $3, $5, $10 or more than that, any amount is enough to help buy a toy so a kid will have something to open on Christmas morning. If you want to donate, please do! Also, if you pimp my links and fundraiser out on your blog, please let me know so I can visit and thank you. =)

Okay moving on... =)

Today, any time I'm listening to music, I'll be rocking one of my Pantera CD's. It was 5 years ago today that Dimebag Darrell Abbott was killed. Pantera is one of my favorite bands and it was because of his amazing guitar skills that I love their music so much. I hate to say it but usually I am rather indifferent about famous people passing because I don't know them and hey, tons of people die every day. I was sad when I was sitting in my room, listening to music, when it came on the radio that Dimebag had been killed. I had never got to see him play in Pantera or the band he was in at the time (Damage Plan) before he died. I was going to get to see him play live too but that didn't happen since he was killed. I was really bummed because I admired the guy a lot.

My Dallas Stars play tonight! In Anaheim. Hopefully it's a good game and hopefully we win. Go Stars!

If you asked me some questions for that big question post I was doing, I got ALL the answers posted yesterday. I didn't actually realize I had so many because I didn't really keep track but damn! There were quite a bit of questions there, lol.

I got my dad a Blu-Ray dvd for his birthday gift. I got a kick ass deal on it because it was a relatively new movie and it was on sale for $14.99! I was so excited. Target had about 20 Blu-Rays on sale for $19.99 or less and they actually have a pretty big selection. All the stuff on sale was good stuff for the most part too. I think I'm going to go back and see if there is anything else I might want to get him for a Christmas gift. He works really hard and really long hours. When he goes home, he relaxes by watching a movie or two. We got him the Blu-Ray player last year for Christmas and his collection of movies for it is pretty slim still. Partly because they're normally damn pricey.

I've had this song stuck in my head for a few days now. I can't stand listening to it though when I play my iPod. I might be in the mood for Nightwish, Lamb Of God, Keith Urban, The Temptations or something else but I always get this P!nk song in with whatever I'm listening to. It's such a pretty song. I love piano and I love P!nk's voice.

Happy Tuesday!