Action Plan

If you'd had a chance to see the video I posted a few days ago, you may be looking for ways to make a difference in your community. My husband got a whole list of ideas started for our church, so I'm sharing them with you now too. Some of them are local places, but I'm sure you can find a similar organization in the local areas you live in.

Here's what he came up with:


~Start saving all your aluminum and steel cans for Cans for Hope, a local non-profit that raises money through recycling efforts for girls rescued from sex-trafficking. (www.cansforhope.org)

~Volunteer one time to serve a meal to the poor or volunteer to help at one event at Denver Rescue Mission (www.denverrescuemission.org)

~Give up one family dinner out per month and sponsor a child with World Vision. (if you can’t afford it, give up two meals! Or go in with another person or family)

~Organize a food drive at your church or your workplace and collect non-perishables for a local food pantry

~Volunteer one time to serve a meal at the Delores Project (safe house for homeless women in Denver) www.thedeloresproject.org

~Volunteer to help at one event for SafeHouse Denver (shelter for victims of domestic violence) www.safehouse-denver.org

~Give up 2 Mochas a month and donate that money ($7) to the Mocha Club, a charity that looks for effective ways to help the poor in Africa.  Bring at least one other person in on this idea with you and start spreading the word!
Q: How far does $7 go in Africa?
A: Great question! Wrap your mind around this…$7 in Africa can:
SUSTAIN life for 1 person living with AIDS.
PROVIDE clean water to 7 Africans for 1 year.
        SAVE 1 person's life from malaria.

~Build a Lemon:Aid stand in your community to quench the thirst of someone in your neighborhood, then donate the funds to Blood:Water Mission to quench the thirst of someone half way around the world in Africa with clean, safe water. Over 320 million Africans lack access to clean, safe water - people like you and me - smart, talented, hopeful people - and we can partner with them to make a difference in their lives as well as ours. (www.bloodwatermission.com)


~2 Weeks Can Change a Life.
By giving up what you'd normally drink in exchange for the water from your tap you can save that money to help build clean water projects for African communities in need. Make water your only beverage for 2 weeks. Save the money you would usually spend on beverages. After 2 weeks, donate the money you saved by making such a simple choice and give someone clean water for a lifetime. (www.bloodwatermission.com)

~Organize a 30 Hour Famine with a group from Encounter, work, or your home Bible Study group.  Raise money for each hour you go without food to be donated to World Vision in order to make an impact on world hunger. (www.30hourfamine.org)

~Choose a country in the world where hunger is a real issue (check out www.30hourfamine.org/hunger/where-were-fighting-hunger).  Spend two weeks praying about how you can get involved in bringing solutions to this solvable crisis in your chosen country.  Start spreading the word about what you discover!  Optional: present your findings to your church family in a 3-5 minute presentation at the beginning of a service.


~Organize a Diaper Drive at your local church or your workplace to help homeless families with this basic necessity.  Donate your stash to Denver Rescue Mission (www.denverrescuemission.org)


~Free the Girls!! Collect used bras from all your girlfriends and/or organize a Free the Girls event to help victims of sex trafficking. “We will ship the bras to our partners in Mozambique, Africa. These safe houses provide shelter and rehabilitation for girls and women who have been rescued from slavery. The bras will be washed and mended, and sold by the safehouse as a means of supporting their rehabilitation programs—and more importantly, as a job opportunity for the former slaves. Of course, each woman in the safehouse will be able to choose several bras to keep.” --www.freethegirls.com

Another one he didn't mention but is an awesome opportunity especially this time of year has to do with gardening! We will participate this year and are looking forward to being a blessing to the hungry in our community. So what is it? If you have a vegetable/fruit garden already all you do is designate all your produce from some of your plants to be donated. So you can plant an extra plant or two or you can just donate from what you already have growing. Local food pantries rarely get fresh produce, so through this gardening ministry you're able to provide some fresh produce to the hungry. It doesn't cost you anything (unless you buy extra plants) and all it takes is your time, and since you're already growing the plants, it's just a matter of dropping your food off. What a simple idea, right? If you are a local reader and are interested in finding our more information you can check out this website.

Hard worker

I'm so thankful for my husband who is working extra hard these days! His job is requiring some extra hours at work for trainings for a transition they'll be making this summer. Then, on top of it, he's added a few more responsibilities at our church for a short time frame too. All this to say, he is busy! He's working a lot of extra hours right now, which has been a bummer for our family time, but great for our debt plan! Thankfully, this craziness is temporary!! :)

Tutoring

I've started a side job. I'm officially a tutor and have a regular student booked through the summer. I'm looking forward to having a little extra money coming in to speed up our debt snowball. I'm also putting together a Spanish class for elementary aged students on Mondays, if any one is interested. Other age groups are still forming, no details arranged yet. We'll see where this new adventure takes us!

Romance Styles

Sticking with the "love" feeling for the week, I thought I'd share these fun romance styles I learned about a couple weeks ago. There is a whole little "test" (not at all scientific) to see which kind you are, but I'll just share the descriptions with you and you may be able to figure it out just from those! :)

So as you think about the way you respond to and show love through romance, chose the one that best describes you.

*Rock n Roll Romance-everything adventurous! These are the people that will go skydiving together or other crazy adventures. You're moments of romance are all BIG and bold, it's not frequent because the size of the adventures are too hard to do regularly.

*Pop Romance-Things are fun, exciting, and more routine. Spontaneity is key, go with the flow attitude. It's a very sweet romance, but nothing over the top.

*Country Romance- moments are significant to this style. Romance can be simple, but holds a lot meaning. They are the practical romantics.

*Classical Romance- There is a purpose behind their romance. Very creative romantically and the details matter. Some what of a perfectionist mind set. Memories are special.

*R&B Romance- romance happens naturally. They have a strong sensuous side and are good with words. They are good at drawing the person they love toward them.

So, what are you? What is your spouse? I thought this was fun! :) Any guesses for us based on the stories I shared on Valentine's Day?

Happy Valentine's Day!

In honor of the day of love, I thought it would be fun to share with you a few of our romantic stories! ;) My husband is such a romantic, it's easy to come up with some great stories. There's been several times that he's written songs for me and serenaded me either privately or in public. He's made up some scavenger hunts that take me to some of my favorite places around town to treat me to some of my 'loves'. Last year I woke up on my birthday to breakfast and flowers and no kids for the day. After I was ready we walked out the front door to find a limo waiting for us to take us around town for a day of pampering and fun. See?! He's such a romantic. I love him!! :) One of the best things about him is that he makes a big impact out of small, meaningful things for me. For example the scavenger hunt was to places like DQ, Starbucks and Arby's! Nothing fancy at all, but the part that made them meaningful were the cards he included at each stop that shared a memory of a time we've enjoyed at those places and also noting my favorite things from that place. It's the thoughtfulness that takes it over the top! Telling me he remembers, he pays attention to the things I enjoy and the memories that have been meaningful to us.

Today, he went with a simple, thoughtful gift. I woke up to a card on our cupboard and a gift bag below it. As I opened up our kitchen cupboard I saw he had bought new tupperware and re organized that cupboard for me. I know! Totally NOT romantic in of itself, but he knows I HATE that cupboard and our tupperware was always a MESS! It was special to me because it was something I wanted to change, but never made the effort to deal with it, so he did it for me. :) I think it probably cost him a whole $20 and my life will be easier because of it. Then, remember the gift bag? Yeah, that's the fun one! :) Well, fun for me at least. He got me a 4 pack of my favorite Starbucks frappuccinos. Again, probably not the biggest and best gift he's ever given me, but something simple to make my day. I NEVER buy those for myself because they are what I consider to be an extra expense and not necessary, so it's nice of him to get me a treat he knows I'll enjoy.

Love lesson from me today: sometimes it really is the simplest things that can make the best presents! Making someone feel special isn't about the price or fanciness of the gifts you can get for them, it's that you thought about a way to bless them when you were buying it.

Happy Valentine's Day friends! I hope today you've had an opportunity to cherish, appreciate and bless on the ones you love.

Forgotten Update

As I was browsing back through some older posts, I noticed that I forgot to give you a car update ! It was a mixture of good news and bad news, but mostly good considering the circumstances. As I shared before, the repair was quite an expensive one. The price the mechanic quoted us was any where between $800 and $1,700 depending on the damage they could discover as they went along. As you can imagine we were far less then thrilled by the quote. We were very discouraged to say the least, not only was it in the midst of our Christmas shopping, but it also happened right after our computer started failing too!

Now, the good news, the actual cost of the repair was $759. I know, it was A LOT, but compared to the numbers they had told us, not only was it on the lowest end, it was BELOW the lowest end!! :) I like to think God threw that in as an extra bonus just for me! ;) Since I had been praying for it to be less then what we were expecting. The other piece of good news is that we didn't even TOUCH our emergency fund. Since we'd had some extra in our budget for those two weeks, it completely covered the whole bill. AND, just because we have an awesome mechanic who is so good to us, he fixed my power steering problem (that was completely unrelated & just an extra thing we mentioned to him to look at) for FREE!

As crummy as it is to have car problems, we saw God's hand in all of it. Taking care of us, providing all of the finances for it and even giving us a few extra blessings in the midst of the troubles.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy your time with your family and friends this week!! Merry Christmas!

The Simple Pleasures

This week I was thinking back on some of the moments that just made my heart smile this week, most of them didn't cost any money, didn't take much time and/or effort. They were essentially, the simple pleasures of each day.

-Snuggling with the kids in bed before getting started with our day.
-Baking cookies with my daughter
-Decorating cookies with friends
-Making and building new friendships
-Getting to sleep in
-Having a family lunch out
-Listening to the funny things my daughter says
-Watching my kids love each other, play together and laugh with each other
-My husband coming home from work an hour earlier then usual
-Having the money to cover all our car expenses without causing extra stress
-Making plans for a girlfriend outing
-Getting extra hugs and kisses from my kids
-Getting everything done in time!
-Enjoying a lovely cup of coffee, catching up with a friend
-Getting a free Starbucks holiday drink

It's amazing how each day there are moments that make our lives full of blessings. What simple pleasures are you enjoying this week?

Gifts with a Purpose

Every year we've gone to the store at 4 AM on Black Friday along with thousands of other Americans to buy our Christmas gifts. It's a fun tradition and we've gotten amazing deals and usually taken care of all our shopping in one day. I've loved it and it's been awesome! But this year we're doing things a little different. This year, I've shopped a little along the way and enjoyed the opportunity to buy things that will go to a better cause. Some of the ways I've done that this year have been to buy from local vendors in order to support their home business or a hobby job for a stay at home mom. We've also bought gifts through Samaritan's Purse in honor of some of our family members, who I know will be blessed to know other people's needs will be met in their honor. I haven't bought all our presents this year from those sources, but it's the first year we've done more of that then just buying everything from the store. I'm liking it. Maybe it'll be a new tradition! :)

Have you bought or made gifts that are fulfilling a great purpose this year? What kinds of things have you done?

A calmer Christmas

Have you noticed how many advertisements have words in them like, "enjoy a calmer Christmas", "take the stress out of the holidays", "simplify gift giving", etc? I think I get an add at least once a day in my inbox advertising a product or store that has the solution for a Christmas that is less hectic. It's got me thinking, if it's such a big deal in the marketing realm, there must be a lot of stressed out people trying to make it through this month with some sense of sanity by the end of it all!

Whatever happened to those things actually being part of the Christmas season? Calm, simple, about loving and gathering friends and family, simpler expectations, less pressure to find, buy or make the perfect gifts, all of what the season used to mean. I think our culture is crying out for that simplicity to come back. I know I am. As I've shared with you, we are making that a priority this year, to keep things calmer, less hectic and more meaningful, focused on what's really important and what we're really celebrating. For our family, it's a time of celebrating our Savior's birth and that day was SIMPLE! He was born in a stable with animals, laid in a food trough and his parents slept on hay. There was nothing glamorous about it, but from that simplicity came the most powerful and magnificent life in all of human history. Which again, makes me wonder (I know, I shouldn't think so much! ;)), why are we working so hard to impress people, make a big scene, be franticly working on our Christmas plans, when from a seemingly meaningless moment, history was altered forever.

A calm Christmas...that's what we want this year. One like the day Jesus was born, celebrating HIS coming and HIS gift to us among our family and friends.

God Provides

We've always had all our needs taken care of and never missed a payment on any bills. We know it's because of God's provision for us. Again, today as I was doing our two week budget, there is evidence that God is taking care of us. We found out last night our car repair has the potential of being quite expensive, possibly even more then our emergency fund. *sigh*. Not, excited about it at all! :( Yet, there is still reason to be thankful and hopeful because after all our bills are paid, food is put on the table and gas in the cars, there is even more extra this paycheck then usual. Of course, I'd love to put that all toward our debt or some toward saving for our computer, but under the current circumstances, it is evidence to me of HIS provision. He is taking care of that bill for us. He is making a way for us to pay for something we didn't expect, but He did and He prepared a way for us. I'll still be praying that the repair is less then we're expecting though! ;) Wouldn't that just be a lovely extra blessing?!?! :)

Thankful...

We have SO much to be thankful for this year. We have been so blessed by God and his goodness to us. We have a beautiful family, all of us have our health, we have all that we need and even lots of extra bonuses and 'wants'. I'm thankful that this year has been a year of learning and growth in the area of our finances and also in our ability and desire to serve and reach out to those around us. The list goes on! Thank you for joining us on this journey too!

A raise = an extra blessing!

This week my husband was offered a new job, which also comes with a raise. We are so thankful for this pay increase because it's giving us the opportunity to pay off debt quicker. We know that God has provided this for us and count it as a blessing from Him on our family. I'm certain God is pleased with our desire to have our finances in order and honor Him by living within our means. It's a further testament to His provision for us. God is SO good to us!