Tag Archives: Donation

Photo-A-Day, Toys

Kora and the Stormshell Shield

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LightSeekers Kora
Photo-A-Day #4619

Less than a week ago I was posting about LightSeekers. I had received a couple of the new smart action figures; Boulder and Zyrus. Then I saw a sale on Amazon.com and there were some accessories and some trading card packs that I was interested in. So I picked up a few of them including the Stormshell shield for the Water characters. Any LightSeeker can use this shield but if it is aligned to the correct character and element then it works better.

I am intrigued by the LightSeeker Card game and have a number of the start packs. I have the water, tech. mountain and dread is coming. I would like to try and play the game with Eva sometime when we have time. I think she would like it and would be good at it. These card games are really helpful in learning how to make quick decisions based on math and also how to plan things out.

I also have a couple of packs of Magic the gathering cards that I got at HASCON that I’ve been meaning to crack open and play with the kids, too. Don’t even get me started about the Dungeons and Dragons Starter pack that I received and have yet to use. Where is the time for all these games?

Speaking of toys and games, we made our annual donation to Christmas is for kids on Monday night. One of the late additions to the donation was from MEGA CONSTRUX & MEGA BLOKS. They sent over some great sets for American Girl, Wellie Wishers and Barbie Dreamtopia. I thought that Eva would have wanted the American Girl sets but she decided that she’d rather they be donated so we did a video talking about each set and then added them to the donation. Here is that video.

Continue reading Kora and the Stormshell Shield →

Family, Photo-A-Day, Toys

Christmas is for Kids Collection 2013

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Christmas is for kids
Photo-A-Day #3169

Today we took the toys that we had collected all year and those that we bought on our family shopping trip and set them up for the annual pre-donation photo. While the overall donation wasn’t as large as last year we did end up with a decent haul for the Christmas is for Kids charity. We didn’t even get over to the annual toy drive like we’ve done in past years and I really missed that. We’ve been doing the donation thing for a few years now and it is a fun family activity. I’m glad that we’ve been doing this ever since Eva was really small. Now it is something that we all look forward to doing. Time to get started for next year.

Contest

Win $10,000 for your School from Del Monte First Day of School Photo Contest

Soon I’ll be trying out the all new Del Monte Fruit Squeezers. I’ll even have a contest so that you can win some to try yourself. But before I get my samples I wanted to tell you about a contest that could get you $10,000 for your school.

Del Monte is launching the “First Day of School Photo Contest” through Facebook! All you have to do is upload an original photo of your child on their first day of school or yourself on your own first day of school. The top 20 Finalist photos will be posted to the Del Monte Fruit Squeezers website, and fans will have the chance to vote for their favorite photo. The winning entry will receive a $10,000 donation to a school of their choice!

Here is how to get started: Continue reading Win $10,000 for your School from Del Monte First Day of School Photo Contest →

Photo-A-Day, Toys

Preview of Our Christmas is for Kids Donation 2012

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Photo-A-Day #2793

Christmas is for Kids is a program in my area that collects christmas gifts for kids to be distributed to parents who are in need. For the last few years we have been fortunate to be able to make donations to the program through the Annual Toy Drive sponsored by Achin’s Garage. Each year we set aside money every month to go on a shopping trip with the kids to buy toys for Christmas is for Kids. We started doing this to help Eva understand how lucky she is and also how we can help people in our area. Toys are things that she can understand. She can feel sad that kids might not have toys on Christmas. She enjoys going and selecting toys for kids. She was also such a big help as we reviewed all of the toys.

Tomorrow is the Toy Drive and I decided to set up all the toys on our stairs like we did last year. I went back in my posts to find all the posts of our trips to the Christmas is for Kids Annual Toy Drive. Check out these past year’s.

I’m blown away by all the great companies that helped us with this year’s donation. I still have a few more to post tomorrow as well.

Photo-A-Day

Activision Family Game Summit Swag Bag

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We’re doing something a little different with the Swag Bag that we received from the Activision Family Game Summit in New York City. We’re donating much of it to Christmas is for Kids. Please take a moment and watch this video on Youtube and if you can please give it a thumbs up.

On December 1, 2012 from 10:00am – 2:00pm Achin’s Garage is sponsoring a Toy Drive of NEW unwrapped toys at Attleboro Farms to collect toys for Christmas is for Kids. We’ll be making a huge donation thanks to so many great sponsors.

Christmas is for Kids Site
https://benspark.com/cifk-home.htm

Event Link
https://www.facebook.com/events/240400599421341/

Attleboro Farms
https://www.facebook.com/attleborofarms

Achin’s Garage
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Achins-Garage/159273517436080?ref=stream

There are many cool toys and games in the donations, any of them I’d recommend for your Christmas Shopping List.

Photo-A-Day

Christmas is for Kids Shopping Trip

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Photo-A-Day #2429

We had a fun morning shopping at Target as a family today. We did our annual Christmas is for Kids Toy shopping trip. Christmas is for Kids is an annual toy drive in our town. Achin’s Garage does this toy drive each year and we save money all year long to get some toys together to give to the event. this year we were able to get together a good amount of money and we picked up a bunch of great toys for kids. Continue reading Christmas is for Kids Shopping Trip →

Blogging

Thank you XShot for the Donation to FNAAS.org

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Shelby wins an XShot

Tonight we went to the FNAAS.org (Friends of North Attleboro Animal Shelter) appreciation dinner. My sister Tara is on the board for that organization and the dinner tonight was to thank everyone who has helped with the North Attleboro Animal Shelter. There were many organizations and companies that helped by donating door prizes and food for the evening. I contacted my friend Michael from XShot and asked him if they could donate some pocket XShots and XShot iPad 4 cases. They stepped right up to the plate and donated a bunch of them. So thank you for the donation XShot!.

Photo-A-Day

Christmas is for Kids 2010

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Photo-A-Day #2066

Today was a good day. It started off with me getting some work done and a post completed for a guest spot over at Blog World Expo. For the next week weeks, and last week, I was asked to write a few posts that had to do with creating content around certain topics. The first one was just about creating content but the second I think was much better crafted. It is all about food and creating content for your blog focused on food. That goes up Monday.

Continue reading Christmas is for Kids 2010 →

Family

Team Eva’s Farm for Heifer International

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Sweet Maple Alpacas

Last year as a family we decided to give a donation to Heifer International. This is a charity that we believe strongly in and so we saved $10 a month for a year to give a substantial donation. Last year we donated enough for some chickens and a pig to a family that needed one. This year we were able to donate near enough to purchase a llama. But this year we decided to start up a team so that YOU could help stock Eva’s Farm.

While I was at Blog World and New Media Expo I met up with a group from Heifer International. They told me about how I could put together a team through Heifer so that a group of people could pull together to raise funds for this great charity. It was then that the idea of Team Eva’s Farm became a spark in my brain. It took me a while but I finally got the team up and running.

Okay, so more about Heifer International. Heifer’s mission statement is

Heifer’s Mission to End Hunger

Heifer envisions…
A world of communities living together in peace and equitably sharing the resources of a healthy planet.

Heifer’s mission is…
To work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth.

Heifer’s strategy is…
To “pass on the gift.” As people share their animals’ offspring with others – along with their knowledge, resources, and skills – an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.

Heifer’s History
This simple idea of giving families a source of food rather than short-term relief caught on and has continued for over 60 years. Today, millions of families in 128 countries have been given the gifts of self-reliance and hope.

I believe in helping people to sustain their lives through work. That is why we have put our time and money towards this charity. By putting away $10 a month we’ve thought about Heifer every month for the past year.

Won’t you join us as part of Team Eva’s Farm? Just click the button on the top of the right sidebar.

Review

Reward Yourself with Sunshine Rewards

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The other day I put a call out for people to help me raise $400 for my friend Maureen. Maureen was put through credit card hell because of a mistake on the part of the Marriott Renaissance Orlando. I put up $100 from a review that I will be doing for the Eye-Fi memory card through SocialSpark but I also asked for help and offered reviews of blogs for $50. The call was immediately answered by Tricia Meyer of Sunshine Rewards.

I took a look at Sunshine Rewards to find out what it is all about. Sunshine Rewards is a loyalty program dedicated to paying you back for reading emails, visiting websites, and shopping on the Internet. Let’s just say I am impressed at what Tricia has created here. I don’t think I would have any clue where to start to set up a program of this nature that helps people earn and also saves them money. I also noticed that Tricia doesn’t advertise Sunshine Rewards very much. I asked her about it and she told me this.

“What I like people to understand most is that we are a coupon and cash back site that is run by a family and takes care of each customer individually. You can see from our forum, videoblog, facebook page, etc. that our members know us personally and know that we are going to do everything that we can do take care of them. We don’t do much advertising because our best members are the ones that are referred to us by other happy members.”

That is a very nice model for customer service. I think that is why Tricia was drawn to help out Maureen. I can tell from Tricia’s personal blog as well as through the work on Sunshine Rewards that Tricia and her family care about helping people find great deals online.

Can you also think of any other rewards program that has meetups like going to Ohana’s at Walt Disney World? Check this out.

I’ve also checked into the Forum on Sunshine Rewards and it is hoppin’. With a large community of people at Sunshine Rewards and so many big name advertisers and shopping options Tricia is certainly doing something right. A lesson that Marriott could have learned from. Thank you so very much Tricia.

You can check out more on Tricia: