Help Kids Help Kids Charity Bazaar

On Saturday, May 9th, my girls and I will be at the Help Kids Help Kids Charity Bazaar in the Framingham Circle Furniture from 10AM until 1PM! The store is at 235 Worcester Road (Rt 9W) in Framingham, MA and there will be mutliple groups of children selling their handmade items to raise money for charities of their choice! It's a wonderful way to pick up a last minute Mother's Day gift, to treat your kids to something in the midst of the Mother's Day weekend, and so much more!

Our table will feature a few dozen handmade beaded charm bracelets (mostly using acrylic, metal, and fimo beads/charms instead of glass and stone), marine life earrings and pendants, and some yummy baked goods! Maybe even a little more! My daughters and their friends designed each of the bracelets and I've been working hard to finish assembling them!




100% of the sales at our table will go to The Lowell Wish Project which is a wonderful charity that helps provide new and used goods for many other charities, homeless shelters, emergency items in the event of fires and illnesses, families transitioning to apartments from the shelters, and so much more! We felt that it was really important to try and help families that are suffering during these ever-shifting economical times and we've seen families that have benefited directly from this organization, so we knew that we had to raise money for them!

We'd love to see some of you there, or learn about the projects that you are doing in your own family to help make a difference! Thanks!

Card Donation Drive for Soldiers to Use

Club Scrap: Mirror Mirror - Greetings to Go, UM Stamps; Ranger: Adirondack Inks - Espresso, Stonewashed, Pesto; Seashells Inks - Starfish Green; Glossy Paper;

My daughters and I are working on a bunch of packages to send overseas to soldiers serving the Army in Iraq! We've got three wonderful guys who are currently serving there and have promised to distribute all of our goodies to as many fellow soldiers as they can and to be sure and share with those who don't get many care packages from home. But beyond the regular treats, we thought of something else that they could really use! We're sending them unused handmade cards that they can in turn send home to their loved ones, and they don't have to pay postage, the military does!

We're looking for more people who would love to send us cards for them... Very good themes include I Miss You, ILove You, Happy Birthday, ThankYou, blank cards, etc. We'd also love a few Father's Day cards to send this month! Everything is welcome, but maybe refrain from 20 glittering pink butterflies in a row as most of the people sending these will be men who may shy away from picking those cards in front of their platoon! :) But plenty have little girls at home, still!

If we have more than these guys can handle, I'm talking to them about trying to maybe set up a basketful at their post office with a freebie sign so that everyone there can scoop them up! And we'll get the girls' Brownie troop more involved in collecting additional cards, stationary, and soldiers to help distribute in Iraq & Afghanistan! I already have a huge thank you to DanaM, Cheryl M, and Pam G for already helping!

Just send me an email at neithj@gmail.com and I'll send you out our mailing address!

Thanks!

Neith


Club Scrap: Paisley 3/06 - papers; FFC You're Invited - UM; Club Scrap Hybrid Ink Pad - Earth; Assembly Line Cardmaking - 9 of Spades;

North Shore Music Theatre - Digital Layout, Freebie, & More!

Club Scrap: Gimme a Ring 1/09 - Club Stamp Digital Kit;
Adobe: PSE 7.0 Cookie Cutter Shapes, Layer Effects and Styles; Altered Hues;
Font: Honey Script;

Thanks to my mother, my girls and their cousin were able to go to one of the last scheduled performances at the incredible North Shore Music Theater! After watching the High School Musical 2 show, the cast came out to request donations in a final attempt to keep the theater open and a large number of them walked around with donation buckets, while the leads gathered at a table to sign autographs and take photographs with their fans. The girls were thrilled to pose with Addi McDaniel, who played Gabriella!

It was a magical performance that was so special to them and so trendy... but feeling like a part of the effort to keep the theater open is what will keep this particular musical dear to their hearts forever!

About a week after the show, NSMT announced that they have one more performance scheduled for February 7th, 2009. It will be a stage production of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day! It may be just a hair young for us, but we can't miss it at only $10 and potentially being the final performance ever at this 55 year old not-for-profit theater in the round!

Anyhow, if you've ever enjoyed a performance at this theater or want to support it, please go to their website and help out! There is hope that enough donation will keep it afloat while it continues to provide live theatre, concerts, and more to the North Shore community, provide teacher's guides and discounted or free admission to schools, and teach theater arts directly to our youth at their academy!

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On another note... I enjoyed making this layout so much that I created a free digital template from it, a 2-layer Quick Drop Digital Layout for Club Scrap's 6x6 Page Swap using their Free Digital Demo, and another layout based on the swap page!

I can't give out the layered QDDL here, since it uses Club Scrap's materials, even though they are freebies. Please grab yourself one of the kits and join the swap! Layouts are due by the end of the month! But here is a preview of it (the actual swap players will get it as two flat jpegs without a white box for a photo since I'm too anal to want to control anyone else's photo dimensions)! However, the free digital template that I've created matches this layout, but is 12x12 and saved in grayscale. Please download the full template at http://neithj.googlepages.com/NeithTemplateStarsSqr.zip!

 

And... here is that other layout... Unfortunately I did not use my own camera this Christmas and am still waiting for the high res copies of everyone else's photos, so I only have this grainy emailed photo for now! Rest assured, the photo will be replaced by the higher quality image as soon as I have it! This layout used my new template as well as the Club Scrap Free Digital Kit Let Me Count the Ways!