My dear blog, it's been too long.  WAY TOO LONG!  Despite my lack of posts, the blog gets a good amount of traffic and I still feel very passionate about purposeful spending.  Time for me to put some effort in with new posts.  Going to start with a favorite cause of mine, Sole Hope.  Sole Hope is growing in wonderful ways.  They need a storage facility to store supplies, shoes, cut shoes waiting to be sewn, all those good things.  They have the opportunity to purchase a used shipping container for much cheaper than they could build or rent a storage facility but they need the funds to purchase this shipping container.  Here's where the purposeful spending opportunity comes in.  A fundraiser has been set up with Yankee Candle to benefit Sole Hope.  40% of your entire purchase goes right to Sole Hope!  Shop by clicking HERE.  Your order will be shipped directly to you.  Super easy!  Order some super smelling candles for the Spring! I'll keep the total raised updated below.

Thanks!

$61.20 of $6000 needed for the container has been raised so far through the Yankee Candle sale.

RagsToRiches4Haiti

Time and again, many of the causes I feature on my blog prove that one person can make a difference.   I am excited to have found another one of those in Chelsea with RagsToRiches4Haiti.

You can read her whole story on her website, but in short, a trip to Haiti in July 2011 captured her heart for the country and the people.  She prayed for ways that she could support some of the ministries in Haiti.  Shortly after, she connected with one of the Haitian translators, Rony, from her trip. He shared with her about 16 children that he had taken off the streets after the earthquake and had been caring for as his own ever since. She kept in touch with Rony and after time and prayer, it became clear that this was the ministry she hoped to partner with. 

At about the same time, a friend sent Chelsea a pattern for a t-shirt scarf and she knew that this was an answer to her prayer.  It was what she would do for Rony's kids (whom you can read more about on her website), and RagsToRiches4Haiti was born. 

 

You can purchase a scarf from Chelsea's shop on Etsy.  I love that they are made from recycled t-shirts.  They are SUPER reasonably priced, even with shipping.  I chose this white string scarf with pink flower. So what is your part in this story?  When you purchase a scarf from RagsToRiches4Haiti, though you are just one, you will make a difference, just like Chelsea has. 

Flipping Furniture

This is a different type of post from my typical entries, but still in the line of being a Conscientious Consumer.  Flipping furniture; it's not a euphemism for me cursing at a dresser, it refers to taking an older piece of furniture and turning it into exactly what you want.  I recently did this with a dresser for my daughter.  We thought it wouldn't be difficult to find her a new dresser at any furniture store.  I was wrong, at least if we didn't want to spend a lot of money. Well made dressers were super expensive and less expensive dressers were cheaply made and still around $500.  But we kept on looking. 

Then I started looking on craigslist.  Nothing older was exactly what we were looking for.  I toyed with the idea of refinishing something.  My criteria though would be that the dresser had to be a super deal for me to put that much work into it and then if I failed it wouldn't be a huge loss.  I found a local listing for a few dressers that might fit the bill and my daughter got on board with the idea, super excited that she could pick a color for the dresser.  The dresser we ended up with was listed for $75 and we paid $50 for it.  It wasn't super high quality but it wasn't junk either.

The dresser in it's original state.

Don't get me wrong, there was A LOT of labor involved, all pretty easy and simple steps, but a lot of steps.   But I love a deal so much and creating something special for my daughter felt good. 

• First I removed all the old handles and cleaned the dresser.  It was very dirty. 
• I filled in the old drawer handle holes with wood filler because we were switching to knobs. Then I sanded it lightly to rough up the surface to accept paint.  Tip - if you are doing this a power palm sander comes in handy and saves a lot of time.  There was an area on top that had to really be sanded because of a think layer of grime.  But I knew good preparation would pay off in the end. 
• Then I wiped it down again to make sure all the fine dust was off.  It was finally ready for paint.  I used Behr premium plus ultra paint plus primer in one in a semi-gloss.  My daughter decided on coral for the color.  I wasn't too sure about such a bright color, but I thought if we put some paint on it and totally hated it we could always go with a different color for the second coat. 
• Another light sanding in between coats of paint and then a final second coat. 
• Once it was all dry, I finished it off with a coat of wax and then my husband installed the new knobs. 

This is the final product what do you think?


The finished (or refinished) dresser.

My daughter LOVES it, even though she wasn't sure about the paint color after the first coat.  But it looked a lot different with the second coat and then the drawers put back in. 

How much did I spend?  About $150 in all.  $50 for the dresser then another $100 for the new knobs (about $3 each), paint, wood filler, wax, paint brushes and sand paper.  The cheapest dresser was about $500 so we can safely say I saved about $350, plus sales tax.  That feels really good.  I was exhausted when I finished, but warning it is highly addictive.  I can't wait to start another project like this!

Any questions I can answer about this?  Please comment below and I would be happy to answer!

Sole Hope Happenings

There are some great new opportunities to support Sole Hope.  I've already blogged about some of those ways and they are listed here.  Here are two new LIMITED time opportunities.

The first thing is there are only a few more days to take advantage of a SUPER sale over at the Sole Hope Store.  It's Sole Hope's 3rd birthday you see, and to celebrate they are offering 33% off everything in their store with discount code HAPPYBDAY through the end of March.  They have some adorable baby shoes - which makes a great and purposeful gift.  

Second, here is any easy and fun way to donate $10 to Sole Hope. Basically, order a bottle of Cultivate Wine at Macaroni Grill or Ruby Tuesday now through April 7th.  Snap a pic of you with your bottle, then tweet it to  @CultivateWines at @MacaroniGrill / @RubyTuesday to support @SoleHope.

Sole Hope and I say thank you for all your support!

Cupcake Kids - part 2

Last year I blogged that we were going to have a Cupcake Kids bake sale.  You can read that post here that explains the WHAT and the WHY of having a sale, but I was not so good about following up with pics of our sale and how it all went.  We are getting ready for our SECOND Cupcake Kids sale this year so I figured it was about time to share some pics and get people thinking about getting their kids involved in this great project this year. 


So many generous people donated LOTS of cupcakes!

The kids had a great time drumming up business from passersby.



We also had BeadforLife Jewelry for sale.

How much money did we raise? To tell you the truth I had to look it up because I couldn't remember. I thought it was like $200. We made $435 for the imprisoned children of Uganda. Selling cupcakes! We sold another $400 in BeadforLife Jewelry. It is not about the money though. I am sure there were bigger sales than ours. It was about getting kids involved in helping out others. It was about raising awareness in our community.

And in that respect it was a big success.

Looking forward to our sale again this year and to change it up a bit we are going to offer baskets made by Ugandan grannies from the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project.   If you are interested in hosting a Cupcake Sale of your own, please visit The Cupcake Kids website for more info. and to register your sale.   Please keep in mind your sale can be as simple as a little table with cupcakes at the end of your driveway.  Every little bit helps and what a great lesson for our kids in giving to others.

She Does Justice

www.shedoesjustice.com

I have Sole Hope to thank again for finding this great little online shop, She Does Justice.  Each month the shop features an organization and donates 10% of the profits to that organization.  And you guessed it, this month (March 2013) that organization is Sole Hope.  So many cute items to choose from - headbands - (I am loving headbands right now), infinity scarves in pretty colors and patterns, prints and canvases, and bracelets. 

Since I (gasp!) do not yet own an infinity scarf but have been wanting one, that's what I chose, in one of my favorite go-to colors, peacock.   Shipping was $4 and it arrived exactly 1 week after I placed my order.  I wore it 4 days in a row, and received lots of compliments on it.  Now I wish I had more infinity scarves.  They are perfect for untalented scarf tie-ers like me and toasty in the chilly New England spring. 

Whaddya think?

And since I ordered my scarf even more colors and patterns have been added AND a gorgeous hand stitched hoop from fellow Sole Hope Ambassador Natalie Ensor that says "hope". Hope, one of my favorite words. The hoop is only available for the month of March and ALL proceeds from sale of the hoop benefit Sole Hope.  So go, check out the shop at She Does Justice.

Easter Candy

Just a quick reminder to think Fair Trade when it comes to Easter chocolate this year. Not always easy to find, and maybe a bit pricier than the traditional brands (not necessarily cheaper than high end chocolates) but worth knowing that it was not harvested with child and/or slave labor.  As I like to say, speak with your dollars.  If this starts a trend, the companies that do not use Fair Trade chocolate WILL start listening and hopefully change. 

I also think this is a great teaching moment for our children.  Educate them about Fair Trade.  I've taught mine so when I said that their Easter baskets might be filled with Fair Trade chocolates, their answer was an enthusiastic YES!

Check out my previous blog post here and here for ideas on where to buy Fair Trade chocolates and if you have any favorite brands, please share in the comments section.