Fundraising Blog Up and Running (or, "Walking" is more like it!)

Great news! You can now purchase Breast Cancer Awareness items (hand crafted by ME!) on my Fundraising page. Just click here or the link on the right side of this page (under my profile). Items are all below $10. There are bracelets, bookmarks, cell phone charms, die cuts, and more! And, do you want to know some more great news? There is a lot more to come! Soon (Monday!) I will be posting candles, bracelets featuring Swarovski Crystals (so pretty), embellished frames, and necklaces! This is just the beginning everyone! Please check back often for more goodies!

13 Penguins-a-Plunging

My husband and I drove the 4 hours (multiplied by holiday weekend traffic, jetlag, and sickness = 7 hours) home to Vermont Friday night for a special event held in Newport at Lake Memphremagog every winter. My sister wanted to make sure that we visited this weekend because she committed to fundraise for the Vermont Special Olympics and (I'm serious here...) jump in the lake! What's more amazing is that there are A LOT of people who do this! That amounts to a lot of money donated to the Special Olympics as well as a lot of cold people! I'm so proud of her for doing something so meaningful and for such a good cause. I think that deep down, my family is very charitable (not to mention a little crazy! Have I told you that my husband, sister-in-law, and I are all walking?) We debated back and forth about which is crazier, jumping in a lake in the dead of winter, or walking 40 miles! We'll see what happens because she wants to walk with me next year and I told her I would do the Penguin Plunge with her. I think we may be equally crazy now... But hey, it's fun and both are for a wonderful cause. To her credit though, it was twenty degrees outside and she did this in her bathing suit!

To find out more about the Special Olympics and to make a donation please visit: www.vtso.org
For more information on the Penguin Plunge please visit: www.penguinplunge.org

A Minor Setback

I apologize to all my adoring fans out there (How many people are reading this blog? Maybe 2? Haha!) for not posting last week. If you are within the 80% of the people in Northeast US that were sick last week, you know how I feel, if not, you are lucky! I battled a cold and stomach bug most of last week and I am FINALLY feeling much better. For the most part, my body still hates me, but I think we are slowly getting back to being on speaking terms again.

As for the walk, my team members and I (well, three of us) are excited today because we are going to an intro meeting in Boston tonight. Hopefully we can get some more fundraising ideas as well as get (more!) excited for the walk! I will let all of you (i.e. both of you) know how it went tomorrow!

Fundraising is picking up for me as I have about 40 letters to send out to family and friends explaining the commitment I have made and asking for donations. If you are reading this because you read a letter I sent you and decided to check out my blog, then HI! How are you? Please post a comment here to let me know you are reading! And, because I sent the letters to my closest friends and family, you can assume that if you are reading this then I miss you and we should get together soon!

I also have pictures of items I am going to be selling which I will be posting online with prices. They should be online by the end of the week. I have bookmarks, bracelets, key chains, cell phone charms, iPod cases (for the new Nano!), packs of die cuts, embellished frames, and more! Everything is made by me except the bracelets which are made by my Mom and the iPod cases which were made by my Mother-in-Law. I know, my family is amazing! We are all pretty crafty people (the girls anyway!) and I am very glad for that.

As for training, there will be more updates to come as soon as I regain strength and get to go to the gym again. Stan has been reglected lately and I'm pretty sure he's mad at me too. :-)

11 DEGREES!

I had a very eventful day yesterday... When I went to get in my car to drive to work I couldn't get into the driver's side of the car. The door just wouldn’t open so I had to climb in through the passenger side door. I thought that I should take it as a sign and not go to work (also, it was 11 degrees outside), however I thought that I was being dumb and finding an excuse to take a day off. Little did I know what was store for me. I got to my car last night at the train station I drive to in the morning to commute in to the city, unlock the driver's side door (it worked!), climbed in, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. I took the key out, put it back in and turned it, still nothing. The lights weren't turning on, nothing was happening. Great, dead battery. So I called my Mother-in-Law, and after attempting to use my husband’s AAA number (I am not a member, apparently) and exclaiming a variety of obscenities to my steering wheel. When that didn't help the battery not to not be dead I called my boss, who lives just north of me. She was still at work and had jumper cables in her car. (I thought that the problem may have been the starter as well because it was making an unnerving ticking sound so I was a little worried we would be there for a while...) We connected red to positive and black to negative and the lights turned on in my car! YAY! (Did I mention that it was 11 degrees outside, which means it was also 11 degrees inside my car?) I started my car and Marie followed me back to Wilmington. The car started fine this morning and I drove to the train station no problem. We'll see what happens tonight I suppose. On top of all this, we are due for a storm tomorrow morning going into the day. I don't tend to pay attention to the weather, but when I turned on the TV this morning to see what the temperature in Boston was (still 11 degrees) they were talking about the big, bad, and equally ugly winter storm warning for Boston tomorrow! Also, my big bad immune system which has been working so hard to keep my white blood cells doing their good little jobs has officially plummeted into no-man's land where it is currently weeping in a heap of not-so-usefulness wondering where it went wrong in life. Thus, I am coming down with an equally big, bad, and definitely ugly cold. Needless to say I went home, made some soup and tea and took a bubble bath for about an hour last night. (Also, I remember cranking the heat up to about 75 degrees in the apartment because it was 11 degrees outside... I wasn't sure if I had mentioned that...)

Despite all this, I must say that my day yesterday is absolutely nothing compared to someone battling breast cancer. Taking on something like this, something that is bigger than I am, certainly puts things into perspective. I think that everyone really wants to be part of something bigger than themselves and it is honestly bringing me an incredible amount of joy. Working toward a specific goal and doing it with people I care about is going to make this a terribly fun few months!

Stan says my steps yesterday totaled 5,024. My total today (up until right now, at 1:00 in the afternoon) are 5,197. I’m pretty sure today is shaping up to be a good day for Stan! :-)

Getting even MORE excited!

I am so excited about the fundraising I will be doing this week! I am relying on a lot of people (some of them I have never even met!) to help me reach my goal. I am going to be sending out letters to family members and friends, a mass email to just about everyone I know, and emails to people who have blogs which I read to ask if they can possibly post something about my fundraising on their sites. I am excited but also nervous because I really want to reach my goal. I often get it in my head that people don't want to donate and that it is too much of a hassle. I think I really need to remind myself that everyone wants to help, they just need to be asked! That's how I am anyway. I will give money to a great cause if I know it will benefit a lot of people, and I think most people feel the same way.

This week my husband is gone to Geneva on business so I am going to be a jewelry (and other cool items too!) making machine! I will be posting pictures and prices of the items I am making on my fundraising blog (http://walking40foracurefundraising.blogspot.com, or click on the link to the right) so stay tuned for a bunch of goodies! All money donated from these items will go directly to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I am donating my time as well as materials for these items. That's right, 100% of the price of the items go to the walk.

Training this weekend was not as successful as I would have liked it to be. I am going to go ahead and blame it on the fact that it was SO cold in Boston, however to be honest I wasn't very motivated to train either. We mostly stayed in and I made a bunch of items for fundraising. :-) Stan says that total steps for the weekend was 4142... (I told you it was bad!)

Cool Little Widget

If you look to the right side of this page (no, your other right... just kidding!) there is a widget below the About Me section of the page called "ChipIn." This widget allows anyone to donate to mine and my husband's fundraising for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Anyone can insert our widget into their blog (or myspace, or facebook, etc.) and encourage people to donate through it. It uses the secure PayPal site, however you do not need a PayPal account to donate through it. Please feel free to check it out by making a donation (or 5! Haha!) Please contact me if you would like to include it on your site, I would be more than happy to help you through the process.

Feeling the Burn

I have noticed that the male supporters of my walking team (^^Twin Peaks^^) have a somewhat interesting mindset about the walk. The women in my group (Me, Amanda, Nicole) are already working diligently at getting fit and ready at the gym to attempt to walk nearly 40 MILES without ending up half-way through the walk laying in the fetal position on the ground while other walkers look at us like we are crazy (which, granted, we probably are anyway, but that's beside the point.) Our male supports however are under the impression that the fundraising is the "hard part." I agree that the fundraising is difficult, but it is certainly not impossible. When considering joining our team the men (I don't want to name any names here, *cough* Jason and Dan *cough*) say that they are "not worried" about the walking. HELLO BOYS! 40 MILES! Let's evaluate just how far 40 miles really is, shall we? 40 miles is roughly equivalent to 80,000 steps; it is exactly equivalent to 70,400 yards; 211,200 feet; 2,534,400 inches; 633,600 hands; 12,800 rods; 3,200 chains; I think you get the point. It is like walking the entire length of a football field 587 times, in TWO DAYS! 40 miles is a LONG way! Just yesterday I walked nearly 2 miles on the treadmill at the gym (roughly 3.3mph) and today I am in a significant amount of pain. I am determined however, to work very hard for the next 98 days so that I don't end up in the fetal position on the ground shaking and crying like a lunatic.

Every day I will update my training progress with all of you. I recently bought a pedometer to monitor my steps and the miles I walk every day. Everyday I have a personal goal to walk at least 10,000 steps. Yesterday I walked 10,736 steps! (roughly 3.5 miles, according to my pedometer!) I have named my pedometer Stan (Steps Taken up to About Now) so stay tuned for more updates from him!

The journey begins...

The story begins with a simple text message on a typical Monday morning...

Lisa: Hey sam, you want to walk 40 miles with me for Breast Cancer?
Sam: Are you crazy? I can't walk 40 miles, I will die!
Lisa: No you won't, 40 miles is nothing. Do it!
Sam: Ok!
Lisa: Awesome! Let's save some boobs!

So, I registered a few days after this conversation and here I am now, a week later, sore from training and thinking up a million different ways I can possibly raise $1,800 in the next 3 months! All with my buddy Lisa to thank!

Personally, this cause has effected me somewhat distantly. I feel incredibly blessed that I have not had to see someone I love fight this disease. Breast Cancer does however run in my family. My great grandmother was a survivor and my cousin is also a survivor. This disease has certainly effected many people I care about, even though I have not seen the struggle it caused. (I was too young to remember.)

I have been training nearly every day (when I don't do yoga) and making a bunch of different crafts to help in my fundraising efforts. I have so many ideas for bracelets, keychains, knitted items, and a whole bunch of other potentially great things to fundraise with!

I started a team shortly after registering and recruited my sister-in-law to join as well. Her way of doing things is to jump in head first without looking and (as expected) she signed up yesterday and already raised over $75.00! Go AmandaLynne! My friend Nicole is deep into fundraising as well and is always at the gym training lately. She participated in a 7 mile long training walk which she completed no problem a few weekends ago! My team is doing very well! Together we have to raise a total of $7,200 to participate in the walk! It's a lot of money, but there is no doubt in my mind we can do it! Please check back often for updates on our journey! We named our team ^^Twin Peaks^^ and are so excited to be working toward this together!