A Lil Charity

Each year my family and I aways say we need to do some sort of charity for Christmas since that is a great part of Christmas but we have never done it until this year! I decided to rally us together and the end result was fantastic I think! I decided that since my brother has volunteered for the Utah Aids Foundation that that would be a great place to do some charity. I got on their website and found that you could donate money, adopt a family, make necessity stockings, or food baskets so I put feelers out and we decided to adopt 2 families, do a food basket or 2, and do some necessity baskets!

We met at my mom's on a Thursday afternoon and brought with us some bathroom necessities that we already had at our home that we had extras of such as: shampoo, tooth paste, tooth brushes, body wash, soap, etc. We didn't have tons so we went to All A Dollar (don't dis cause we were able to get loads of things for little which meant more stuff for others!).

What adopting a family is is a family puts what they need/want most on a card and people get those items for them. For example, one of our families had never had any sort of baking things. No cookie sheets, baking pans, measuring spoons, cups etc so that's what we bought! Then we went a little further and got them stuff to make with their new bake ware like sugar cookies with sprinkles, cupcake mix, cake mixes, cooking spray etc.

Our other family needed some sheets and an alarm clock. Derik was in charge of the sheets and man he bought the really nice like 500+ count sheets! What a lil giver he is! lol We added a few extra things in their basket as well.

Since we were able to get a lot of items at All a Dollar we were able to make quite a few little necessity baskets! We also made a random basket too that had soup, detergent, toilet paper, paper towels and a few other randoms thrown in. Then my brother has a good friend who travels a lot for his business and he always bring home the shampoos, conditioners, lotions, mouthwashes etc. He donated those to us so I made little necessity bags that were just simple but nice. These weren't the crappy kinds of shampoos either. They were nice stuff!! We didn't end up getting done until 11pm. I was beat! It was so much fun though and we felt great after we did it! When my mom and Derik brought all the baskets to the UAF, they were all so excited to see all the stuff we made. Wish I could have been there just to see their faces. Still knowing we helped others has made a great impact on this Christmas Season for me!

Although we all didn't have tons and tons of money to spend we did what we could to help out others. My sister wasn't able to join us for the packaging in person but she was there in spirit and she made a wonderful donation to help us bring some comfort to those in need! I think this will become a Christmas tradition! Helping others.... is there a better tradition?!