A couple Christmas` ago, i waited until the last minute to do my gift shopping. Feeling overwhelmed with a baby and a two year old, I had absolutely no ambition to confront a mall. I also was thriving to follow a minimalist lifestyle. Picking up dozens of little toys each day that had been touched for half a second was severely getting on my nerves. I don`t keep books I've read, extra pictures, knickknacks, candles etc... My house is bare of plants cause i can`t seem to keep them alive. Fake plants or decorative dried flowers are not welcomed in my home since they are usually layered in dust and spell out dead energy. I cringe at goody bags, McDonald's toys, Dollorama crap and my kids daily arts and crafts . They have a life span of 24 hours max before I chuck them out. Purging is therapeutic to me. My husband and i have moved 5 times in 10 years. I can't say i have an emotional attachment to anything except maybe a small amount of pictures. Even at that, i just threw out 80% of my pictures if not more. Getting rid of "things" makes you appreciate what you've got. I love that less is more. Anyways, all this to say, i was out of gift ideas for my father and my in laws. They are doing great and have everything they need. So when i tossed the mail on the counter, a certain pamphlet caught my eye. It read "Great gift ideas". To my surprise, these were the best gift ideas. It was from an organization named Plan Canada. Through them you can buy goats, pigs, chicken's etc... to help a person, family, school or community in a developing country. How ideal! I was going to buy these for everyone on my gift list in their name. However, when my dear husband came home, unlike me, he was in the spirit of the season and wanted to do the traditional gift buying. I shrank a bit but agreed that we could postpone this great idea for the next year. Well, a few years have come and gone since the great idea was put on the back burner. Then it dawned on me, at my daughters daycare, there was a penny fund raiser being held since it has just been announced that the penny is no longer being manufactured. That's when it clicked. This idea was never going to excite my husband but it sure would excite my forth grade students. I could barely sleep that night knowing how thrilled they would be to by goats or hens or pigs for people in need. I started this project a week ago and we have already raised 300$ in pennies. That means we could buy lots of annimals, or a well for a school, mango trees, a birth certificate or a healthy birth for mother and child, a scolarship or a motorcycle ambulance. Now that is awesome. Talk about making every penny count. I love it.
M
No comments:
Post a Comment