It's a (Great Big) Give Jewelry Bracelet Giveaway!

Remember Give Jewelry? If you don't, please go read. These are amazing folks who are working so hard on behalf of orphans in Bali. 

The children of the Bali Orphanage come from all over Indonesia. Many of the country’s islands are poor, which means families are often split up because of death, poverty or disease. Because Bali is one of Indonesia’s more stable islands economically, orphaned children often find themselves here.

Give Jewelry has partnered with the oldest and most established orphanage on the island. It’s run exclusively by volunteer nuns,and it operates with extremely modest means.

Under Indonesian law, only citizens of the country can adopt children from its orphanages. This makes placement challenging for these kids – as a nation that struggles economically, few Indonesians are in the position to take on an extra mouth to feed – and many of these children live their entire lives within the orphanage before leaving to get married or find work.

At any given time, between 45 and 80 children call the orphange home. And there is little hope for any other. The nuns, the children, and the people behind Give Jewelryare family in the truest sense of the word. 

We think a lot about crafting home here on this blog. A purchase of Give Jewelry is a truly beautiful way to help craft a home a world away.

Give Jewelry is offering you a $250 dollar, "Take care of all your Christmas shopping at once" giveaway.  The winner of the giveaway will also have 10 weeks of food (that's 210 meals!) donated in their name to the 2 new orphanages Give is just beginning to help on the islands of Sumba and Timor. That's how Give Jewelry works:

1 piece-1 child-1 week of food

So, really Give Jewelry is offering you a chance to give--to the children and to the people on your Christmas list. All the bracelets come packaged beautifully in a way that lets the recipient know that they are doing something wonderful for some children a world away. 

These are beautiful bracelets with purpose.

Give Jewelry is a sustainable movement to provide food for children in orphanages throughout Indonesia. The vision is simple: every bracelet purchased directly benefits kids in need. So no matter what type of bracelet you choose: friendship,charm, leather, beaded, cuff or any of the ther bracelets, you’re really choosing to make a difference In the life of children.

There are lots of ways to enter the giveaway (and you can enter more than once):

First:

o    Go to the site  www.give-jewelry.com and choose your favorite bracelet and put a link back to the bracelet and a short description of it in the comments below.

·         Extra Entries:

o   Subscribe to the Give Jewelry blog

o   “Like” Give Jewelry on Facebook

o   Follow Give Jewelry on Twitter

o   Subscribe to Give Jewelry YouTube channel

o   Post about Give Jewelry on your blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: www.give-jewelry.com

FREE Cause Bracelet for In The Heart of My Home Blog Followers:

FREE Cause Bracelet for In The Heart of My Home Blog Followers:

Please head over to Give and do a little Christmas shopping  to set in motion the “1 piece-1 child-1 week of food.”  Write “Elizabeth” in the comment box to receive a free cause bracelet of your choice!  Choose which cause bracelet, Relay for Life Purple or Breast Cancer Awareness Pink, by writing “Elizabeth-pink” or “Elizabeth-purple” in the comment box upon checkout. 

And take a moment to watch Give in action. You'll be glad you did.

Gee, thanks!

and sorry I'm so late to the party! I just learned that this blog has been nominated for the Homeschool Blog Awards. Thanks for the nod in my direction; it was very nice of you to think of me. Today is the last day to vote, so you might want to mosey over there and check out all the categories. The lists of blogs in every category are great places to find new gems to read. 

Will I See You There?

A Silk and Wood Childhood~ and a Giveaway!

Mary Beth had an interview the other day for a babysitting job. The little girl, around three, had a bright, colorful collection of playsilks. Mary Beth made quick work of those silks, neatly tying them into beautiful gowns and fluttering capes. And, almost instantly, they were fast friends. Mary Beth is a playsilk master because playsilks are very much a part of our every day work and play. Our home is filled with silk and wood and lots of tools to fuel the imagination of children and the grownups who love them.

We've made silks into bridal gowns, hung them from soccer goals, strung them between the trees as banners, draped, caped, and escaped in them. We love our silks!

You can imagine how delighted I am to welcome Sarah's Silks as a sponsor.

 I've got a thing for Sarah in silk:-).

Playsilks are incredibly verstile, amazingly beautiful fabrics that are pure fodder for imagination and glee. At Sarah's Silks, you'll find a wide assortment of silks in different shapes and sizes and lots of suggestions for how to use them. You'll also find simple, beautiful costumes that beg to be brought to life by children still eager to infuse playtime with wonder.

Playsilks make a lovely drape over a nature table. They are the perfect backdrop for small doll play and they serve infinite uses in a playhouse. 

Sarah's Silks is offering a free star print mini-silk to everyone who places an order of $50 or more. Just enter the code FAMILY at the checkout. These would make a very nice drape on an advent table. 

But wait; there's more!

This beautiful pink fairy dress will make one lucky little girl smile. To win it sign up at Sarah's blog to receive a newsletter or become a fan on Facebook. Then leave a comment below and tell me how sweet these silks are!

Have a happy imagination kind of day!

Crisis Management in the Laundry Room

ESPN has 24 hours of non-stop basketball airing right now. In honor of pre-seasons that work just as well as post-seasons, I'm returning to this laundry strategy. For 24 hours straight--because I'm certain it will take that long:-)

How to Climb Mount Never-rest

This post is for people who have giant mountains of laundry in their houses. It is a not a post about how to have a sensible, workable, successful laundry system. Other women have written about those, women who are wiser, women who are more disciplined. This is about crisis laundry. I am a woman who has a very bad laundry situation.

After a few weeks of intense basketball playoffs and tournaments that collided with soccer season and a string of unexpected doctor appointments and my failure to work one of those brilliant systems, I have twenty loads of laundry to do. So here's what to do (because, well, I've been here before, so I know what to do).

Bring all the dirty laundry to one location, preferably somewhere out of the main traffic areas of your house. This is not a short-lived operation. Yesterday, I had Patrick carry all our dirty laundry to my large master bathroom. Sort the laundry. This is laundry triage. The first pile is "Daddy's Laundry." All of Daddy's clothes go there and they are washe

d first. The second pile is towels. These are the second to be washed. That means that when Daddy gets home, all his clothes will be clean and he will have his choice of clean towels. If he ignores the piles in his bathroom, he can operate under the illusion that laundry is all caught up and his wife is an exemplary homemaker.

Then there is a pile of jeans. Everyone's jeans (except Daddy's) go in this pile. It gets washed third and we can know with certainty that everyone will have bottoms to wear very soon. Then, there are piles of lights, darks, pinks, sheets, and dishrags. I confess to have already washed all diapers before the grand laundry project began.

Laundry moves from the bathrooom to the washer and then the dryer and then ends up in the family room. The only exception is that first load of Daddy's Laundry. That gets taken back upstairs and put away immediately (remember the illusion?). As we progress through the piles upstairs, the pile downstairs grows. By the time the first game of the NCAA basketball tournament begins, there is a healthy pile of clean clothes on the couch. 

You tell a bunch of eager boys that the only way they will be allowed to sit here in front of the television and watch hours of basketball is if they fold clothes. Timeouts are for the putting away. It works. They fold. They put away. You are quite sure you are a genius. At the end of the first day of March Madness, you only have 15 loads left.

And then the baby throws up in the van on the way to soccer practice. Your mind lurches in fast motion. More sheets in your future. More towels. Several changes of baby clothes. How many people will throw up? Where will they throw up? How much more laundry will they create? Stinky barfy laundry will move to the head of the triage piles. And it will not wait its turn in the master bathroom--ew.

Dear Lord, thank you that it's only the first round of the tournament. Thank you there will be almost endless games all weekend. Thank you for an abundance of clothing, for high efficiency washers and dryers, for laundry detergent and Mrs. Myers lavender dryer sheets. And God, thank you for basketball, for oh-so-many reasons.

 For more laundry inspiration, read here:-)