Hi!

Okay. So lately my life has been CRAZY!  All last weekend I spent helping out my oldest daughter's booster booth at the local Cherry Festival to help raise money for the marching band and color guard at her school.  Midway through I found out that my younger daughter was going to need $645 to participate in the dance squad for same school.  AND that she will need the money by the 8th of July.  Uh, yeah....that's A LOT of money!   (not something I have lying around if you know what I mean)  So on top of helping out at the festival my younger daughter and I started a mad scramble to try to find ways to earn the money for her in such a short period of time. Unfortunately my daughter is still 13 so her getting a part time job isn't an option.

We started by collecting bottles and cans, then a friend was nice enough to agree to donate $20 if my daughter would hand out coupons for her restaurant at the local Cherry Festival Parade.  The same friend was nice enough to introduce us to a local business owner, who not only donated money to the cause in exchange for my daughter handing out coupons for her business, but who has also agreed to donate a gift basket that my daughter will be selling raffle tickets for! (really the generosity of people always amazes me!)
We are also having a garage sale on the last weekend of this month.  

I mentioned on Facebook that my daughter was looking for ideas and one of my friends suggested ChipIn.  That way if my friends or family wished to donate money and they lived out of state they could do so without having to send money via the mail.  (I've had a few state that they wanted to help)

So that is what has led to this post.  Since the site doesn't seem to have an option to place the widget on Facebook.  (If anyone knows how it can be done please let me know! Thanks!)

So I've decided to post it here on my blog.  If you look to the left side bar you will see it at the top.  I've also placed it at the bottom of this post.  That way my friends and family can follow the link from Facebook to my blog and then use the Chipin widget here.

Am I asking for any of my readers to donate?  No, I just wanted to let you guys know what this widget is and why it is here.   I didn't want to offend anyone by having them think I was using my blog to beg for cash.  (I do plan to share pics of the gift basket when we pick it up, if only cause I think it is really awesome that someone could be so nice!)  

Also if anyone has any other ideas of things that my daughter could do to raise money she and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.



*someone did say that this was a horribly large amount for a school activity and why doesn't the school pay for the team.  Yeah....unfortunately due to the massive lack of funding in schools most teams and extra-curricular activities have either had to find ways to fund themselves or be cut altogether.  To find out more about how you can help at your own local schools click here to go to my other blog were I discuss schools and volunteering, etc.*