31 Days

I use an app called Dreamdays 365. In it, I track big upcoming events like vacations, major work events, runs I am training for...you get the idea. Today I saw this:

A strange mix of excitement, sadness and panic hit me like a ton of bricks. The isn't news to me. I have known Joy of Life was around the corner, but this year it takes on a much different meaning. 

• 31 days till Joy of Life.
• 31 days till my last day at Cancer Care Services.
• 31 days till I will no longer have my friend and mentor, who has believed in since the first time we met 10 years ago, as my boss. 
• 31 days till I leave the familiarity of the non-profit world for the for-profit one.  

31 days until I close a huge chapter on my life. 

But on the flip side there was this: 

• 33 days till I start my new job at Pier 1.
• 33 days till I "go to the dark side" of corporate America. lol. 
• 33 days till I get to start doing 1 of my 2 dream jobs.
• 33 days till I don't have to go home every night at stress if I my event doesn't make goal, services will be cut and people will lose their jobs.  
• 33 days till I get to meet a lot of new people. 
• 33 days till I go work for a company who has built a culture that values giving back to their local community.
• 33 days till I get a raise. :)
• 33 days till I get to have new experiences and new adventures.

33 days till I start writing a new chapter of my life. 

Needless to say the next 31 days will be filled with lots of emotions. But emotions aside, I still feel the same overwhelming peace I did when I first laid eyes on the job posting. I knew that it was where I was supposed to be. After I spoke with the recruiter, it confirmed it was where I was supposed to be.  After my interviews, I knew even more it was where I was supposed to be.

For several months I had prayed God would open a door to an opportunity that fed my soul, helped provide for my family and would allow me to glorify him. I prayed that when that door opened he would give me the peace to know that it was the right door for me.

 A few times I "thought" I found that door, but never felt the peace I had prayed for. This time the peace was there from the start. So even though I am sad and little scared of closing that chapter in 31 days I know what waits for me in 33 days is where I am supposed to be.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Allie Has Big News

Since the hubs put a little teaser on facebook the other day, several dear friends have been begging me to spill the beans. And I finally can! :)

Kipper did say it was NOT a baby and people kept trying to guess what it was.

• Adopting a new fur baby
• Adopting an adult
• Kipper doing an Ironman
• Moving to Midland 
• Judging Miss America...with something about a talent of peppers and coffee. lol
• Twins
• Moving to Midland again (we are really wanted in Midland!)
• Taking in a sister wife
• Renewing our vows

No one hit the jackpot, but I do have to say the guesses have been a TON of fun to read!

My blog yesterday talked about unanswered prayers, this is a continuation of that. About 5 months ago I began praying for something and in August it looked like that prayer might have be answered. While I tried not to get my hopes up, I am me, and I did. So in the end when it didn't work out, I was devastated. I questioned myself, my abilities and my path.  But at the same time I knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn't right. Trust his plan. He will provide.

The next day. Seriously the THE. NEXT. DAY. a new door was opened. A few weeks, lots of prayer and many tears (both happy and sad) later lead to the most amazing kick off of Allietober I could imagine!

There is a move in my future. I am taking a leap and spreading my wings. And today I can finally share my new home!

I have accepted a position with Pier 1 Imports overseeing their community relations and associate engagement!

This decision didn't come lightly. Nonprofit has been my entire career. My heart and soul. Friends have joked with me for years to "come to the dark side" where they have better pay, more benefits and often time cookies. But I could never imagine it. My heart is in serving others and giving back to the community.

Of course the emotions are high because for the first time in 10 years I won't be laboring along side my dear friend and mentor, Melanie. I knew this time would come someday but I had never REALLY thought about it until now. This week has be tough. I have never experienced such joy and sorrow at the same time.

I had always dreamed of a community relations role within a company that truly valued giving back as a part of their culture, but it was just a dream. Until now. It is my reality!!!!

I will be on the giving side to our local nonprofits. I will get to connect employees with local organizations who need their volunteer service. (Pier 1 pays for every employee to volunteer 1 hour each week at the nonprofit of their choice....even hourly employees get this benefit!) I get to be an organizer, planner, cheerleader, a giver and an advocate.

Pier 1 has been incredibly supportive in my transition, especially given that Joy of Life is in 5 short weeks. The night of Joy of Life is always emotional because it is the moment you have worked towards all year. This year it will be bittersweet. It will be my last day of employment with Cancer Care Services. A few friends who have known joked it will be the best going away party I will ever get from an employer. lol.

On November 11, 2013 I start my new journey. One where I know with every fiber of my being, this is where I am meant to be. This is where all of those unanswered prayers have guided me. An opportunity that I thought was only in my dreams.

Trust his plan. He will provide.

When Average Becomes Awesome

As much as I love social media, it has some down falls.  You watch all your friends post photos/status updates/etc you begin to feel pressure that your life isn't exciting enough. All of a sudden you start to think that every weekend needs to be EPIC or you have to be involved in a million things so that you appear more interesting. (My dear friend, Jordan, wrote a fabulous post on her blog "When life gives you lemons" about this that you should all read!)

I am someone who has had too many irons in the fire since age 5 and sadly, I have fallen victim to this mind set a few times more than I care to admit. It wasn't until right before my 30th birthday that I really started to analyze things and decide enough was enough. (you can read more about it here) I was tired of being busy for the sake of being busy all the time. Over the last 2 years or so I have started cutting back on my commitments and learning to play things a little more by ear. And you know what? It has been amazing!!! 

Sure sometimes we get to the weekend and realize we don't have plans - awesome Kipper and I will have an impromptu date night or (gasp) even just stay home watch a TV together! It. Is. Awesome! Or sometimes it leaves you open to spur of the moment plans that are far better than anything you could have planned out in advance. 

Enter last weekend.

In a rare turn of events, I had to work both Saturday evening and all day Sunday so I hadn't planned on doing anything else all weekend. Then Friday, T asked if I wanted to do a 5K up by her house with her. I didn't have any plans and needed to get a run in, so why not! 

It was humid and gross, there was a slight delay for a man who may or may not have had a heart attack during the 1K, but it was awesome!!  Not only did I have a PR, I got to spend time with one of my best friends. 

Afterwards we went to Denny's to eat where we spent the time talking and laughing. Even when we tried to leave, we ended up standing around in the parking lot talking more. This of course led to us having a "post run tailgate...at Denny's" in the back of T's car.  An average Saturday morning that was just plain awesome!

Of course when you combine this with a wonderful evening on Lake Granbury with my Hood County Jamboree Volunteers (that felt like a family get together in Alabama rather than work) and then National Cancer Survivors Day on Sunday (how could you not love watching a second line parade of cancer survivors?) it made for a pretty awesome weekend!

Now don't get me wrong, I still overcommit, and sometimes work is a little crazier than I would like. But until you break the cycle of always expecting awesome, you will never see just how amazing your average, everyday life can really be! 

Hey Kids, Look At My Crayons

About a month or so ago we were cleaning out the art room at the office and realized something: we have WAY to many crayons!! We had so many new boxes that had never been opened we decided that we could part with some of the shoe boxes full of broken older crayons. As we started packing them up to donate to another organization that could use them, I decided to save a big old bag of them in case we ever wanted to do some melted crayon art.

Fast forward a few days and an hour or two on Pinterest later....I had a brilliant idea!! I was going to use some of those crayons to make some awesome shaped rainbow crayons for the kids to use at Camp CARE!

After a little research, I knew it would be best to use the oven but we didn't want to spend a bunch of money on shaped silicone bake ware just to melt some gross old crayons in it. Yet, I found several people who said they used ice trays in the microwave and it worked just as well. It was settled then - I would find some ice trays and we would just do it in the microwave.

To start we needed to get all the paper off of the crayons. Because they were older crayons the paper didn't just peel off as easily as I hoped. A little trick we figured out that worked really well was to use a knife or a something with a needle point to slide down the paper to cut it. Then it would just slide right off in one piece!

Once you get a good selection of crayons unwrapped, start breaking them into small pieces to fill the molds. We had a lot of fun playing with different color combinations from simple red, white and blue to a full on rainbow.

Once you get all your molds filled it is time to head to the microwave. It was suggested you melt in 4 or 5 minute increments, checking how they are progressing in between.  At first it looked like things were going really well then I opened the microwave door to this....

Apparently the glass in the microwave got too hot and melted a hole (actually 2 holes) in the bottom of the mold. This is really when I should have given up, but oh no - Allie had a BRILLIANT idea! Put a dish towel under the mold to help shield it from the direct heat of the glass.

A few moments later the smell of smoke confirmed, that I should NOT be allowed in a kitchen even if it is for crafting. Yep, I caught the dish towel on fire...in a microwave.

At that point I pretty much chalked all this up to a crafty fail and decided that I should call it a day. (Not sure how the board would respond to "I am sorry I burned the office down. But look at these re-purposed crayons we made!" )

Allie: 0 - Crayon Craft Project: 2 

But never fear my friends there will be a rematch! Stay tuned! :)

Joy of Life 2011

Every nonprofit has their "signature" event and for Cancer Care Services that is Joy of Life gala. In the past Joy of Life has been held on a Thursday evening, had a guest speaker and focused around good food/wine. When I was hired one of the things I was tasked with was taking Joy of Life to the next level. My goal is to build Joy of Life into a great party that everyone cannot wait to go to each year verse just another charity gala. So while the basics of the event remind the same, it saw LOTS of changes. Plus we were working with a venue that most in Fort Worth had been to a million times, so I had to get creative to give it a fun and festive vibe so they didn't feel like just another event at the country club. (all this on a VERY tight...and I mean TIGHT budget!)  

So began my creative research for ideas...and then figure out if we could afford to make them happen! All the event materials have had a purple feel to play up the wine emphasis and we just rebranded making our logo purple and teal. I decided that was the perfect direction to go in to help people really start to identify Cancer Care with the purple and teal, while remaining true to our pre-event marketing materials.   

After a lot of research I figured out it would be much cheaper for me to purchase everything for the centerpieces, rather than go through a florist. The best price I was able to get from all the florist bids was $75 a centerpiece. I was able to do them for $38 each and Cancer Care Services owns everything to use for future events! Granted my office did look like a mess for quite a while because of this plan! :)

Color palate of the feathers and the vase filler with the led lights! To get the lighter colored feathers we died white ones....this is NOT something I would recommend. Dying them, combing them out, drying them and getting them to fluff is a lot of work. If we wouldn't have already owned the white feathers we would have NEVER gone this route! 

All in all I am extremely pleased how everything turned out and we had a lot of fun putting together the centerpieces and candle holders! Plus I received a ton of compliments on how elegant but still really fun everything looked! (mission accomplished!)

The addition of a live band and dramatic lighting really helped set the mood of the evening! It was great seeing people having such a wonderful time enjoying good food and wine, with wonderful friends, while raising money for a great cause!

The Live and Silent Auctions were both a HUGE success! We had over 120 lots in the silent auction and it was the first time we have every had a live auction, which raised over $33,000 with the 6 items!  

And to top all of that off we DOUBLED what the event raised in 2010!! That means more money to help those in our community who are dealing with cancer! But the best part of it all was I got so this with some of my dearest friends by my side helping me out each step of the way!

Now I am sure Mel is going to shoot me for ending with this picture, but the randomness of this shot makes me crack up every time I look at it. (Kipper did good capturing this one!) But I guess I love it because it sums us all up so well!

Cheers to all the joys in your life! :) 

Rebranding Makeover

I am sure you have all heard me talk about it a zillion times over the last 8 months and are sick of hearing about it! Well guess what? There is light at the end of the tunnel because on August 1st Cancer Care Services kicked off our month long roll out of our new logo/brand. This has been a labor of love for me at work for the last 8 months and I am SO excited for it to finally be happening!


Luck would have it that our August Board Meeting fell on August 1st so I wanted to make sure we had as much done at the office to really kick off everything, but at the same time I wanted it to be a surprise for the majority of the staff as well. With that said, a lot of the little things I needed to do in preparation for our office makeover had to be done at home and I came into the office for a few hours on Sunday, July 31st to make all the changes.


We have actually made a few more changes since our kick off date, which I will post pictures of later but this will give you an idea. :)

BEFORE - Reception Window

Things randomly get taped up to the window and then they just seem to stay there...long past their due. Or they are things that don't really pertain to the majority of our clients so it can be confusing. 

AFTER - Reception Window

No more taping random announcements up to the window. We have an organized, defined place to post crucial information clients might need when coming in!

AFTER - Reception Window

Added our new icon heart for a little punch of color! 

BEFORE - Client Activities Information 

This board/table is one of the first things you see coming into the house. It has become a random catch all  for people dropping off random fliers and our information was a mess. This area has been a pet peeve of mine since I started last November. 

AFTER - Client Activities Information
This is still a work in progress and we have made a bunch of changes since this was taken, but still a great improvement. Now the calender has a defined place to be displayed each month and we are no longer allowing non Cancer Care Services materials to be posted here. Each week, our Volunteer and Activity Coordinator, Jen,  will pick 1 or 2 programs/activities to be featured on the board next to the calender. 

BEFORE  - Random  Wall Space

AFTER - Random  Wall Space

Just because we didn't want to post non Cancer Care Services  events etc on our information board doesn't mean we don't want to be able to allow clients and volunteers to share those things. Introducing our community board! This is a place clients, volunteers, staff, community members etc can post special events, programs, fundraisers/benefits for clients etc

Gives you an idea of the bigger picture! :) 

I also had a few other little "crafty" projects I did for our big kick off day, such as some "party favors" for our monthly staff and board meetings and a new donation bucket. Several of our support groups pass a bucket and people through in their spare change to donate (something the clients came up with on their own!) so I decided to make them something to celebrate the new look too! 

 "Party Favors" pre-set on the table for Monthly Staff Meeting

 "Party Favors" pre-set on the table for our Monthly Board Meeting 

New donation pail to be used for support groups and other community events 

There are so many more wonderful changes/additions with the launch of our new logo/brand that I am sure I will start sharing on facebook shortly. I just wanted to share my crafty moments I was having to keep secret until after the big reveal!  

Mm Mm, I’d like to linger here...Mm Mm, A little longer here

Mm Mm, I’d like to linger here

Mm Mm, A little longer here

Mm Mm A little longer here with you

Mm Mm, It’s such a special night

Mm Mm, It doesn’t seem quite right

Mm Mm, That it should be my last with you

Mm Mm, And when the winter comes

Mm Mm, I’ll think of you and sigh

Mm Mm, This was good night and not good bye Mm Mm

Those are the words of one of my all time FAVORITE camp songs. I loved when we would sing songs by the camp fire at girl scout camp. We always started with the more fun and silly songs. Yet as it got closer to time to put the fire out and turn in for the night, thing moved to slower songs. I could never put my finger on why it was my favorite song, maybe I just liked the way it sounded. Yet now that I am older I get it. Sure I liked the way it sounded, but the words really summed up how I was feeling. I loved camp. I loved being with friends at camp. And I didn't want it to end. I LOVE CAMP!!

Fast forward many, many, many years. You would be a million more times likely to find me sporting a new purse with some super sassy shoes, than all grubby by a camp fire or hiking. Then  I got the opportunity to work as a day camp counselor at Camp Carter YMCA....It was like a switch went on.  I remembered why I worked so hard to sell a million girl scout cookies to earn all those free weeks at summer camp. I remembered they excitement waiting to see what new adventures would unfold in the "woods."  I remembered the feeling of how when you are at camp you felt like you could do anything, even stuff you would be afraid to try normally.  That summer as a counselor might be one of the greatest summers of my life. 

Alas, I graduated from college and got a big girl job, but my rekindled romance with camp didn't go away. Thankfully I worked for the MS Society who put on a 1 week summer day camp called Journey Camp. I got the opportunity to help take Journey Camp for 5 days held at our office to a full blown day camp out at Camp Carter. After 2 years of Journey Camp I thought I would never be apart of a more special camp experience and not being able to do camp was one of the hardest parts of leaving to go work for the Heart Association. I came to terms with  just enjoying those great memories. 

After a few years those memories became a little less vivid and my burning desire every summer to run off to camp subsided...till now! Journey Camp was amazing, but the last two days of Camp CARE have been beyond anything I could imagine. We have kids whose parents are extremely sick with cancer, kids whose parents are smack dab in the middle of fighting for their lives, kids who live with a sibling who has cancer, and several kids who have lost a parent to cancer very recently (including one whose parent lost their battle within the last 2 weeks.) Most of them could never afford to go to camp because their families are draining their budgets to fight cancer. 

Each day they attend music, art and play therapy sessions as well as doing normal camp activities. Seeing the kids work their emotions out in their sessions (for many this is the first time they have had a chance to try and work out their feelings with someone other than a family member) is inspiring and heart breaking all at the same time. Yet it isn't just the sessions with therapist where the magic happens. Camp is therapeutic in so many ways. As I said before, at camp you can do anything! For a few hours these kids are able to put aside the pain and fear they are dealing with and just be kids!  We are only though day to and I can tell you already that this might be one of the most amazing weeks I will ever experience. 

In the spirit of my craftiness and the tie dying activity I am leading tomorrow I worked up a few "sample" shirts for the kids to look at. A few of us are going to wear one of the samples I tomorrow, but of course just ti dying wasn't enough for me...I rhinestoned mine and glitter a back up for Thursday! Hey I am conquering the world one rhinestone at a time, right??? 

And to close this blog out I want to share a few of my favorite photos for my camp experiences as an "adult" (I am sure I will have several more to add after this week!)

Mm Mm, This was good night and not good bye Mm Mm