I work for an amazing company! Every year they divide the company into 3 groups (we only have 21 people in the company) and each group gets $5000 to donate to a charity or organization of their choice. This year my group and I decided to donate to the Second Harvest Foodbank. Not only did we get to donate our money to these wonderful people who are VERY short on food, donations, and supplies this year, but we also got to donate our time!
Our group of 6 spent 2 hours bagging apples from these ginormous crates! I think we completely bagged 4 or 5 crates in that time. While it may not seem like hard work, the constant bending over and the occasional bad apple made it a fun challenge. There was actually a group of old folks from an assisted living facility there and we were trying to bag more apples than them. This may not seem like it would've been a hard task but they come every week to help and were very experienced baggers! I still think we managed to bag more than them. Either way, it was a great experience and always feels good to help those in need. Happy Holidays!
It has been awhile since I've updated my 101 list. I have actually put a lot of my items in progress and have just been a very bad blogger and not actually recorded what I've completed. I absolutely LOVE to read, that's why I wanted to read 101 books during the course of my to-do list.
My favorite books to read are series, I feel like I get to know the characters better and that I'm actually part of the story (yes I'm a total nerd and I know it, I just like to get lost in a good book). Since I'm a huge fan of the Twilight series, my friend suggested I read the Sookie Stackhouse series. So I bought the box set of them from Borders and sat down to read. I think I finished the 8 books in a week and a half. I guess there is a 9th book that didn't come in my box set that I still need to buy and read but I won't have time for awhile now that it's the holidays.
I have to say, I loved the series!! I didn't fall in love with the first book but the more I read the more I couldn't put the book down! Sookie is a strong willed young woman who slowly becomes more entwined in the supernatural world. The books follow along with her, uh, adventures with the supes. She falls in love, falls out of love, falls in lust, gets in trouble, picks up a second job, meets new friends, and enters into a world she hardly knew existed. If you haven't already read these books, please borrow them from the library or buy them at a bookstore. Totally worth the purchase and a great and easy read. Since the books are also the very popular True Blood HBO series, I can't wait to get my hands on the first 2 seasons to watch on a cold winter weekend!
Whoo hoo!! We have another one in progress!! Tonight I made a new dish. It was not complex and it didn't require a million dishes and a lot of clean up time. Tonight I made beef stroganoff from a recipe I found on Kraftfoods.com. It was yummy and delicious. I also blogged about it under my recipes blog. If you are too lazy to check it out, here's a little something to wet your palette....
Beef Stroganoff from Kraftfoods.com
I have started two longer term goals on my list. #46 is to read 101 books. I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger. I want to see the movie when it comes out on DVD but I always like to read the book first so I have a better understanding of the characters. On a scale of 1-5, 5 being AMAZING, I'd rate this book a 3.
It's about a girl who meets a man as a little girl. She grows up seeing him from time to time as he randomly time travels back. Then she meets him in the present and they fall in love and get married, all the while he is still time traveling. It was a good book but not very exciting. I like books with a little more action and more stuff going on. I found it could be a little difficult to keep track of what year the characters were in and how old they were. Other than that, a decent read and a good filler of time.
Since I've also finished a 2 of my 101 goals I have put $10 into a savings account. I've started 2 others (these ones) so I'm just going to put my $5 for each started project in savings. This way, if I don't finish them then I'll still have to donate money as well. But, worse comes to worse, I have some extra cash money in the bank account to spend (or save) for later!! Gotta love the dolla dolla bills y'all!!