Fundraising, training, and more: 24 weeks out...crafty chicks style!

Pam L, Lauren, and I walking in Gettysburg

So for the 2011 DC walk we are officially at the 24 week mark!  How very exciting!  And it's starting to get warm (FINALLY) so we can start training outside in the beautiful sun.  And this year we have 4 entirely different areas that we are walking in, and different routes in those different towns.  So we are hoping to keep the boredom that set in for me last year doing the same ol' walks away.  And it keeps it fair too, since we are all taking turns walking not too far from our homes.

So, you may ask, how exactly is wearing a wig going???  Well, not as bad as I'd feared, yet not easy either.  Since I am always cold at work, I don't have the problem with getting to hot from wearing it.  That's definitely a plus.  And since I have my own hair protecting my head, I don't have a big problem with getting itchy, that only starts to bother me around hour 10, and it's not too bad.  My biggest problem is that where I pin the wig and cap underneath to my real hair, it starts to hurt a little by that 10th hour, and I start thinking maybe I should be a rebel and just pull it off...  LOL!  And I have one problem I didn't think of too much beforehand:  People that I see but I don't really talk to much or at all are starting to wonder if I'm sick!  If they ask someone that works on my floor, they get straightened out and told the real story of my pink hair challenge.  But then how many people don't ask, and then think I have cancer...  So on weekends when I work I've started wearing a pink ribbon scrub cap, like the people that work in the OR wear.  And I make sure some of my hair that is not pink is out in the back, so people can see I still have hair.  But boy do I look ridiculous wearing that all day!  On the bright side of that though is on weekends I'm a lot more comfortable.

So much is going on in this month of April, I am having a hard time finding time to write!  We have 5 fundraisers this month!!!  And new to this year, we've made a whole lot of things to sell at our fundraisers, and it's taken off in a BIG way!  We are a group of crafty chicks this year, and I believe that we will more than meet our minimums to walk, which is totally exciting.  Just a month ago I feared how we were going to raise the $11,500 our team needs to walk; now I'm a little more confident.  So at our first of five fundraiser, we did at the mall in our town.  We set up a treadmill that a friend of mine lent us for the day (Big thanks Gina!) to walk 20 miles in the  mall, and set up a table to sell all of our wares next to it.  We also had a second table with ribbons on it for people to write names of loved ones that have or are battling cancer on for us to carry on our 3 day journey.  We enjoyed ourselves, got some exercise, sold some stuff and got some donations, and got some publicity.  So I would say it was a success.  But we have discussed this after the fact, and because of the high cost of the insurance we needed to purchase in order to do this fundraiser at the mall, we don't think we would do it again.  We would do a treadmill fundraiser somewhere that didn't require insurance though, it definitely attracted attention to us and to our cause.  And it made it more fun for us as well!

Pam L, Pam N, Lauren, and I at the mall fundraiser!

So what crafts have we crafty chicks come up with to sell this year you ask?  Well, Pam L's area of expertise is making breast cancer awareness bracelets.  They are gorgeous, sparkly, and bringing in some serious donation money!!  They have truly just taken off!  We liked her design from the get-go; we knew they would sell.  But what we didn't know is that only a few weeks and 1 fundraiser into our sales we would sell out and need to order more supplies already!  And that before the shipment has even arrived, we have so many people that have put in an order we have to order a 2nd shipment!!!  This is amazing!  And Lauren I'm learning has always made crafts, so this is nothing new to her.  She is our t-shirt maker this year!  We were able to get 30 pink t-shirts donated, and she adds the designs/sayings to them.  So far she has made team shirts that have "Me and The Girls" on them, "Save 2nd Base" shirts, and "Treasure Your Chest" shirts.  And we can sell them for relatively inexpensive prices, since it doesn't cost much at all for her to make them!  It's a wonderful fundraiser!  And what, you ask, is my craft?  I make pink ribbon clips and black headbands with little pink ribbons on them.  The pink ribbon clips are nice and inexpensive, and the headbands I've just started making so we don't know how well they will be received yet, though my team mates and I love them and have each purchased one already!  And we have finally made a bank account so that we can split all our fundraising money easier, since people can just make out checks to Me and The Girls now.  Really happy about all we have going for us right now!!!

Our beautiful pink table at our fundraiser at the mall!

So now for the month of April we still have a dine out night at Texas Road House, a bake sale in front of Smokey's Restaurant, and 2 other fundraisers where we get a table to sell our crafty chick stuff.  I am hoping to be done with my fundraising by the end of the month!!!  Woohoo!  Then all I have to worry about (and I'm not all that worried anymore) is getting the minimums for my team mates!  Yay go Team Me and The Girls!!!

Dedication, Motivation, Inspiration

Wow, how quickly things change...  And isn't it wonderful?

I am feeling less nervous and more optimistic about raising so much money this year.  My wonderful team mates have everything to do with that!  They have been just as crazy hardworking as I have been, if not even more!  I apologize for any doubts I had before.  How could we fail when we are so committed to doing everything it takes to raise the money we need to walk?

The answer is we can't, and we won't.

So I have been thinking myself too important, and I have been rightfully put in my place, and humbled.  My team mates do NOT need someone to hold their hand and do things for them.  They do not need me that way, and I feel bad that I ever thought otherwise.  I am relieved and grateful for this revelation!!!!

3 words to describe team Me and the Girls this year?  Dedication, Motivation, Inspiration.

Dedication:  I am now no longer the only person seemingly obsessed with finding ways to raise money!  LOL!  It is now a group obsession.  I have found kindred spirits here, and we are all up working till 1 am!  With this sort of dedication we will have every dime we need to walk.

Motivation:  If we weren't as motivated before, a taste of success at receiving items donated for our silent auction in June has truly lit a fire!  It may be that we receive a 100 no's for every yes, but that yes sparks us to try 500 more places!!!

Inspiration:  And with team mates like these, I don't need to look deep inside myself for motivation to keep asking asking asking.  I only need to turn my head and  look to my friends working just as hard beside me.  This is easy, this is priceless. Having team mates working this hard beside me is a wonderful gift.  I want to keep working this hard for us, if only to keep up with how hard they are working too!

And training?  They are already doing 5-6 mile walks on their own.  I have no worries here either!  We walked together for the 1st time this past weekend, and it was a wonderful 5 miles.

So thank you team mates.  And I apologize for doubting.  Failing is not an option that will cross my mind again!!!!  You're the best!!!

11500

What is this?
It's just a number, isn't it?

11,500


Maybe it will have more meaning if I write it like this for you:
$11,500.00
A lot of money, isn't it?

Welcome to Me and The Girls; this is our magic number for this year.  This is the amount of money we need to raise together in order for the 5 (yes, our team has now grown to 5 members!) of us to walk together 60 miles arm-in-arm in the 2011 Washington DC 3 Day for the Cure!  This is the number that I wake up in the morning thinking about, and go to bed at night thinking about.  I sound obsessed by it!  This number thrills me because of the enormous amount we will be donating towards finding a cure, new treatments, and education about breast cancer.  This same number also terrifies me, because I am starting to feel ultimately responsible for helping to raise this amount, or responsible if we (gulp) failed to raise this amount.

It's funny, I have a facebook friend who thinks the opposite of me.  She says that raising the money is the easy part, it's the training for the walk that's the hard part for her.  For me training is easy, it's just finding time and walking, and challenging myself and my team mates to keep on truckin'.  For me the harder part is definitely the fundraising.  I love having my now larger team this year, I love sharing this experience with people who have never done or felt anything like this before.  It makes it all new and exciting for me again (not that it even remotely lost it's excitement, but you know what I mean) too.  But I am scared at the same time, because I want us all to succeed so badly, and splitting the money we raise 5 ways instead of 2-3 ways like last year makes it more challenging.  I don't know how much to feel responsible for. I know that holding their hand and doing it all for my team mates will rob them of half of the wonderful learning experience that is the 3 Day. I think of all I learned about myself by doing this much work, much of it outside of my comfort zone (who am I kidding, nearly ALL of it outside of my comfort zone), and the strength and determination it brought out in me that I never knew I had.  Yet on the other hand I don't want anyone to resent me for not doing enough to help either.  I guess it's a fine line I will have to walk and figure out with my team mates as we go along...

Updates:
*My Great Pink Hair Challenge of 2011 has officially begun.  I am beginning with 3 streaks.  It remains to be seen if I will raise enough to make them permanent or not.  I will be checking out the fit of my wig this week, and I've set up an appt. to get my pink highlights at the salon, just in case...
*We've started selling Joe Corbi's pizzas, and this week we can set up the online ordering for people who live out of town.  This is a neat feature because it will ship it directly to them and next month we will get a check mailed to us for any money we made online!  Hopefully we sell enough to raise a decent amount.
*Started taking my 2 little guys (Devon is 3 and Gabe is 2) out in the double stroller and talking to businesses around town about donating things for our auction.  Even though it still makes me nervous, it no longer makes me sick to do it.  :)  Really happy that I've gotten better at that!!  Have gotten some hits, some misses, but either way I've gotten my butt started!
*Still working on getting insurance for the treadmill walking fundraiser my team mate Lauren and I are doing at the mall.  Who knew we'd have to be insured for a million dollars???  Not me that's for sure!  This is making me pull my hair out just a little...
*We are making our own t-shirts to sell at fundraisers this year!  I have a friend who is donating all the pink shirts, and my team mate Lauren is working on turning them into works of art...  I am really excited about this development!

So much to do! So little time to do it...

I guess we have all wished for more than 24 hrs in a day before when we were busy and had a lot to get done and not enough time to do it in.  That's what I'm feeling like.  I remember feeling this way last year as I started fundraising as well.  But kinda different in that I feel the busy and urgency to get stuff done, without the stress of wondering if I can do this or not.  Sigh.  I guess that's how I'm meant to feel every year as 3 Day fundraising season really begins...  But would I really want it any other way??

Well during one of my insane up till 1 am-on-the-computer-even-though-I-will-have-to-be-up- in-5-hrs "inspiration marathons" as I call them I decided I really wanted to sell T-shirts this year.  The problem is that you have to put out quite a lot of money of your own up front, and you have no idea if you will even get that money back, let alone sell enough shirts to raise any money.  So I went to Cafepress.com and set up a shop there.  I figured I didn't have to put any money out to start, so if no one but me and my family bought anything I wasn't out of my own money at least!  So I've started with some cool but basic designs for now and am looking online for a free image creator of some kind to get my ideas going...  I guess we'll see how it works out!  To visit our store, click on the link on the left top of my page!  And one of my wonderful team mates may have figured out a way that we can make them ourselves...  Work in progress here more to come as I learn more about her ingenius idea...

As we approach the start of my pink hair challenge, I have great news!  I have decided to go through with the twist on last year's challenge, I've decided that if I raise enough to reach my first $1000 milestone with this challenge, I WILL put permanent streaks in my hair!  I have a salon - Aura's Spa and Salon - that has generously donated permanent pink highlights, should I need them.  Thank you to Casey Moore for helping me to set this up, and for volunteering her time to do the highlights!  Which of course means that I will need to wear a wig to work, which I must say I am really nervous about after my mother has told me how much she detested the headaches her wigs gave her.  And as it turns out my Mom still had a short hair blond wig from when she went through chemo that she hadn't donated.  It saddens me that the reason she kept one was "you never know, just in case I needed it again," but then that just fuels my fire to find a cure, so that she doesn't need this wig EVER AGAIN!  So I'm really excited about the official start of the challenge on 3/3/11.  I actually have had 3 people already donate and buy 3 pink streaks, before it's even begun!  And they only need to donate $280 more to get me to my first $1000... 

On another note, I have begun the attempt to get auction donation items.  Sadly, Caesar's Atlantic City will not donate a package this year, and that's one of the big ones I hoped I could count on again this year.  So I've started writing to other Atlantic City casino's, hotel getaways in MD,  and whitewater rafting places in WV.  I have so many places to email and mail letters to, and only so much time in the day to work on it.  My husband will hopefully start helping me with this shortly, and I am praying my team mates will help as well.  This auction is where I raised the most $ last year, and unlike last year I will have to split the $ raised with this auction with my team mates.  Which means that I really have to be able to get a lot more donated items than I had last year.  I think this is the only thing so far in my fundraising that is making me feel actually stressed out.  Well back to work on that...

As far as training goes, I am happy to announce that I have logged over 60 miles training so far this year!  Yay!  I've vowed this year to keep better track of my miles than I did last year.  I was really disappointed that when the miles really started adding up I forgot to log them, so I don't really know how many I walked last year training for the 3 day.  This year I've started using Daily Mile, and it's really quick and easy to keep track of and it even displays on my blog or posts to facebook.  Hopefully this year I will have a grand total of miles logged for finding a cure!

Next on my list is my treadmill fundraiser in the mall in our town.  I have a date set for April, and a team mate to help me walk, sell bracelets (yes Linda Craik I will be needing your beautiful bracelets again, I already have a few requests for them!), and collect donations.  I hope this fundraiser will be a fun evening with my team mate and a wonderful success, and luckily not too much more prep work for this one!  :)  And the mall is also going to donate the money collected in the water fountain in July/August and donate it on our behalf to the 3 Day.  That was an added bonus that just goes to show you that sometimes all you have to do is ask!

And lastly is our Joe Corbi pizza fundraiser, which is slated to begin on 3/9.  I have a great feeling about this one, because I've never met anyone who didn't love these pizza kits.  Besides, I just may have to break my diet to eat one myself!  So cross your fingers for us that this one goes really well!

So that's where I am this year at the end of February.  Even though I am beginning to have the stress just start to creep up on me, I realize that at this time last year I barely had $50 raised, and not much of a clue how I was going to get the rest.  It is also quite a comfort to have the feeling, "I will do this somehow, don't worry" as opposed to "how in the world am I going to do this?"  I guess that's the wonderful thing about being a 3 Day Alumni!

Me? The leader?

Well I was able to get all of my email and facebook letters out to my family and friends, I just have all the ones I need to put in the mail, along with all of the letters to various people in the community (doctors, insurance guy, dentist, etc.)  I put so much of myself into the letters that it makes me feel extremely vulnerable.  I think that  makes my letters more personal, but I also believe that it has some drawbacks as well; I equate the effectiveness of my letters with my self esteem, even though rationally I know that one has nothing to do with the other.  I guess as I do more letter writing, I will hopefully stop reacting this way.  But anyway they, and with them a little piece of me, are out there.

I've also heard a good response from my daughter's school.  The principal called me to tell me that they were not interested in doing a penny war, they've already done something similar this year for another cause.  But he IS interested in having the special project coordinator talk with my daughter about a fundraiser that he would do.  So yesterday afternoon my husband showed her a website that has fundraising ideas on it, some of which would be completely perfect (and not an overwhelming amount of work for me) for a middle school.  Hopefully, armed with some ideas my daughter and the coordinator will come up with a  brilliant plan that is satisfactory for all involved!  

I will also be delivering my letter today to the town mall to see if they are agreeable to my treadmill fundraiser idea (or tomorrow, with 4 kids sometimes you have to flexible and willing to change plans at the last minute!). I think this would be a successful and fun fundraiser, without a whole lot of prep work. And that is a  wonderful thing, seeing that some of my fundraisers require a lot of work ahead of time and you never know if the amount of money you raise will have made it worth all the effort.

On another note, I feel pretty good about starting training early this year, since this year I can walk indoors on the treadmill.  I signed up to be a training walk leader this year as well, so I thought it would be helpful if I was in decent shape a little ahead of schedule, so when I invite others to join my team on a training walk it will be slightly easier and I won't look like I'm struggling.  I guess only time will tell if this was adding a little too much responsibility or not.  I am really hoping for a few more people to join my team (fingers crossed here) and that someone will want to help me plan at least a few of the training walks for our team, and that we can use some of the walks we did last year again.  Then it will only be a matter of planning a few extra of the nicer team walks to invite others to join us on.  At least that is how it works in my head...

And the thing I'm most excited about right now is finally being able to have our first team meeting.  I have so many ideas and things to discuss to get us all started on the same page.  It seems some 1/2 of the team and perspective new team mates have researched the 3 day and read my blog and are mentally prepared for a challenge, while the other 1/2 haven't done much in this regard and I'm not sure they understand what they have signed up for (not that any of us REALLY did the first time!).  So I guess catching that 1/2 of the team is first, then starting to plan training walks and fundraisers next.  It's hard for me because last year even though I was the designated captain, I felt more like we were all equal.  This year since my team is all new and I've been there, done that, I feel like I'm supposed to have all the answers and be a leader.  As much as I wanted others to do it with me, I don't feel like much of a "leader."  I hope that as we grow as a team that I feel the part a little more... This part is as new to me as the 3 day experience is to them!

Training...the beginning...

I was not sure in the beginning that I would raise enough money to participate in the walk, but I realized 2 things. I'd better train just in case, and I could stand to lose a few pounds and get in better shape anyway.  So I had nothing to lose in starting to train.

So while my fundraising was just beginning,  I started walking.  I learned one thing immediately:  I HATED walking in the cold!  But in February, I started anyway.  Then of course, the big snow storms came.  Well in 4 feet of snow, there are no sidewalks to be found to walk on.  So early training had to be put on hold almost as soon as it started.  But it was a long time till October, so no biggie.

Once the snow FINALLY melted away, I began again.  I started with just doing 3 miles walks.  3 miles was not hard, and didn't take very long, so I was able to do it a few times per week.  A few weeks later my teammates and I started walking together on a weekly basis.

Team Me and The Girls on one of our early training walks

Recommendation:  The Susan G. Komen site has a suggested training schedule starting 24 weeks before the event, which once it started, helped to keep us on track, even if we didn't follow it to the letter.  There was even an option to have the schedule emailed to us on a weekly basis, so we didn't even have to go to the site to check it.  I recommend using this schedule, even if you can't do everything exactly as it is mapped out, you can at least use it as a guide to help you see where in the training you should be.  Another thing that helped us out was the site "map my run," which helped us to map out routes to walk and told us the mileage of those routes.  Worth checking out!