Love, Dolly Parton and an Award

What is Love? What a grade school slum book question. Hehe.

Ganns tagged me with this meme (weeks ago) where one is supposed to define love without using cliches. You should read his definition(s). Sweet. The day I read his post, I remembered feeling so loved just the night before.

Alfred spends a few nights every week here. We've found that that's the best way we could spend quality time with each other without being grouchy with each other. Anyway, as we tucked in to sleep (actually he already was asleep), I complained about having been bitten by a mosquito on my elbow. He reached over and scratched it for me. Aaaww. Haha. Oh yes, he was still sleeping. And I didn't ask him.

So what's love? Love is willingly going out of your way to do something for another. Um-hm. But it's when you don't feel that it's an inconvenience, when it's not being done out of obligation, when you do it with all of your being and there's no conflict in or outside of you. Yup, that's love.

Is that a cliche? Anyhow, I am tagging Kiss, Tracy and Dauphine. I hope you ladies play along!

Anyway, I signed up for the Live Search Club. Okay, it's not a real club. There are tons of games there that are powered by Windows Live Search. You earn tickets while playing, and those tickets can be redeemed for real prices. I've got my sights on a Kitchen Aid mixer or a 30Gb Zune player. I don't know if I'll actually get either one though. Haha. While playing the games on there, I thought about how cool it would be if my nieces would just play those games instead of browsing through Friendster. It would be a much better use of their time. I learned a lot playing!

One of the games is Celebrity Reveal. There are five trivia questions that would serve as clue as to who is the featured celebrity. One of those was Dolly Parton. Through the questions, and the search results that came out in Live Search, I learned about her Imagination Library. It's really a cool project for children's literacy. They mail free books to kids every month, from birth up to their fifth birthday. What a great way to encourage reading and learning. It started in her hometown but it's now all over the US, and also in Canada and the UK.

I hope there is something like that here in the Philippines. I wonder how I can start something similar? If I win the lottery, I swear, I will start something like it. Makes me want to sit with like-minded friends and brainstorm about a program we can actually make happen.

Reminded me of the pre-school classes we taught as part of a child rights and abuse prevention program we planned and implemented years back. The concept was about the importance of education in keeping kids away from abuse and exploitation. I miss my past life sometimes. :)

Okay, on to another tag. Dette awarded this to me, and Tracy did too months ago!

It's the Arte Y Pico Award.
Art y Pico Award Rules:

1. Pick 5 blogs that you feel deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging atmostphere (regardleess of what language).
2. Each award should have the name of the author with a link to their blog.
3. Award winners to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who gave them the award
4. Please include a link to the "Arte y Pico" blog so that everyone will know where the award came from.

I hereby bestow this award to Vicki, Susan of Raspberry Road, Jen, Brandy of Mega-Doodle Inspired and KimB. All awesome digital scrapbooking artists :)

Enrich your vocabulary while donating free rice!

I was browsing the World Food Programme website today and found a link to a nice and fun way to continue making a difference. The link led me to Free Rice; all I did was play a word game and I ended up donating 1260 grains of rice and I am on Level 37 for my vocabulary!

Now 37 is not even the average score, which disappoints me, hehe. So I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to that site, play the game, and donate more grains of rice. You should go play too.

I am skipping Thursday Thirteen this week, but you may check out my old TT's here and here.

Belle

Okay, so boyfriend was away for about 4 to 5 days last week having fun in the sun. Now, he's been hanging around here for, hmm, about 3 days? Not bad.

That means Patapon is back in town too and I've been playing and getting victories (ok, I've lost several times too). This is one game that Alfred won't be beating me at. He just doesn't have much rhythm (he said that).

So anyway, I was out bloghopping and going through my bluemoon email that's subscribed to a sharing group. Through either of those (I don't remember which one in particular), I stumbled upon a wonderful new blog that I've added to my digiscrapping blogroll.

It's Kirsty Wiseman's blog and you've got to go and visit.

She gives away lovely overlays that you can you use for digital scrapbooking but what I loved about her blog was reading about her 12-year old daughter Ellie (or Belle as she is fondly called). She has a special condition that requires further medical attention and they are flying her to the US just for that. To cover for her journey, Kirsty and family and friends have put up the Ellenor Wiseman Trustfund to raise money. You can purchase a raffle ticket as your way to donate to her cause or just simply donate through PayPal.

As for me, I'll be purchasing the collab kit that some designers have put together for Belle. It's available at nuts4digi.

Anyway, it's almost 3PM, way past bedtime - I've got work tonight at 11. Oh well.

Thursday Thirteen - #10

I can't believe I almost missed Thursday Thirteen again this week...
In the spirit of Idol Gives Back, which was an awesome show that I almost missed too, here are 13 ways to give back - online.

1 to 6: On my sidebar I have my 'one-click donations.' All you got to do is go to those sites and click on the button to make a donation. It doesn't even take 5 minutes of your time (on hi-speed Internet)

7 to 9 Care2.com is another site that offers you an opportunity to click to donate and they have quite a number of campaigns going there. Sign up to learn more of what you can do. Click on these three buttons to start your own race.

10 Save the Children UK used to have a Philippine office and I was involved with some of their projects as a teener. You can shop at their site to make a difference. Just click on the logo and it'll take you to their page.


11 ECPAT is a global network of organizations dedicated to combat the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. I was very active in this network in my young life and was involved in many activities. Here's a link to a page that lets you make donations to the cause through PayPal, but please explore their website for information on this issue plaguing the world's children.

Ok, I am two links short but I really got to go and get ready for work tonight. I'll come back and add two more to these links. C'mon, let's all give back...

Edit: Ok, here are the additional links.

12 I found this website a long time ago (I already forgot how) and was fascinated by the work they do. I even wrote to them asking for any possibility that they may feature kids from the Philippines and Asia, but they weren't prepared for that at the time. Today I remembered how I was so interested to maybe even organize a local chapter or start something like this here. Maybe I shouldn't give up on that. Visit their site and learn how you can Make a Child Smile by sending them and their siblings real cards. You can make a donation too, if you want.

13 This website is for a local foundation taking care of abused and abandoned girl children. I've never really worked directly with the organization itself but I've worked with some of their girls in the past, through my involvement at ECPAT and the youth organization we built - Young People against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Childern. Visit the CRIBS Foundation website and checkout their How to help link to find out how you can help a child in the Philippines.

Move along now, you got 13 sites to help you give back :)

Clickable Charities

Until sometime last year, my BraveJournal header had a number of badges and graphics displayed all over it. Among those were buttons I would click daily to make donations to different charities.

When I decided to add my blog to verabear.com, the header just wasn't working well when it was being viewed through an iFrame. I had to do something about it and the easiest was to remove everything. My buttons have since found a home on my verabear.com home page, but I feel that they would get better mileage when seen sported on a blog. So I've brought them over. I have yet to decide whether I'd be giving them their own spot over at the sidebar but the Categories link should make it easy to get to this post when one needs the links.

As I used to work with NGOs for children, I am partial to the Child Health Site and the LiteracySite. Nonetheless, I visit all 6 sites because it doesn't require much effort for me to reach out and help good causes. They also have well-stocked shops/boutiques that are so much fun to visit. I've shopped from there a couple of times and it's just a great way to do some shopping while still helping out wth a charity.