*FREE*

Lisa Rupp at Lisa Rupp Design is offering a free printable calendar. She posts each month at a time. You can find them here.


I just printed March!

Visit her blog for more fun designs.

The 50 States Project

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this blog now that Honduras posts are done. I know I don't have many (if any) followers, but eventually I'd like the blog to grow and develop a life of its own. I think I will push for that once I know what I'm going to do with it!

For now, I will post about interesting things I find while browsing the Internet.

Here is one!

California People post by Jeremy & Claire Weiss

This is The 50 States Project. One person from each of the 50 United States was selected to participate in a photography project. Each person photographs assignments that best portrays their home state. The first assignment was to photograph people. This is the photograph for the state of Michigan, and I think the photographer captured the essence of Michigan very well. Peter Baker, the photographer also added a title and a description of his photo, see below.

"Joe Diesel, Ypsilanti, Michigan, 2009" © Peter Baker

"Joe McEachern is a mechanic in Ypsilianti who specializes in converting diesel vehicles to run on vegetable oil. He's a young entrepreneur as well, starting a veggie-powered party bus service that shuttles college students to local bars, driving business interests and providing safe rides to the partiers. He is part of a hopeful future for Michigan, using mechanical ingenuity and environmental passion to create new opportunities for the state."

This is such a symbolic photo and a great representation of the state of Michigan's economy right now. With the Big 3 auto makers struggling, and GM announcing that they are in more trouble than they thought, and as a result, smaller businesses losing work, it's hard here. The only way things will pick up is with the hard work and innovation of individuals. The Big 3 should look at Joe McEachern's design and ideas and learn from the 'average Joe'. Get on board!

I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures for each of the 50 states! I can't wait to see what photos the upcoming assignments will be. Check out the pictures from your state!

El Fin!

The End! I gave a presentation at church with Suzanne about our trip this Sunday, and while I had a great time in Honduras and have enjoyed being a part of Hands In Service, I am ready to be done. So this post will conclude my posts of my Honduras trip!

What I have left to post about is the actual project I went down to work on. It is a day care center called Santo Domingo Savio.

This is what the center looked like when we arrived.

This building was already built when we got there, we had to build a similar building adjacent to this one, in this area.

This is what the structure looked like when we finished.

Suzanne and I were in charge of painting the inside of the first building. Paul needed a break from the manual labor and joined us to paint. This is what the inside looked like before we painted.

This is what it looked like when we were finished. The colors are Lemon Curd and Sassy Lilac.

This is our entire team in front of what we built.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing the pictures of my trip. I hope to do more things like this in the future. I get asked all the time if I will go back. I would like to go back, but I'd also like to go other places and see other things. I will go back maybe in a a couple of years to see how things have progressed and changed since 2009.

Kelly Rae

I won! I won! I won!

Since I don't have the internet, I was slow to find out that I won a giveaway sponsored on Kelly Rae's Blog.

I hope I wasn't too late getting back to her! As soon as I receive the gifts I will post them for all to see!!

Until then please check out Kelly Rae's blog and etsy shop, you will love what you see! This is one of the many things she's created.

Hands In Service Projects Part 3

Hands In Service helped a woman named Nelly realize her dream of opening a school for the disabled. She accepts students that the other schools won't. Her students are mostly deaf or have Downs Syndrome.

Nelly fell out of a tree when she was twelve and became a paraplegic, and her school wouldn't take her back since she was in a wheel chair.

In 1997, Nelly and her husband Nelson had opened a school in her home, and she realized she needed more space to teach all of the students. In 2005 Hands In Service started building classrooms and dorms for the school. Today, the school is named CasAyuda, which translates to 'helping house".

This is a picture of one of our team members Eric in the blue, Suzanne, Nelson, Michelle, and Nelly in the front.

Nelly has different class rooms for different subjects. The goal of CasAyuda is to provide the students with life skills that they are capable of doing that will make them money.

This is their cosmetology room, where the deaf girls learn to cut and style hair.

They also sell their paintings and pottery.

This was the first project that Suzanne worked on. She helped build these dorms for the girls who attend the school. Nelly gets a lot of students from the hills and other places that are quite a ways away since this is the only school in Honduras that accepts challenged students. Since the students come from so far away Nelly allows them to stay in the dorms free of charge and she also feeds them for the week for free. A lot of the students can't afford to pay the tuition, so Nelly charges them on a pay scale depending what they are able to pay, and parents of other students who are able to help out, will always give more than their share of tuition to help the others.

While we were visiting the school, we had a light rain, and a double rainbow formed over the school, it was pretty cool.

You can also the building on the left in this picture is under construction. They are adding a second floor. The entire school continues to grow. It gives hope to many families in Honduras.

Hands In Service Projects Part 2

Sorry for the delay in blogging. I have gotten a little tired of going through all of the Honduras pictures, but I will keep plugging on. I would like to have all of the posts complete on the blog, it will be nice to have it all together I think.

The second place we went to see was the Nutrition Center in El Rosario. Suzanne, who was on the trip with us, helped build the Nutrition Center so she was excited to see the progress.

This is the outside of the center. This was built so that the kids in the town would have food to eat during the day, this is kind of like a school cafeteria.

These are a few pictures from inside the center. All of the appliances were donated. I am not sure how many people utilize the center, but it isn't very big. There are two stoves and ovens though, and they said they get used a lot.

This is just the common gathering space.

It was nice to see that the facility is being used and is being well taken care of.

While we were in El Rosario, we met up with Manuel. He is a boy that Suzanne met and became friends with while she was working on the center a few years back. Manuel was nice enough to bring us to his house and take a couple of pictures.

This is Suzanne in their kitchen. You can see what they use as their stove behind Suzanne. It is that metal trash can and it is difficult to see but there is a pan on top of the can. They burn a fire in the can, by looking at the charred wall, a fire or two got away from them.

These are all of the people living in the house. You can see the bed to the right, the kitchen is through a door to the left and there is a small room behind the people in the picture and that is it. I believe there is only one bed for all of those people.

I will try to post more often, I have a few more things to show you!

Living On Food Stamps

I read CNN.com every day at work, and I came upon this article about a CNN correspondent who decided to try living on food stamps since so many Americans now have to turn to food stamps to make ends meet.

Sean Callebs decided to document his experience while living on food stamps. As a quick over view, Sean has agreed to live on $176 for food for the month of February. He has also been in contact with the Food Stamp program to see what services they offer to help people spend and budget wisely, he discusses how Obama's stimulus plan would support the program and what I find most intriguing is that he discusses parts of emails that people who live on food stamps send him. The real life stories show you just how important government help is. One of the stories he blogged about today was this one.

"Kendra, is in part why we began working on these stories. She writes that she was a business executive that graduated with a 3.9 gpa. But once her company went under in this economy she couldn't find work and is now on food stamps.
Kendra says food stamps are "more dignifying" than having to go to a food pantry. She says "the latter is incredibly embarrassing and shameful for me." My heart goes out to her."

I particularly like that he has compassion for these people and in turn helps me to better understand the need of so many.

If you are interested in reading his blog you can click here.