Dress up time!

We have tickets for the Covenant Academy Father and Daughter Ball (Feb. 12).

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...and applications for the Little Miss Valentine Pageant sponsored by Morrison Ruritan (Feb. 19) and the Snow Princess Pageants to benefit the Ronald McDonald House (Feb. 26).

We also have all the dresses, accessories, dress capes, shoes and, of course, the gifts for the very special girls getting to attend these events!

We just got in a big shipment of new dresses and shoes, so hurry in!

She's Baaaack...kind of!

Three months...really? 

So, learning time management has been my biggest challenge lately and slowly but surely I'm getting there! The blog(s), however, have taken a backseat to getting a house together, getting everything at work settled down, Relay for Life (I'm team captain for River Park), getting to actually hang out with my friends (those people that say they have no time for their friends after getting married are liars...I have more time...more about that later), trying to occasionally work at the shop, writing thank you notes for wedding gifts (I've made a dent in them at least...still have a ways to go though!), trying to get names and numbers and addresses and insurance information changed, taking care of my plants (a whole post in itself...I've learned to love the rain...that's the only time my plants get watered), etc. etc. etc. 

There is sooo much more going on here than just newlywed stuff and, by the way, if one more person asks me "How's married life?" I might scream...lol! It's great...wonderful...I love it...but I'm so sick of talking about it!

So, take all of that as an apology, a small rant and a shout out to all who were wondering if I had dropped off the face of the earth (or at least the Internet). I miss y'all too! I promise to get back into the swing of things very soon...on all of my blogs. Keep checking back.

Oh! and join me and the rest of Team River Park at Relay for Life tomorrow night as we Rock & Roll all Night to KISS Cancer Goodbye! We'll have giant soft pretzels, cold sweet tea, Tshirts, & candy....and that's only our booth! Come on out and support the cause!

Christmas in the Park 2008

Join us tomorrow night for the 23rd annual Christmas in the Park!

It'll be a night to remember so don't miss it!

Have a very Karito Christmas!

As soon as I saw the newest Karito Kid, Piper, I thought about Bella Smith (I LOVE that girl!!). I've always thought that Bella was a doll...but now there is actually a doll that she resembles! I called her and had her come in to see it the same week that Piper came in at the shop!

Come check out Piper and all of her Karito buddies at the store! It's the perfect time to layaway the dolls for Christmas...clothes, books and other Karito accessories too!


Check out the Karito Kids website over in my links list to learn all about them! The company gives to different charities with every Karito doll, book, outfit or accessory sell...I just love that!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

You all know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

We're doing our part to help out the cause by collecting spare change at our register.

Do you know the facts about breast cancer? CLICK HERE for info!

Children's Advocacy Center Banquet

At Ashley's Attic, you know we love the kids! We believe that no child should have to hurt unnecessarily and should be supported, cared for and cherished....for that reason, I'd like to let you all know about a fundraiser for our community's Children's Advocacy Center.

The Angels' Autumn Fest is a formal event that the C.A.C. will be hosting in October.

There will be a really nice dinner, a silent auction and will feature Tennessee's First Lady, Andrea Conte, as the keynote speaker for the evening. Andrea (pictured above during another children's advocacy event) is a big supporter of Children's Advocacy Centers in the state of Tennessee and has made it her goal to make sure that the centers are supported and well-publicized.

Like I said before, this will be a formal event...ladies, it's a great excuse to get all dressed up and go out for a nice dinner event with your friends or your guy!

Junior Auxiliary will be there helping to serve the meal and I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone there. It looks to be a really special event.

I hope the C.A.C raises lots of funds for their cause! This is a great opportunity for our community to come together to help a really worthy cause.

You can learn more about the event or reserve your tickets by contacting the Children's Advocacy Center at 507-2386.

In Remembrance

Yes, I know it's already September 12...but I'm just now getting around to blogging and I couldn't just skip saying a little something in remembrance of September 11 and the people who lost their lives that day.

It's one of those days that we'll always remember...this has become this generation's Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination...we'll always remember where we were when we got the news. This morning I was listening to all of the songs the radio stations were playing to honor the day and couldn't help but shed a few tears...it doesn't seem like it was 7 years ago...the feelings are still there and still the same and it only takes a song or a picture to bring them right up to the surface. So my prayer today, and every day, is for our nation and all of the people in it (the ones I know and the ones I don't know) that I love so much.

And thanks so much to all of the service men and women who are out there protecting us everyday. There are no words to express the gratitude my family has for those individuals...so I hope that a simple "thank you" suffices!

Scholarship opportunity

Since I'm posting about my projects and causes tonight, let me fill y'all in on a scholarship opportunity from Junior Auxiliary.

Since we are so blessed to have many friends and customers who are in professions devoted to supporting the special needs of children and youth...I figure this is a good scholarship to advertise on here:

Every year the National Association of Junior Auxiliaries, Inc. offers scholarships to those who are planning to attend school at the graduate level to work in one of those professions.

Visit the J.A. of McMinnville blog for more information and links...or go straight to the NAJA website to view the application. NAJA will be accepting applications from September 1st until February 1st.

(and even if you're a fan of the blog from another county or state, check the rules for applications anyway...it might still apply to you! As long as your state has a Junior Auxiliary chapter - and you meet the other requirements - this scholarship could help you too!)

Yay for free money for school!

Miss Warren County Pageant Applications

Applications are now available at the shop for the

Miss Warren County Scholarship Pageant.

This pageant is sponsored by Queens for a Cure - the Relay for Life group that I'm involved with.

The pageant is open to all girls in high school in Warren County and all of the proceeds go to Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society.

Come on by and pick up an application...

For a Cure!

Come on out to Relay for Life!

When?: TONIGHT! Festivities start at 6PM.

Where?: WCMS' Nunley Stadium

Why?: To support the Cause. ALL proceeds from tonight's event go to the American Cancer Society and their effort to support those affected by all forms of cancer and to eventually find a cure!

Do it for Morgan, for Andy, for Presley, for Jackson, for Lauren, for Kennedy....and all of the others in our town and state who have fought or are fighting this awful illness.

Come join me tonight at the Queens for a Cure booth. We will be serving Barbeque from High Rollers Smokers, baked beans, slaw, Kielbasa Sausage Hoagies, Cold Drinks, Bottled Water and Homemade Fruit Tea in souvenir cups. You can make your own personalized beauty queen sash, get your face painted and your hair colored Krazy colors. We will also be hosting a magic show featuring a real magician who also makes really great cool balloon creations! We will be selling memory balloons to honor your loved ones and the very talented Miss Paula Wanamaker has made cupcakes and cookies that you really have to try...but don't eat the banana cupcakes...they're mine....heehee!!

Go check out this blog...

I'm the public relations chair for Junior Auxiliary of McMinnville and, thanks to Susan Burks for setting it up, we have a blog! As PR chair, I have taken over administration of the blog and I'm working to make it a really great resource for, not just members of the club, but also the general public who might want to know more about, or want to help out our chapter!


For those of you who don't know; Junior Auxiliary of McMinnville is a chapter of the National Association of Junior Auxiliaries. We are a group of women, here in McMinnville, who do our part to make a lasting difference in our community by meeting the needs of the citizens, especially the children. Our organization's slogan is "Care Today - Character Tomorrow"...along the same lines of the "Teach a Man to Fish" school of thinking.


We believe that we can make a difference in Warren County and we participate and host several service projects in the community; from the fun and family friendly Christmas in the Park, which has become a community tradition; to Coats for the Community, a project in which we collect donated coats and winter weather items from all over Warren County and then set up at the Mall in the autumn in order to give out the coats free to families and individuals who need them. We also host the Junior Miss Warren County Pageant in April and the Snow Princess Pageants in February, as well as several other fundraising projects in order to raise money to support all the service that we do for Warren County!

It's a great group that I'm so proud to be involved with. I wouldn't be a good PR chair if I didn't invite you to check out our new blog, to find out more about this club that does so much for the community, to make suggestions or comments that you think might be helpful to us, to find out more about maybe joining the club, or to donate if you feel so moved (monetary donations are great; but we also take coats for our Coats for the Community project, Books for our J.A. Book Drive, school supplies for our Pencil Pals project, etc.).

Here's the address: www.jaofmcminnville.blogspot.com

Stamp Out Hunger

Join me this Saturday, May 10th for Stamp Out Hunger™

— the nation's largest annual single-day food drive!

The more people who help, the more successful the food drive will be...so repost this, call and text your friends about it, email people, whatever it takes to get the word out!

ON Saturday letter carriers in more than 10,000 communities will collect food items and deliver them to local food banks to help some of the millions of Americans, including an estimated 13 million children, who face hunger every day.

Since 1993, families have donated more than a half-billion pounds of food to Stamp Out Hunger.
Simply place bags filled with nonperishable food items like canned meats and fish, canned soup, juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice next to your mailbox on Saturday, May 10th. *
Your letter carrier will pick up the bags and deliver them to your local food bank.

To learn more about this food drive click here.

I like this food drive because I don't actually have to make the trip

to the donation center...it comes to me!

You don't even have to be there to give it...all you do is fill up a bag with non-parishable and leave it beside your mailbox!

The food that you donate will go to Middle Tennessee's Second Harvest Food Bank where it will be distributed throughout the Middle Tennessee area. Click here for more information about that organization.

While we're talking about food banks; you should know also that Warren County also has its own emergency food bank. To learn more about it click here. I'm sure that they

would love to have your donations too!

Happy donating everyone!

Annual Education Conference

I'm finally getting a chance to chill out and relax after a busy weekend at the National Association of Junior Auxiliaries' Annual Education Conference in Birmingham, Alabama. We had a lot of fun and got to meet lots of women from all over the south who are extremely dedicated to Junior Auxiliary's cause. We also got to attend several meetings, seminars, talks and workshops designed to inspire us and help us learn to do our jobs as J.A. volunteers even better. We came back from the conference with so many great ideas...I can't wait to start acting on those ideas! My camera was dead part of the time...and we stayed busy so much that I often forgot to take pictures...but here are just a few that I remembered to take...

[This is me and my roomie Kristi...I'm pretty much an only child (my brother is 16 years older than me) so I don't share a room well...I'm so glad I had Kristi in my room because she made me so comfortable and didn't mind my only child room sharing habits...or lack thereof. We talked a lot though and I'm glad that I got to know her a little better. I can't wait to work with her on some of the projects we discussed.]

[I'm amazed that Shauna got to come along on the trip. She's one of those supermoms that I admire...and on top of that she is very involved in the community and she's an amazing nurse that got nominated for two awards at River Park Hospital this weekend but missed the ceremony to be with us at the conference...(not to mention she looks like a supermodel...see the picture)! She was also one of the drivers that got us to Birmingham...Thank you Shauna!]

[Brooke, Cole and our 2008-2009 J.A. President Natalie on their way to the parking garage to go home...we all missed our families after two and a half days so we were really ready to head out. ]

[This is our row during one of the meetings...Jaime caught me trying to get a candid pic...]

Oh...and for my Ashley's Attic connection; I was on my feet the whole weekend and what do you think I had on them? Crocs, of course...I wore my black Alices the ENTIRE TIME! They are super comfortable and allowed me to go from casual to business casual to after-five-cocktail dressy without having to change to a different style shoe...pretty cool for one pair of shoes, eh? They're my favorites, seriously...if you haven't tried a pair of the Alice, you really need to get into the shop and let us fix you up with a pair!

Reducing, Reusing, Recycling...Our Shoes!

Do your Crocs look like this?Do you have a pile of worn-out Crocs underneath your bed, in your closet, in the mud room?

You all know that just like a performance tire, when the treads on your Crocs become worn, their slip-resistant nature will be compromised. That's when you know it's time to treat your feet to a new pair and now you don't have to worry about those worn-out pairs just laying around, going to waste.

You know that we are very into helping out with whatever good cause that we can...and we are trying to do our part to be 'green'...so, for those of you who haven't heard...We are now McMinnville's official drop-off point for recycled Crocs. Their SolesUnited program aims to collect all of those worn-out and yucky Crocs that you have laying around and to recycle them into brand new Crocs.

Click here for more information on this program...

In addition to recycling the Crocs, for each pair of the recycled shoes that they sell they will donate a new pair of Crocs to someone in need (they have several groups around the world that they partner with to make this happen on a BIG scale).

All you need to do to help this cause is bring in your worn-out Crocs to the shop and we'll put them in our big SolesUnited bag...when the bag is filled we get to send it back to the Crocs Company and request another bag to fill. I've already got the bag half-way filled up ... and I have a whole school in Murfreesboro that is planning to collect worn-out Crocs as a service project and then send them back to the company through us!

I love that this program is giving us Crocs-wearers a chance to do our part and not feel bad about either throwing the shoes away or keeping them in the bottom of the closet forever...

Thank you...

Thanks to everyone who came out to support Queens for a Cure, Relay for Life and The American Cancer Society at our "Breakfast With the Bunny"!

We had a lot of fun!

Here is just one of the faces that I painted at the event. I think Salem is great! Paula, you have a great kid! He was very understanding and patient when at first I painted "Vaderbilt" on his cheek...we fixed it though! Go Vandy!

Healing Hearts

In the past year Junior Auxiliary has begun helping out the organization Healing Hearts of Tennessee. Healing Hearts is a service organization that has a headquarters in McMinnville. They provide counseling and other forms of therapy to individuals as well as entire families in order to help them get through major traumas and other life-altering changes. You can read more about them here on their website. They are a group of people who really really care about what they're doing and the services that they provide to our community.
We at J.A. have been trying to help them out in small ways; some of our ladies and their husbands have taken training sessions to become mentors for the children that come through Healing Hearts' doors, some have offered up other services to help out, and the club as a whole has been raising money with some of our finance projects' money going directly towards Healing Hearts. While we are trying to do our parts and I'm sure that many other individuals and groups have been helping out in their own ways, it has become apparent that the organization needs much much more help. Our Junior Auxiliary president, Susan Burks, brought to the rest our attention in an email today; an article in Sunday's Southern Standard about Healing Hearts' funding problems.
I just thought I would do a quick post to let those of you who might not read the Standard know about this...maybe you can help or know someone who can help...I'm sure they'll accept any form of service that you have to offer.
Thanks.

While I'm on the subject, though...

Speaking of causes; you've heard me talk about our line of Karito Kids dolls before in this blog....

Well, they seem to be picking up steam and really gaining popularity. Several of the dolls and their accessories have already sold a couple of times over (we already had to do a reorder!) and even more customers have expressed interest in the dolls and the book series for upcoming birthdays and other holidays! Come in and see what all the hype is about!
Below is a photo I took of just a few of the dolls that we have.

I really like this company and I love the ideals that they represent. The dolls and their accompanying books are just a gateway to the whole Karito Kids world...with each doll comes a passport that allows your child to get on the Kidsgive website with a code in order to play games, earn points, and shop for online goodies (a-la Webkins); but on top of that, they get to learn about the countries that the different dolls are from and actually find out about charities in those countries designed to help the children and families of that particular nation.
AND THEN, for every point your child earns with their passport code, the company will donate money to one of those charities...after so many points, the child actually gets to make the decision which charity their "points" go to! I love that this company is encouraging kids to take responsibility for what is going on in the world! I love that they encourage the ideas that EVERYONE, even kids, even just one little girl, can make a difference in the world!

Below is the box-set of all the dolls' books.



Go check out their website over in my links to learn more about the dolls or come on in to the store and let mom and I tell you about them in person.

They are about to release a new doll as well, so I'll definitely be keeping you posted about that!

Yet another reason we love Paula Deen...

You know about me and my causes...well, I can really appreciate when someone else really really cares about one of the causes out there.

I saw on TV tonight a piece about Paula Deen being a spokesperson and big supporter of America's Second Harvest Food Bank where she was getting really riled up about our country's biiig hunger problem. As the richest nation in the world, it is very sad that we have such a problem; millions of people in the United States go hungry every day...

Nashville has it's own branch of the Second Harvest Food Bank and is always accepting donations.

Most important to us Warren County folks, though, should be those in our own community. When last I heard, we have our own Emergency Food Bank here in town. I'm sure we would all be suprised to find out just how many people right here in Warren County don't get enough food to eat. Here is the link to the Southern Standard site with the most recent information I could find on the Warren County Emergency Food Bank.

There are other groups and projects in this community dedicated to making sure that the folks of Warren County don't have to go hungry. I'm sure you can check with your church or your child's school...your closest boy or girl scout troops maybe even...to see if they have any programs to that affect going on.

So, there's all the information you could ask for! Get out there and help! I know you have a few cans of soup, beans, or beets in your pantry that you aren't going to eat any time soon...why not donate it? Do it because Paula says so! And on that note...follow Paula Deen's example...get mad about the problems you see out there in the community and the world...find a cause that you care about...and then do what you can to support that cause!

Whew! Now I'll get off my soapbox...lol! Thanks for reading!