12 Days of Giving, Day 1

Every year, Josh and I figure out some way to give back during the holidays. For the past few years, we have spent most of our efforts on Jubilee Christmas at church. We usually donate a lot of toys that Josh picks up for inexpensively throughout the year at work and they are used for the "shopping" portion of Jubilee Christmas where the parents get to go in three or four different times to pick items out for their children in addition to the ones that were purchased by a sponsor. In addition to that, we typically select two or three children to buy for, so we get a list of clothing items and toys that they want and we go shop for them.

This year, I was inspired by my friend Laura to take a different approach to holiday giving. Many of my blogger buddies did a similar thing in the month of November where tried to give back in some way every day. I didn't get it together in time to do that, so when Laura told me about her plan for giving back throughout the month of December (I think she's doing every day, which is sooo ambitious!), I decided to get on board! I thought it would be fun to do 12 Days of Giving, so Josh and I sat down and tried to think of some different things that we could do throughout the community. It's been fun!!

For Day 1, we donated to Laura's Christmas Gift Drive. She knew of a family that was struggling this year, so she decided to raise money to help them and shopped at a store that is locally owned (she is in Ft. Wayne) to help out the owners, too. I'm so impressed with her generosity and thankful for the inspiration! This is a great way for us to give back to the community because we understand that we lead very blessed lives but there are so many people who do not. It's something that is on our hearts and we've had fun picking out some of the things we're going to do to give back. Stay tuned for more updates!!