Once upon a time,
a woman realized she had forgotten her checkbook and was unable to pay for her groceries. The woman behind her at the checkout line paid her bill; she gave the first woman her address so she could send a payment check. The first woman repaid her, along with a little extra as a thank-you. The second woman decided to donate that thank-you money to a local food bank. When friends found out what she had done, they matched the donation. Their friends matched it too, and before long the
93 Dollar Club was born.
It also inspired a wonderful movement on Yahoo! called
How Good Grows. You can use the site to share the good deeds you've done -- and maybe inspire other people to do the same. All you have to do to join in is:
* Do a good deed! It doesn't have to be a Bill-Gates-vaccinating-Africa kind of deed, it can be something as small as paying the bridge toll for the car behind you.
* Update your status on Yahoo! with what you've done at
kindness.yahoo.com.
* Share your update on other social networks and see your ripple of kindness grow as others click on your update, "like" the good deed you've done, and share a good deed of their own.
Your good deed doesn't even have to involve donating money -- for instance, the good deed I entered today had to do with
helping out a friend in need -- but I'm honored to announce that this holiday season, Yahoo! has given me and other
Yahoo! Motherboard members $100 to perform some random acts of kindness and help brighten other people's holiday season! Now this is what I call blogging for good! I am so excited to be a part of this! I can't wait to start -- and I hope you'll join me in performing some random acts of kindness of your own.
The only problem is... I don't know what to do with the money. There are so many great ways to use that $100, and so many people who could use it. Here are some suggestions Yahoo! gave me:
* Pay for a portion of someone's groceries at a local grocery store
* Go to checkout at a toy store and pay for someone's toys
* Go to the Post Office and offer to pay shipping costs for holiday gifts
* Hand out umbrellas on a rainy day
* Go to a local ice cream parlor and pay for ice cream cones
* Pay for people's checked luggage or curbside bag check
* Buy a handful of tickets for the Nutcracker (or some other holiday show) and drop them off at a local Boys and Girls Club
* Check out
http://kindness.yahoo.com for more ideas
All I know for sure is that I want to involve my whole family, and I prefer that the recipients of the money don't realize who it came from. So what should I do to spread some kindness this holiday season? I'd love to hear your suggestions.
Win a $5 Dunkin Donuts gift cardTo make things more interesting, I'm performing a random act of kindness and buying one Bonggamom Finds reader a cup of coffee! To put it another way, I've bought a $5 Dunkin Donuts gift card and I'm giving it away to a randomly selected commenter on this post......
Required EntryLeave a comment on this post and tell me what
you would do if you were given $100 to perform a random act (or acts) of kindness. This entry must be completed for other entries to count.
Extra EntriesFor extra entries, you can do any or all of the following. Please leave a separate comment on this post for each extra entry, with a way to verify the entry (i.e. tweet link, blog post link, blog comment link, Facebook id, Twitter id, etc.).
1) Go to
http://kindness.yahoo.com/Hjw-u0 (which takes you to the kindness ripple I started) and share your own act of kindness, then come back here and leave a comment with the URL of the kindness ripple you've started-- you will see your own unique URL after you click on the "Share" button (1 entry).
2) Find my (bonggamom's) kindness ripple and click on "like", then come back here and leave a comment telling me you did (1 entry).
3) Share this with your Facebook friends (1 entry):
Visit the Yahoo! How Good Grows site and share an act of kindness you've performed recently (or plan to). You could inspire others to do the same. Start a ripple of #kindness and see How Good Grows! http://ow.ly/3fh2l
4) Tweet this, up to once per day (1 entry per day, leave a comment with the tweet link for each tweet):
RT @bonggamom Visit Yahoo! How Good Grows & share your act of kindness! You could inspire others 2 do the same #kindness http://ow.ly/3fh2l
5) Tweet this, up to once per day (1 entry per day, leave a comment with the tweet link for each tweet):
Help @bonggamom figure out how to use $100 to spread kindness and enter to win a $5 Dunkin Donuts card http://www.bonggafinds.com
The RulesThis giveaway ends at midnight PST on December 5, 2010; I will draw a winner at random on December 6. I will post the winner's name in the comments section after he/she confirms acceptance. Continental US residents only.
For additional giveaway rules, click here. Good luck!
Disclosure: As a part of the Yahoo! Mother Board, I'm excited to be taking part in How Good Grows Through Ripples of Kindness . Yahoo! has given me $100 to do random acts of kindness in the hopes of brightening people's holiday season. I hope you'll be inspired to join me. I did not receive a sample or monetary compensation for this post. The $5 Dunkin Donuts card giveaway is not affiliated with Yahoo! or the Yahoo! Motherboard; I am providing the prize personally. . The views and opinions expressed here are my own.
Did you miss the Black Friday sales? I don't blame you. I braved the crowds last year and ended up with nothing -- I couldn't find what I wanted, the lines were too long and I didn't succumb to the old bait-and-switch (well, the big sale item is all sold out but since I'm here, I might as well buy this.....). But I also get why people do it: they've got a long holiday list and it makes sense to try and save money.
Get ready, Dinosaur Train fans! PBS Kids is airing a new episode on December 6. My kids love watching Buddy the T-Rex and his adopted Pteranodon family go on adventures and learn about natural history and natural science, and they love the paleontologist who appears at the end of every episode and compares the dinosaurs they saw in the program to modern-day animals.
Who doesn't love The Grinch? We read this Dr. Seuss classic any time of the year, and when the holidays come around, our Grinch book gets read more than ever. There's no better character that embodies the spirit of Christmas better than green, grumpy old Grinchy Claus -- and no better idea for a holiday present! So when online gift company Mail a Monkey offered to send me one of their limited-edition Grinches, I jumped at the chance to review them.
* Mashed potatoes
Bonggamom's note: When 3Po saw that The Pea was getting her own guest review post, he insisted on doing one of his own. Since he's been enjoying Atari's Backyard Sports: Rookie Rush, a game for Nintendo DS that we were given to review last month, I decided to let him have a go at it. Given that he's 6 years old, I decided to let him dictate his review to me and type it out myself, otherwise he'd be typing till Christmas. I did give him some gentle prompts when his descriptions were too unclear or ungrammatical, or when he'd totally go off on a tangent (at one point he was talking about the snack he had been eating after a Rookie Rush session). Other than that, the words are totally his own. Enjoy!
It's not even Black Friday yet, and the sales have already begun! I received an email today with a great offer from Cardstore.com -- free shipping and 20% off with the code CYBERSALE. This is your chance to get your holiday cards done and save a little cash at the same time. The holiday cards I ordered from Cardstore.com arrived a few weeks ago and they are gorgeous. You can see what they look like on my recent Cardstore.com giveaway post -- but photos can't convey the nice, thick card stock, the vibrant colors and the crisp, clean font printing. Hurry up and order before Black Friday comes and goes!
Required Entry
It was like being inside a subway train during rush hour in Tokyo. There was no room to walk, let alone push a cart, but somehow people were jostling and pushing their way around. It was wild and crazy; no wonder savvy Black Friday veterans plan their shopping strategy with all the precision of a military campaign! Needless to say, I chickened out and left without purchasing anything, but braver souls than me can really get some amazing bargains on Black Friday.
I've always loved painting shirts. A custom painted shirt is one of the best ways to express individuality, and all it takes is a shirt and some fabric paint. I still have one of the first (and the best) shirts I've ever painted, of an elephant with red painted toenails, that I did when I was fourteen, and I've personalized many shirts since then. Here's one that my sister, my friend and I did when we got together with our kids to organize an at-home "cousin camp" (we made ourselves "camp counselor" shirts):
Her flair for creativity and personal expression is one reason why The Pea loves Ubisoft's Style Lab line of games for Nintendo DS. Style Lab Makeover lets her experiment with different makeup and hairstyle looks (without the mess and fuss of actual makeup), and Style Lab Jewelry Design lets her create one-of-a-kind jewelry. Both games have given her many hours of entertainment! From design-your-own jewelry, it's just a short step to design-your-own fashion -- and I'm so happy to see that Ubisoft has made that step with their introduction of their newest Style Lab game, Style Lab Fashion Design.
The Pea has already created quite a few clothing items, and she's only been playing with it for a week! She says she loves it because she gets to create exactly the design she wants, and it makes her feel special to think that no one in the world has the same design as hers.