There’s a Wocket in my Pocket Sam I am!: SpReAd the Love Update

The Children’s book challenge is well underway…as of yesterday – Monday March 3, we’ve had 16 posts each of which has highlighted a different beloved children’s book ranging from the classic to the sublime.  Jazzy listed and linked them all up here.  There are a few more posts in the hopper for this week and there is still time if anyone would like to write a post or report a book donation.  To date, including the posts, the hosts and the donated books, the SpReAd the Love Children’s Book Challenge has totaled up $37 that we’ll take from the pocket of our anonymous donor and give to one of Richard Armitage’s Just Giving Charities…not bad for a first time around.

Speaking for JustGiving…look what popped up

The first installment of our initial $200 matching gift…

Last week Jazzy threw out a little side challenge the prize for which was a donation in the winner’s name to Adam Brown’s London Marathon Just Giving page which is raising funds for the British Heart Foundation, in honor of Adam’s late father.

and the winners are…

In fact, if one were to scroll through the list of donors on Adam’s page, one might find some familiar names reaching out in support.  Best of luck and all good wishes to Adam in his run!

While I’ve loved all of the great children’s book memories, this past week was bittersweet for me personally since it marked the passing of my Grandma Anna.  You may remember that I recently gave a shout out for her 101st birthday.  I can’t really be too sad…she lived a very long and very fruitful life and simply slipped away in her sleep last Thursday night…no suffering, no pain…a gift really.  I would like to take a moment and thank the almost 200 people who came yesterday to the mass celebrating Grandma Anna’s life, many of them whom I’d never met, all of them who had something nice to say.

So, counting the 37 Book Challenge kindnesses and the collective kindness extended to my family and me yesterday, we are up to a grand total of 264 kindnesses…almost halfway to maxing out our second anonymous matching Sugar Mama/Daddy pledge.  Keep up the kindness Armitageworld – we are really SpReAding some Love now!!

Tempus Fugit: SpReAd the Love Update

Good Lord!  Where did the last week go I wonder?  Between drama at work and a crushingly busy weekend followed by parent-teacher conferences for my oldest last evening, I completely lost track of time and updating everyone on our SpReAd the Love progress.

celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday March 2 by donating a book to a needy child

The book challenge has gotten underway with posts from Trudy Brasure and Servetus on favorite children’s books.  I really do need to get going on this…I’ve been re-reading my selection.  I will also have a guest post from my daughter MiniMe who, I think, has made her final book selection, but that may have changed since yesterday.  There is still time to write a post if you’d like, of if you’d rather not, you can always get in on the act by simply donating a children’s book where it can be of use.  I also found a fantastic triple dip opportunity for many in the US….

Half Price Books has stores throughout many parts of the US

This means if you choose to donate to the Half Pint Library, Half Price Books will match your donation, and if you let us know about it, we’ll count it as well and money will be donated to Richard Armitage’s Just Giving charities – that’s a lot of impact for the donation of one small book  🙂

After meeting our first challenge goal in only 6 weeks, we are still steadily tallying kindness from all over and I am confident that we’ll reach our second matching gift donation with kindness to spare.  It’s really clear to me that for many people in this wonderful community, kindness and generosity are a way of life, not something most find needful of credit.  SpReAd the Love’s main goal is to highlight and celebrate the amazing capacity for kindness that so many Armitage fans embody, and if we can raise a little money for some worthy causes in the process,  that much the better.  As of Sunday February 23rd, we’ve recorded 226 kindnesses given or received.

In the spirit of the recently completed Sochi Winter Olympiad, I’ll leave you with a pretty cool Olympic kindess that Jazzy passed along to me

SpReAd the Love : First Challenge

Following is a repost from FunkyBlueDandelion:

Thank you all for embracing SpReAd The Love. Obscura should have an update this afternoon of where we stand in regard to the number of kindnesses we’ve logged so far  but before we do that we wanted to let you in on our first blogger challenge. We’ll be issuing these periodically throughout the year and the first one is a really fun one.

Dr. Seuss’s birthday falls on March 2 and in the US it kicks off Read Across America in elementary schools and libraries. The challenge from us is to choose a book that meant the world to you as a child (or a children’s book you’ve read and loved as an adult), blog about it and then donate a copy of it to a school, library or literacy program, or give it as a gift to a young family member or friend. Just let us know in the body of your blog post where you’re donating and that’s it, it counts. We have another anonymous co-conspirator who is willing to donate $1 for each act of kindness during March and April up to $200 to Richard Armitage’s JustGiving charities so this one is going to be a win-win.

Wanna make that win-win-win? If you blog and are willing to host a guest post for someone who doesn’t, let me know so that we can match you up with someone who might like to participate but doesn’t have a blog of his or her own. Hosting a guest post is also a loggable kindness. If you don’t blog but would like to participate we’ll work it out. Just email me at funkybluedelphinium at gmail dot com with the subject line DR SEUSS. The target date for this challenge is March 2 but any posts between March 1-7 will count and please let us know so that we can link to them all.

Okay, it’s Sunday which normally means poetry here and we talked about Dr. Seuss and it’s yucky and snowy and cold where I’m sitting so I need a hit of sunshine so I’m going to spin a Burning Man vid that I’ve posted before. Have a great day whatever you’re doing!

….Sincerely,

Jazzbaby (you’ll have to follow the link to the dandelion patch for the video 🙂  )

You can also leave a comment here, or email me at ancient dot Armitage at gmail dot com if you’d like to participate.