Here is a great program I just heard about that I want to share with you.—

With the holiday season fast approaching, many good people are getting ready to do the good work of helping families and communities in need. VolunteerSpot — a free online planning tool — has joined with the Arbor Day Foundation to make participating in this season’s service activities easier than ever.

Whether it’s class parents planning food drives or nonprofits and congregations preparing for community meals, toy drives and charity bazaars, VolunteerSpot’s free online sign-up tool makes it easy for any group to sign up and coordinate volunteers. And in this tough economic climate, volunteering will play an even more crucial role in ensuring a brighter season for struggling families and communities.

“I think most people want to give back, especially this time of year. VolunteerSpot has been very helpful in coordinating volunteers for our Backpacks of Food program.” Said Pastor Brad O’Brien of Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.  Backpacks of Food is a hunger intervention partnership between the church and local elementary school where volunteers fill children’s backpacks with food for the weekend so they can eat healthy while they aren’t at school. Its volunteers are among the more than 100,000 people using VolunteerSpot across the country.

About the Giving Tree Giveaway

As part of this effort to promote holiday volunteering, Arbor Day Foundation and VolunteerSpot are teaming up for a Giving Tree Giveaway.  Plan any local holiday service activity on VolunteerSpot, and the Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree in your name in a fire-damaged national forest. “The trees we plant will be lasting symbol of service to generations to come,” said Kevin Sander, director of corporate partnerships for the Arbor Day Foundation.

“Giving to others is the true spirit of the holidays, but in this economy, one of the most important things we can all give is service,” said Karen Bantuveris, VolunteerSpot founder and CEO. “VolunteerSpot wants service to be easier – which is why we created our online tools – and this holiday season we want service to have a double benefit by giving back to our nation through replanting our national forests.”

To get a tree planted, register a new account at VolunteerSpot and plan a holiday service activity. Just add the word “TREE” where we ask what type of group you organize, and be sure to invite at least four volunteers. Once completed, VolunteerSpot and the Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree in your group’s name in fire-damaged national forests. Happy holidays from VolunteerSpot and Arbor Day Foundation!

Please visit VolunteerSpot’s website to learn more about the Giving Tree Giveaway and see examples of holiday service ideas: http://www.VolunteerSpot.com/ebooks/GivingTree .

You see, I’m just not a bowler.  It is not my sport. The loud, crashing sounds of the pins, the thumping of dropped bowling balls and the idea that you are wearing rented shoes that thousands have worn before you is just not for me.  Plus I suck at it. Which is why I was always secretly relieved when my children would  request the bumpers and I enthusiastically complied . “Why sure, honey. We can get the bumpers!”   In the old days, the manager would have to come down to the lane with a crow bar and pull up the bumpers. Not anymore. Imagine my horror when on our recent bowling outing the manager told me that you can  turn on and off the bumpers when you enter your names into the scoring computer. Now, whoever wants bumpers can have them. It is no longer and all or nothing proposition. “Who wants bumpers?” What’s a mom to do? Do I fess up and admit I want them or brave it without? It was my moment of truth. I figured I had to be a proper role model of determination, but mostly because I feared humiliation I decided to tough it out. And I did OK. Not great, but no worse than what I usually did.  By the third game I was making some spares and even hit a few strikes. Still… I would have liked knowing that those bumpers were there. Just in case…

Aside from being a busy mom and stepmom, I am also a nature artist. Here is a photo of my seaweed art. If you would like to purchase my seaweed art cards on Etsy click here.

First, I only shop at Marshalls. I took the kids there when we were in New Jersey this summer and we could not believe the deals. All the girls got stylin’ gladiator sandals for under $10. Cheryl found an O’Neill bathing suit for $7 and Sophia scored an American Eagle wool pea coat for $24. I told the kids, “From now on, that is where we will shop.” No more over priced mall designer stores. After all, why pay more when you can pay less?

Secondly, I canceled the house keeper. It killed me to do it, but I just could not justify the expense anymore. Now I pay the kids a small amount of chore money to clean their rooms and bathrooms and pick up the rest of the house, which is something they should have been doing all along.  I had justified the expense in the past because I was working full time and the kids were so busy with sports and homework. Now, we set aside two Saturdays a month to give the house a thorough cleaning and the money we save can go into a vacation account or toward some  other house hold expense.

Cook from scratch. If the kids want cookies they can make them themselves. Ditto for pizza and other snacks. Here are some recipe ideas from my Just Imaginate blog.

Make gifts and cards. This holiday season I plan to make as many as possible. I am starting now so that I have plenty of time.  Here are some homemade gift ideas also from my Just Imaginate blog.

Cooking/baking and making crafts  is a wonderful way to spend time together as a family. It is entertaining. It’s relaxing and it teaches kids the value of saving money.

I have a new blog called Just Imaginate, that I just launched that is dedicated to super fun crafts and activities for children.

When my children were small they were always coming to me and asking, “Mommy, can we do a project?” Since I was determined to raise my kids to be self-directed and creative without a dependency on TV to be entertained, I was more than happy to comply with their requests. One day when my oldest daughter Sophia was about four, she was working on an ”invention” and someone asked her how she came up with the idea for it and she replied, “I just imaginate.”  This blog is a compilation of all those fun years we spent together imagining, creating and “imaginating”.

Please check out Just Imaginate. Bookmark it. Forward it to your friends and send me all your suggestions, questions and contributions.