day 264

Tonight I went to the Orioles game! As an SHH fundraiser, we sold tickets to the game for $18, and we made $5 from each ticket. They played the Yankees and got sort of crushed...the score was 11-0 when we left after the 7th inning. But it was still really fun! Camden Yard is beautiful, and I was with great friends :) I'll definitely be making some return trips there this summer!

day 249

Today was our last SHH meeting of the semester :( Sam brought us some sparkling apple-grape cider and we all toasted to our favorite SHH moment of the semester. It was hard to choose, but I settled with the bake sale where we raised $160!

day 244

Tonight was our second SHH fundraiser of the week, and our second attempt at taking a party bus into a club in D.C.

The "redemption ride," as we called it, was a success and we all had a great time at FUR nightclub downtown!

day 242

Tonight SHH had one of our most unique fundraisers yet - it was called "Queens for Dreams" and it was a drag queen show! I'd never been to one before, and it was definitely a fun (outrageous) experience. We partnered up with the Towson chapter of SHH to put the event on, and even though we had a much smaller turn out than we had hoped for, we still made $200 to put toward our fundraising goal!

I didn't get a good picture of either of the queens, but this is a picture of the frat guys that Towson recruited to take off their shirts and walk around with donation buckets to collect money. We definitely wouldn't have raised as much money as we did had they not been there!

day 230

Testudo stopped by our SHH bake sale today!

day 229

Tonight we had a great fundraiser for SHH! Katlyn found out about a bar in Adams Morgan (D.C.) that has a program called "non-profit Thursdays." Different non-profit organizations can sign up for a Thursday, and from 5-9pm, 20% of all food purchased and $1 from every drink bought goes directly to the organization. In addition, we had a table where we were accepting donations and raffling off items. It was definitely a success, and we're going to try to do it again soon!

day 195

We had our biggest SHH fundraiser tonight! We chartered a Maryland bus to take us and 60 of our closest friends to Ultrabar in downtown D.C. It was a really fun night - although I'm not sure which was more fun, the actual night or rehashing all of the events that took place the next day. Lots of funny stories :) This picture is of me and some of the UMD girls I went to Honduras with. I love getting together with them!

day 191

I made 30 of these beautiful chocolate covered pretzels tonight for the upcoming SHH bakesales. They're so fun and easy to make, and a nice alternative from the traditional brownie/cookie/cupcake bakesale options!

day 179

These beautiful friendship bracelets came in the mail today! They're the newest fundraiser for SHH; it's called Threads of Hope. The bracelets were made by a village in the Philippines for whom these bracelets are the main source of income. They mail the bracelets to the company in the US who runs Threads of Hope, and the company sends them out to organizations like us! The bracelets are $2 each or 3 for $5. Half of the proceeds go toward our fundraising, and the other half go back to the village in the Philippines.

They're so pretty and well-made, and they come in tons of color combinations. Let me know if you want one!

day 174

Today was another warm one, and the perfect day for an SHH bakesale! We had the music going, delicious baked goods, and lots of fun, energized people behind the table. We raised $100!

day 168

I spent the day at George Mason University for the SHH Spring Summit today! It was a great day full of fundraising ideas, reconnecting with friends from the trip, skyping with the kids in Honduras, and a bake sale where we raised $100!

(Sam was still a little tired from Katlyn's birthday festivities, as you can see...)

day 165

I drove to the SHH meeting tonight, and after being inside for only an hour, my car was covered in snow! Unfortunately it didn't stick to the roads, but there was still enough for Ashley to decorate Ruby's back window :)

day 163

Tonight I made 2 of these change buckets for SHH. We're going to put them on the counters of local businesses and hope that people will drop their change in there after they pay. My friend John said that he did this at a local Subway last year and got close to $500! I've got about 16 buckets, so we'll see how much it raises!

ps. speaking of raising money for SHH...click here!

day 158

Tonight we watched Maryland basketball lose to Duke, but to be honest I only half watched because I was busy making that webpage you see on my computer screen! It's my "mySHH" fundraising page, where (if you're so inclined...) you can donate a couple dollars to help me and my SHH chapter reach our goal of raising $10,000!

Even if you're not going to donate, check out the page! I wrote a little blurb about the fundraising and there's pictures of some pretty cute kids :)

oh, here's the link!

day 155

Tonight Sam & Bryce hosted a dinner for everyone who went on the winter trip to Honduras. It was so fun to be back together with (almost) everyone again! Being with everyone, reminiscing about the trip and planning our fundraising activities for the semester reignited the spark I had when I got back from Honduras. I'm going to try hard to keep that going all semester - it's easy to get lost in the day-to-day madness of classes and work and everyday life, but when I remember everything I saw on my trip, all of that falls into the background and all I can think about is what I'm going to do next for SHH. (In fact, I'm supposed to be writing a reading response for a class right now, but instead I'm drafting a fundraising letter...oops!)

Speaking of fundraising, we decided tonight that the University of Maryland chapter of SHH is going to raise $10,000 this semester! It's a really high goal, but I have absolute faith that we can make it! We have a lot of things in the works (a 5k, a volleyball tournament, bake sales, a movie screening...so much to plan!) so stay tuned and see how you can get involved!