National Mandela Day! Help a woman out! :)

Today is Mandela Day, a day that honors Nelson Mandela and the 67 years of public service he has given. In celebration of his mark on the world, Dermalogica and its philanthropic cause in partnership with Kiva, joinFITE, are inspiring people around the world to take action to become change makers for a meaningful cause.

joinFITE, championed by Dermalogica and powered by Kiva.org, is a microfinance platform designed to provide female entrepreneurs and small business owners with Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship. To date, joinFITE has helped fund loans for more than 18,500 women entrepreneurs, with a goal of 25,000 by the end of 2012.

One week ago, joinFITE hosted bloggers virtually through a Spreecast stream to learn about how they too could become change makers this Mandela Day, and invite their audiences to do the same. joinFITE is asking consumers to help direct 670 Kiva Women trial loans through Kiva.org in order to help women start or grow their own businesses through microfinance, which helps them as well as their communities become more financially independent. 

Today, I am sharing this call to action and encourage you to get involved by making a microloan to create a positive change in a woman’s life. It will only take a few minutes of your time, and is absolutely no cost to you.

Please visit www.Kiva.org/women to direct a loan, and help make a difference in the life of a woman in the country and business practice of your choice.

Be careful... it's dangerous in there

Hey! We're on to day 11 already. Thank you for joining me on this little journey of mine. It's been fun! We're a little more than 1/3 of the way through this little adventure. How exciting! Don't worry faithful followers out there in the blogosphere, I have another journey on which to embark after this one ends. Wow. Was that like the longest run on sentence or what? Bah. Anywho. Today's challenge was titled "what's in your makeup bag?"

An octopus.

ok not really. It's makeup. But ya know what they say "ask a stupid question..."

There it is. The contents. Let's go down the list, shall we?

Clinique blush that a friend gave to me

several eye shadow brushes

pretty eye shadow

Bare minerals eye shadow

Bare minerals concealer brush (my favorite item)

Bare minerals Foundation brush

Bare minerals warmth brush

Cover girl falsies mascara (the BEST mascara I have ever used)

Cover girl lip stain (used primarily in my show)

another eye shadow brush

another bare minerals eye shadow

bare minerals mineral veil.

OH! and all the way to the left is my eye lash curler. It looks like a medieval torture device. But I love the thing.

So. There it is. The reason I wear bear minerals make up is because my skin is super sensitive and breaks out a lot. I decided to invest in Bear Minerals. It was $60 (minus the eye shadow) and it's lasted me almost a year. I love it! Seriously the best make up I've ever used. Definitely worth the investment. :) That's all for now, kids. Tomorrow is Christmas. I LOVE Christmas!

You talk about food ALL the time!

That's because I LOVE food. Seriously! I love it! Now, Day 10 is a picture of your favorite place to eat. That's a tough question. I know that a lot of people expect me to say

Whereas I LOVE our health mex chicken burrito or our gourmet Portobello and Poblano tacos... this is not my favorite place to eat. Even if I DO work there. Don't get me wrong. I like my job and I like our food. But it's not my favorite. The word favorite is tricky. I don't have a favorite anything I don't think. I mean, I have a favorite kind of flower and a preferred way to eat steak... but I don't have a FAVORITE song, movie, place to eat etc...

However, if I had to pick, I think my favorite place to eat would be this place.

"that's your house, dummy." Yeah yeah yeah. I know. I snagged this picture off of Google Earth. It's a few years old since our motor home no longer resides in our driveway and I think that may be our old truck.

Anyway, my favorite place to eat is my home! My mom is a very seriously good cook. Seester cooks well, Brian cooks well and Babbo cooks well! I started to learn to cook at a pretty young age. Nellie was always really good about teaching us to cook AND teaching us how to clean up afterwards. I've always loved cooking. But as far back as I can remember, my mom was making us super delicious food. No restaurant can beat momma's cooking. So there ya have it, folks. My favorite place to eat is at home! Whether I'm cooking or someone else is, I always prefer to eat at home. It's where I'm most comfortable and where there's lots of love.

I hope your homes are filled with lots of family, love and yummy food this Christmas season. :) Until tomorrow, my faithful readers.

Here comes Santy clause here comes santy caluse

Day #9 Picture of the last thing you purchased.

We don't have a whole lot of family traditions around Christmastime. Only to all be together. No matter where we are, we try to all come together for Christmas. This is very important to our family.

But a tradition we have that I absolutely love is the Christmas Sock and Christmas Pajama tradition. Every year, mommy, seester and I buy pajamas for Christmas. These were last year's pajamas.

Mine are bright pink with artsy looking partridges in pear trees. Mommy's were tan and pink and had a bunch of sock monkeys all over them. Seester's were cream colored and had old fashioned looking Santa's all over them. The shirts coordinated, too. Mine was white, Nellie's (mom) was red and seesters was green. Seester bought these and some fuzzy aloe infused socks for all of us.

That picture was taken in Salt Lake on Christmas morning. My family came to see me last year and we hung out on my turf for a week. :)

I really wanted to be able to afford our Christmas jammies this year but between the play, walking pneumonia and not being able to work much, I just couldn't. What I COULD afford was our Christmas socks. :)

Seesters look like candy canes, mine are white with red on the heel and toe and have Christmas Trees and Nellie's are the same but with Frosty on them. They too, are fuzzy. :) I'm really looking forward to just relaxing on Christmas and being together.

Cheers, my dear readers. I hope you all have comfy warm traditions with your families this holiday season! :)

Hark how the bells!

Day 8 is a song to reflect your mood.

I chose "Carol of the Bells." While it's not really accurate of my mood, it's one of my favorite songs. I've been totally high on Christmas lately so this is very apropos. Carol of the Bells is almost always guaranteed to make me cry. It's so musically complex and yet it sounds so...uniform. It's like hot chocolate for my soul. :) Ok. I'm done geeking out now. So here's the song. It's sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. No, I'm not Mormon... but MAN can these people sing! Please ignore the cheesy video that's accompanied with the song. But it's my favorite version of the song. Destiny's Child's version of the song is probably my second favorite.

Goin' to the chapel and we're gonna get married!

Well, we're not. I'm not.. it's just.. never mind.

Today's challenge is to write about your dream wedding.

Now, my dear readers. Not many of you know this but I was engaged a few years ago. I was 21 and had been in a relationship for 3 1/2 years. We were engaged for about 6 months and then we broke up. It just wasn't the right timing. I'm thankful for the learning experience and how I grew in that process.

I pretty much had my wedding planned. Colors: Champagne, black and red. My maid of honor is seester (duh). Yes. MAID of honor. She WILL NOT get married before me! :) Bridesmaids are soulmate, Kelsey (friend of 14 years), and Rachel Rupel (soon to be Rachel Castleberg). I wear a dress made by my mom and carry a gorgeous bouquet of calla lilies and blood red roses. Tied with a black ribbon. My bridesmaids wear black party dresses that are classy and don't look too much like bridesmaids dresses (so they can wear them again) Tied with a red sash around the waist.

My brother is the minister. My groom has yet to be determined and my whole family is there. The setting is a rose garden. I'm barefoot. :) I'm getting married in the church building at the Southside church of Christ. After the wedding to the man of my dreams, we party! I want a big reception with all my friends and family! I plan to sing to my husband at our wedding. There WILL be dancing! :)

All this is just a dream. Minus the part about my brother being the minister. That's tradition. :) I don't care much WHERE I get married. All that matters is that my husband loves God, loves me and has a desire to do ministry with me. So there ya go... perfect wedding.

what do you mean you can't cuddle a fish?

Today's challenge is to post a picture of an animal you would like to keep as a pet. I already have a pet! It's a beta fish and his name is "puppy." Don't look at me that way. I didn't name him. I got him as a birthday present from a friend last year. I love me beta fish. :) But alas, you can't cuddle a fish.

This is puppy. And while he's very very cute, he's not very cuddly. I had a dog. His name was Humphrey Bogart Hall. But we just called him "Bogie." We had to put him down just before my birthday this year. He was 13 years old. He was a bichon frise. I loved him and I'm sad he's gone. I LOVE doggies. I hate cats. With the fiery passion of 1,000 suns I hate them. That being said, I still think the animal I would like to own as a pet would be this animal here.

a bush baby! I think they are so stinking cute. :)