Have a Heart...

A couple weeks ago, my mom told me about a fundraiser her VFW was doing for a local woman and asked me to donate some decorated cookies to their bake sale. Having the tender heart I do and feeling genuine heartache at the situation the woman was in, I said no. No I would not donate decorated cookies to the bake sale. I would however sell decorated cookies and donate that money to the woman (via the VFW) instead. You see, making these cookies is a lot of work - these are not fifty cent cookies. I was afraid I would spend so many hours on these and they would raise a fraction of the worth of the cookies at their sale. Oh no, I was not going to let that happen.

You see, this poor woman has had a difficult life health-wise. She was born to a mother who had served in Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange. I did not realize the side effects from Agent Orange can be passed on to children and am lucky that I have not suffered such side effects as my dad is also a Vietnam vet exposed to Agent Orange.

She has four children and is going through her second bout with breast cancer and suffers from chronic pancreatitis. Her husband is only able to work part-time because he is also trying to take care of his family.

My goal was to raise $300 for this family. Not an enormous sum, but something I felt was achievable by one person who works full time and has other things going on in her life. I took "pre-orders" at work and from a few family members because I did not want to make a lot of cookies and not have an outlet for them.I went with heart cookies because the fundraiser was so close to Valentine's Day.

By the time I left work for my "baking weekend" I had "pre-sold" almost $500 worth of cookies. I made five big batches of dough and over the course of a week baked over 200 cookies. I may have conned my sister into helping me with this endeavor a time or two...thanks Trish!

The fundraising weekend is this weekend, starting today as I write this which is a little unfortunate because we are expecting terrible weather this evening. Hopefully the people still come out to support their community. I will not be making the trip as I have more cookies to decorate. You see...all these cookie designs? It's just over half of what I committed to making. I still have about seven dozen cookies to decorate, package and deliver. 

Stay tuned...