Follow-up

So, this project is definitely one of the highlights of my semester. It took a huge amount of time and effort (I don't even want to bother counting the hours, but they are far more than 10), but I relished every second I put into this. I got to help children with cancer by doing something I truly enjoy, and what could be more satisfying than putting your talents to use for the good of someone who needs it?
I want to encourage anyone who can host an event, whether it be a bake sale, car wash, marathon, etc. for Cookies for Kids' Cancer. These people are truly inspirational and have made me all the more glad I decided to undertake this project. You can even just ask your friends and family to go online and donate to the organization directly by making an online giving page for yourself.
I definitely want to do this again, perhaps once a semester but definitely once a year. I would even like to coordinate the projects of future first-year biology students so that they can benefit from this experience, as well. Just thinking about it gets me excited all over again!
Reader, thank you for following me on my journey. I hope it was fun for you, because it definitely was for me. I'll keep this blog up for as long as I do these projects, so look forward to it!
Farewell and God bless you on this day!
Holly

Results!

So, I can now post the proceeds and pictures from my bake sale! We made, in all...
suspense building....
$1,125.42! I am so proud of my team, and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by people willing to support my cause. Now, for some more pictures!

 Sr. Mary Roberta Connors made me a beautiful bake sale sign!

 David and I on the big day, just after set-up was finished!

I want to thank everyone who helped me with this project, including:
 -the Franciscan sisters, for letting me use a great deal of their materials (thanks again Sr. Mary for the awesome sign!) and recipe;
- Martha, who provided the stellar baklava cookies and fortune cookies;
- Melody, for the nutella cookies;
- Elizabeth, for assembling the dough for the Sisters' penitential biscuits, which were a big hit;
- Jove, Laura, and Marissa, and Stephen, who pitched in for the post-mass rushes;
- CJ, for making the morning announcement;
- Ellie, for attending the table for the long evening shift;
- Fr. Mike and the University of St. Thomas, for letting me use this location,
- and David, for helping with just about everything and more or less keeping me sane!

And thank you everyone for your support!

Pictures of Cookies!!

Before telling you the fabulous results of our bake sale, I want to tantalize you with pictures of cookies. Well, it's mostly because there are a lot of pictures and I want to split posts. I'm sure you won't mind, though, dear reader. Thank you for your patience and support! I would have posted follow-up a lot sooner, but someone in administration lost the flash drive her pictures were on... but she eventually found it and was able to post the pictures on her blog. :)

Feast your eyes!

 baklava cookies, homemade fortune cookies, homemade thin mints (even better frozen!), nutella cookies...

 gingerbread, snickerdoodles (barely pictured) and ULTIMATE chocolate chip cookies (the first to run out)...

 oatmeal cranberry and oatmeal chocolate chip...

 my second favorite, the peanut butter honey drop dog cookies (which my sister's Husky puppy adores)...

and my favorite, tie-dye sugar cookies(!) alongside sugar cookies and nutella cookies!
Hope you enjoyed these!

It's Today!!

I just came back from the first part of my bake sale, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. It went fabulously well. I will wait to disclose the amount we raised, for now. We sold many baked goods, including gluten-free peanut butter cookies and cookies for dogs. Seeing the fruit of my labors makes me want to hold a bake sale for Cookies for Kids' Cancer at least once every semester! Thank you all so much for your support. Hopefully the sale this evening will go well, too! Look forward to seeing pictures on this blog!

It's all coming together...

Bake Sale day is coming up fast! Preparations have been long underway and are now reaching a peak-- flyers have been posted in the residence halls and are approved for the rest of campus, a facebook event has been created, and I've been getting the word out by wearing my favorite cat apron with the CFKC logo and a brief advertisement since yesterday. Baking is going to start soon, as well, for my baking team and me. I was excited to hear that at least a few people have read this blog and have brought it up to me! I didn't see that coming! Thank you all for your support: hopefully Sunday will go well. God bless!

It's a date!

I have great news! My bake sale is going to be held on Sunday, April 1st, in front of the Chapel of St. Basil (on campus at the University of St. Thomas- on the corner of West Alabama and Yoakum) from 10:00 am- 12:30 pm and from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. I am so excited, and so are many people who want to help me out with this. Now I need to spread the word about this sale and get it started!

My bake sale kit came in the mail! So exciting!

Christmas in March! I ordered a bake sale supply kit from cookiesforkidscancer.org, and I was very excited to see that a couple of their sponors added a few items-- Glad tupperware added advocate buttons and stickers, and OXO added a really nice airtight donation jar (complete with label!).

The essentials for a super awesome bake sale.

When I first got this package, I was riding with my dad going to the doctor for a second round of an antibiotic shot, because my immune system and I have not been on good terms this semester. My personal struggle with classes and consecutive illnesses makes me all the more thankful that I can help small children that are suffering much more than I am. When ordering items from Cookies for Kids' Cancer, the organization gives you the option to choose where you want your money to go. I chose to donate my purchase's cost to central nervous system research, because the CNS is very near and dear to me-- I want to be a neurologist when I finish at St. Thomas and, God willing, enter and succeed in medical school. My reason for this specialization is that I want to give back to the doctors, researchers, technicians, and other people who made my triumph over grand mal seizures possible and who will hopefully help me to achieve a similar victory over absence seizures in the near future.

The next steps for me here are to finalize the date and location for my bake sale and to get an 48-hour ambulatory EEG over Spring Break. Hopefully both will go well, especially the former, as I want to hold the bake sale ASAP so that I can possibly host more than one over the course of the semester (and possibly for years to come!). I have a goal of $500 for each bake sale that I host. If I can have as many as possible, well, the proceeds will add up and will surely help cover the costs of research for children's cancer therapies. It's nigh unimaginable that such young people have to be asked to grow up so fast. I want to do all I can to give these kids the childhoods they truly deserve-- one free of chemotherapy, radiation, hospitalization, and pain.

In conclusion, I don't really know what to say. I can't wait to help with this cause, and I have so much hope that my efforts will go well. It's good to have hope when there seems to be reason for none, and for pediatric cancer patients, hope is a precious gift and a substrate for healing. God bless you all this coming week.

All systems are go!

My professor approved the idea of a bake sale for my service learning project! I am so excited to see this through. All I've got to do now is get in touch with some folks, set a date and location, and hold the sale itself. It won't be easy, because college stops for no baker, but I'm sure it will go well. I have told a few people close to me about the idea and project, and they want to support my effort in any way that they can; I am so grateful for that. This is going to be a lot of fun!

Ambition!

So, I went home for the weekend because I had an MRI to take (right after the first exam of the semester, wonderful macromolecules!). I was obliged to take the day off from studying and so found myself looking at recipes for hours. I really, really love to cook, especially to bake. After preparing a Pavlova with lemon curd (sweet, crisp, marshmallowy meringue cake with a lemon custard topping), I flipped through the latest edition of Food Network magazine and came across this website and its project: http://www.cookiesforkidscancer.org/ .
These wonderful families whose children have suffered from pediatric cancer are not only not giving up on finding a cure but are raising money and awareness for it. Their efforts piqued every facet of my nature-- I thought immediately that I should host at least one bake sale for them at the university. It won't be the easiest project to tackle, and it will surely take far more than 10 hours, but the cause is so worthwhile. And who wouldn't want to bake cookies to help children suffering from the sickness that claims the life of more children than AIDS, muscular dystrophy, asthma, and multiple sclerosis combined?
Thus, I am making this second post to mark my decision to host a bake sale for Cookies for Kids' Cancer. I sure hope it gets approved!

Pilot

I am not a blogger. I use Facebook perhaps once every 2 weeks or so, and I am not known for being public about, well, anything. Yet, I feel that this is the best approach to this volunteer project, because it is paperless and easy to keep up with.

Anyway, a little background information is necessary to get this project going. My name is Holly, and I am a freshman at the University of St. Thomas. My current path is that of the pre-med double major of Biology and Philosophy, the former being my ultimate passion and the latter being an intriguing subject that has been growing on me quite quickly. For Intro to Cell and Molecular Biology, students are required to undertake a Service Learning project for 10 hours throughout the semester, and such a project must have a scientific background. The choices for this project are to either tutor in underserved Houston area schools or to find another project and have it approved. As much as I love children and helping them, I am rather dreadful at explaining things and would be, as a teacher, more of a hindrance than a help; people who know me personally have found that I have a talent for being very confusing. So, I must find an alternative that will put what talents I do have (save stupefaction, which is useful for no good) to work in order to benefit others.

My current idea for this project is to volunteer at my old school district's free health clinic for students. I went there on a couple of occasions, to be vaccinated for school and for bronchitis, and I have found their services to be wonderful despite the lack of workers and proliferation of children who require their help. My mother is a school nurse within the district and has expressed her admiration of the nurse practitioner who heads the clinic, for it is apparently a very stressful and thankless job. Therefore, I would enjoy helping the people who work there so that the most children can be treated and less people will have to be turned away due to time constraint.

So I conclude this blog entry in the hopes that its wishes will become fulfilled. May God bless you, reader, in everything you do.
Sincerely, Holly (1/17/12)