Cant have the good without the bad!

Well we have had a lot of successes so far so I guess we were due some not so successful ventures!

The riverbank market thing never really worked out. We found out you have to have a hygene licence to sell food at the market and the cost of the stall has gone up to $20. We felt like it would'nt really be worth it if we were just selling Joyah's bracelets. Probably just as well anyways as the two Saturdays we were going to do were both cold and rainy!

We had to cancel the movie night due to a lack of sales. This was disappointing as potentially we could have made over $1000 profit and in the end we were looking at making a loss so we made the decision to cancel.

We had a sausage sizzle at the races in the weekend. One of Joyah's leaders was able to get us a spot at the races. However we were placed in a really bad position and made very little sales.

However we still have one more sausage sizzle at The Warehouse in Petone this Sunday. We are hoping to sell more than normal with the xmas crowds plus since The Warehouse will be open till 10 we are allowed to stay till 9.30. It will be along day but should be worth it ;)

As always we would appreciate some volunteers to help us out. Especially since Joyah and I need to get to the uniform shop at Sacred Heart on Sunday as well ( the only time that it is open that is not during the day on a week day! ). Please let us know if you can help.

Thanks once again for everybody's help and support :)

Hi all

We had a busy and successful Labour weekend and made a profit of approx $1200 over both days. We were knackered by the end of it LOL! Many thanks to Delma, Taryn, Kirstin, Rose, Debbie and Gemma our wonderful willing helpers :) We wouldn't be able to do this without your support, it is much appreciated.

Its harder now to keep a track of the amount we have raised as we have spent some of it LOL Now Joyah has a nice warm and compact sleeping bag and a shiny new travel pack. However we have raised approx $6000 so far :) As we have not yet got a final amount that we need we will keep going till we feel we have enough but the end is definitely in sight.

Our next focus is our New Moon movie night. In the email with the link to this page is an attachment of a flyer Joyah designed about the movie night.

We need your help in 2 ways, if you are interested we would love it if you bought some tickets also we need goodies for spot prizes etc. Do you have any contacts that we could use to acquire goods. In particular we are after lollies, chocolate, Twilight merchandise, make up , books ,vouchers and anything else that would be attractive to our main target audience teenage girls and their mothers LOL!

Joyah and I plan to go down to the riverbank market on 21 & 28 Nov to sell her button bracelets and some baking, let me know if you are able to help with the baking. If you are down at the markets make sure you come by and say hello :)

Joyah and Nimue are of to a Girl Guide camp this weekend so lets hope for good weather!

A plea for help

Before our plea will keep you update with what we have been upto. We had another successful sausage sizzle on 20 Sept, thanks to Mum who helped on the day ;) We raised $360 :)

Joyah also had a big TradeMe blitz in the holidays and listed a whole pile of stuff. We were very happy with how the auctions went and will be depositing close to $300 to her account from the TradeMe auctions. Thanks to those people who donated goods :)

We are now close to $5500 raised ;)

We have booked a fundraising session of New Moon at Skycity Queensgate on the 9th of December. We will selling tickets for $20 at the beginning of Nov with lots of lucky seat and spot prizes. We would really appreciate some help in getting some goods for prizes. First of all we would like lots of lollies to give away as prizes so anyone who would like to donate a bag of lollies please get them to me or Joyah. Also we would love someone to help Joyah approach shops and business's to donate Twilight merchandise for us to give away. Joyah has also written a letter to Robert Pattisons agent asking for his autograph, you never know our luck :) Basically the more prizes that we have to give away the more attractive the tickets will be to buy for our target audience , teenage girls!

Now for our big plea for help, We have a very busy labour weekend with sausage sizzles! We have a sausage sizzle booked on Sunday 25th at Petone Warehouse. Then we have a sausage sizzle booked on the Mon 26th at Mitre 10 Mega! I have been told we could sell up to 1000 sausages on a sunny public holiday at Mitre 10 Mega!! Thats more than double what we normally sell!

Obviously if this is going to be the case we will need help! More so than ever! Normally we can mange by ourselves if there are no volunteers for help and we will be there all day on the Monday but we will also need extra volunteers. So if you are not going away and can spare a few hours on the Sun or Mon please let us know. We will also need help on the Sat preparing the bread and onions.

In November we have no sausage sizzles booked. Joyah and I will be spending a couple of Saturday mornings at the market. We will be selling baking and Joyah's bracelets plus whatever else we can organise. Closer to the time we will be asking if anyone can provide baking we have ingredients that we can give to people to use :)

In Dec as I mentioned we have the New Moon screening and what we would hope to be our last sausage sizzle! Apart from Joyah's bike ride which will probably happen in March ( we still need someone to help her train ) that should be our fundraising finished!

As always we appreciate all support and help from our family and friends.

Another sausage sizzle and some good news

Hello our wonderful family,friends and supporters

We have a sausage sizzle coming up this Sunday. If anyone can volunteer a couple hours of their time it would be much appreciated :)

Also some very good news, we have just heard that Joyah will receive a $500 cheque from Lions towards her fundraising. That is fantastic news for us :):):):)

We will give you more details later but we have an exciting fundraising event coming up in December. This will be of particular interest to all the Twilight fans out there =)

Good ole sausage sizzles!

I did wonder how the nicer weather would affect our sales and it looks like for Sunday any it made a difference. We made $450 profit on Sunday :) Many thanks to Angie and her kids and Joyah's Guide leaders Debbie and Gemma for their time and support.
We are now very close to $4000 raised, well on our way to our target. We have another sausage sizzle in about a months time. With the warmer weather we also look into having a couple of stalls at the riverbank market selling the bracelets Joyah has been making and also baking.
Also with the finer weather Joyah will have to start her training for her bike ride. As yet we still dont have anyone to help her with this, if you know of anyone who can please let us know.

Lots of news

First of all some good news. Last Friday Joyah's guide unit organised a neon 80's disco for her. It was a wonderful night and they raised $251 for Joyah :) The night was well supported by leaders and girls. The Girl Guides from Joyahs unit put in a lot of time and effort and did a great job. Here's some photos of the night. You can see Joyah in a pastel green top and Nimue is wearing a yellow t-shirt with pink hearts on it.

We are having a small half way there party on Sat night as we as we now have raised $3500!!!!! Big thanks to EVERYONE that has helped and supported us we are thrilled with the results so far!

Some sad news though. The night before the disco Joyah's guide unit's hall was badly burned in an arson attack. It will have to be demolished and have been told by the council that the hall will not be allowed to be replaced on the land where it was . So at the moment her unit has nowhere to meet! All their resources and work was lost. That included all the decorations for the disco that girls had spent the previous 2 weeks making :(

We have another sausage sizzle on Sun 23rd August. This will be a tricky one to organise as both girls will be in 2 concerts that afternoon! So any volunteers will be much appreciated :)

Another successful sausage sizzle

Hi all

Well we made a $350 profit on Sunday , many thanks to the Anderson family for their help ) We now have just over $3000, woohoo!!!!!

Joyah's Nan rashly promised earlier on a half way there party, we're gonna have to hold her to it very soon as I'm sure it wont be long before we have raised $3500 :) Only another $3500 to go, phew!

Thanks to all the people who have donated goods for TradeMe we have a few auctions going at the moment. Unfortunately they haven't been as successful as our previous ones but every bit helps.

Yes it's that time again!

Hi Folks

We have another sausage sizzle on this coming Sunday at Petone Warehouse. We have already had a very kind offer to take care of the 2-4 shift. So we are looking for volunteers for either the 10-12 shift or the 12-2 shift.

As always all help is very much appreciated :)

Thanks to all the people who have donated items for us to sell on TradeMe, our study looks like a second hand shop at the moment! Joyah is slowly working her way through listing the items, no matter how much items sell for it all helps :)

♥Many Thanks♥

Thank you very much to you all who have donated goods to sell on trade-me, spent time at the sausage sizzles and quite recently thanks to those who have donated buttons or brought button bracelets :). Also those of you who have made straight money donations or helped in any other way. We have made a decent amount of money at this point which not of been possible without your donation of goods or donation of time. It is definitely appreciated :).

Without your donation we would not of been able to reach $2700 by this point. Going to Canada is a great opportunity so please keep any donations coming.

From Joyah ♥♥♥

Another update

We had a pretty busy sausage sizzle on Sunday. Joyah was sick with the flu and was not capable of putting in any hours. Many thanks to Lynne Joyah's district co-ordinator, Robyn Best, Joyah's friend Rachel who was a very cheerful and willing helper and a great replacement for Joyah on the day and also to Jim and Clare who came all the way from Tawa to help and stayed an extra hour as well!. We did well as we raised $459!!! It actually would have been more if we hadn't been caught and needed more sausages. We had to buy them at the supermarket which is not nearly as cost effective as the Moore Wilsons ones! Oh well lesson learnt for next time, bring much more sausages than you need as you never know when you are going to be busy!

The balance of Joyah's account is approx $2700 :) :) We are thrilled with the progress and it could not have been done without the support of all our family and friends.

We have another sausage sizzle coming up at the end of the month. We will let you know closer to the time.

We have a nice pile of stuff to start putting on TradeMe but will always accept and appreciate any more.

We are still looking for someone to help Joyah with training for her 150 km bike ride any thoughts let us know.

Update

Our sausage sizzle on the 21st of June was reasonably successful, we raised $287.22. While not as good as other days still better than a kick in the pants! Many thanks to Mum and Joyah's guide leader Debbie who helped again.

We have a sausage sizzle this Sunday 5th July at Mitre 10 Mega as always any help would be appreciated just 2 hours of your time is all we need.

Also we haven't had anything on TradeMe for a few weeks so if you have anything please let us know.

All support that has been offered has been much appreciated :):)

Some excellent news

Hi all

First of all we had another successful sausage sizzle on Saturday at Mitre 10 Mega and raised $412.50!!!!! Thanks to Mum and Joyah's guide leader Debbie who helped out on the day.

We also got some excellent news earlier on in the week. I had applied to Schering-Plough ( where I worked for 9 months last year ) for a grant and they gave us $250!!!!

We have sold some stuff on TradeMe in the last couple of weeks as well.

So once all this money is banked we should have close to $2000 :):) It feels great to have this much all ready and I have to say Joyah has been putting in alot of hours and work to achieve this, I am very proud of her.

We have another sausage sizzle this Sunday 21st at The Warehouse in Petone. Anyone who can help it would be much appreciated.

Also we have run out of stuff to sell on TradeMe if you have anything that you want to get rid of let us know.We made almost $70 dollars of some stuff that friends of our were going to put out on the side of the road!

Thanks to everyone who has been so helpful and suppportive :)

Polish your BBQ skills!

Hello all I hope you are surviving the cold weather! 

Just wanted to let you know that we have 2 sausage sizzles scheduled for June. One is for this Saturday the 13th at Mitre 10 Mega in Petone and another on Sunday 21st at The Warehouse Petone.

If you can offer some time on either of these it would be much appreciated. We will especially need help on the 13th as Nimue and I will be in Palmerston North for a gym competition so it will just be Jimmy and Joyah!

Also if anyone has a contact that can help Joyah train for her big 150 km bike ride please let me know as I think she probably needs to get some training in!

We all appreciate all the help that has been offered so far you are all legends :)

Yummmmmmm sausages! Yup we are'nt sick of sausages yet but we probably will be by the end of the year!

Thanks to Angela, Chris and Liam who helped us out at the sausage sizzle at Petone Warehouse it was much appreciated and we raised $375.60!!!!!! Hopefully Joyah wont eat too many of the sausages and make a dent in the profit!

Thanks too to Angela who came up with a simple catchy jingle called "come get your sausages" very original!

We now have $923 in Joyah's fundraising account and  by the time money goes in from some goods sold on TradeMe tonight we will have close to $1000!

Can you help this Sunday?????

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read this post :)

This post is to let you know how our fundraising efforts are going so far.

Things are going quite well actually, we have been steadily selling stuff on Trademe , dont forget if you have any goods that you do not want anymore give them to us and we will get rid of it for you!

Through a guide contact Joyah has managed to secure an opportunity  to provide help for someone in need on a regular basis and to receive a donation for that help :)

We will be starting our sausage sizzle season this weekend. We basically have 1 or 2 a month booked till the end of the year. Our first one is this Sunday. If you are able to spare a couple of hours to help it would be much appreciated otherwise our  family will be spending the whole day at Petone Warehouse! Please contact me to let me know.

Feel free to read the original post again and see how we plan to raise the funds and how you can help ;)

What is this all about

Welcome and thanks for making the time to come and look at our Blog , I am very new to Blogging so please bear with me while I learn and improve.

The main purpose of this Blog is to inform family, friends and supporters about the fundraising efforts of Joyah and her family and how they can help.

As most of you know Joyah has had the great honour of being selected as a part of a group of 8 Girl Guides to represent New Zealand and travel to "Guiding Mosaic 2010" an international guiding event held in Ontario Canada July 2010.

We envision that we will need to raise approx $6000-$7000 NZD to enable Joyah to take part in this incredible life changing opportunity. Our family's philosophy has always been to support our children 100% in their hobbies, passions and extra curricular activities. We are very excited about working together as a family to make this happen. We believe in particular that Joyah will be fully involved in this whole process and will learn the value of hard work in helping her to achieve her goals.

There are many ways you can help

- You can make a straight cash donation to the Westpac bank account set up for this purpose 03 0531 0900913 00. This can easily be done by internet banking.

- You can volunteer your time and offer to work on one of our sausage sizzles. At the moment we have booked The Warehouse Petone for 17 May, 21 June and 26 July. We have also booked Mitre 10 Mega for 13 June and 5 July. We will also look at booking some dates at Bunnings Naenae and Naenae New World.

- Is there anyone that is familiar with applying for grants? As this is for an individual we don't have as many charities we can apply to. Someone to help with process would be lovely.

- We are planning a couple of cake stalls probably held at the Lower Hutt Riverbank market. We will let you know dates sooner to the time but any donations of baked goods to sell would be much appreciated.

- We have been given a number of packets of broken Girl Guide biscuits that cant be sold. We are planning to use these to make some of the recipes out of the Girl Guide cookbook and sell at the cake stall Any donations of non perishable goods to be used for baking would be great i.e cocoa, brown sugar, tins of sweetened condensed milk, dried apricots, sultanas, icing sugar, preserved ginger, coconut etc.

- Joyah has learnt recently how to make button bracelets. I have had several people admire the one she made for me and comment they would love to buy one. If you have any buttons you could donate please let us know. Joyah could make these bracelets to sell to family and friends as well as on the cake stall.

- Someone had the great idea of selling little mini albums at the cake stall as well. So we are looking for donations of scrap-booking paper to make these albums. Any scrap-bookers out there want to spend an evening making these? Divas??

- We have started selling Joyah's grandparents unwanted stuff on TradeMe with the monies made going into the fundraising account. If you want to get rid of stuff that is cluttering up your place let us have them and we will sell them on TradeMe. If they dont sell we will either donate to the Salvation Army or take to the tip.

As we will be adding auctions on an ongoing basis. Joyah has been fully responsible for these auctions from the taking of the photos to the writing of the information.

- Is there anyone out there that is comfortable approaching business's and companies for donations and/or sponsorship? This is something that is way out of my comfort zone and I would appreciate help with this, it could be in the form of getting free or cheap sausages etc for sausage sizzles, items donated that could be sold on TradeMe or simple cash donations.

- Is there anyone with Blog expertise that could help me improve upon this Blog let me know

- If you have any odd jobs that need to be done i.e spring cleaning, yardwork etc that Joyah and/or her family can do for a donation please let us know

- We are thinking of holding a Quiz night. Anyone with experience of the organizing of one of these and are willing to help please let me know. Also it would be nice to have a bit of a pull to the Quiz night by having some kind of celebrity there, anyone know a celebrities sisters nieces mother in law?!

- One of our main fundraisers will be a sponsored bike ride. We are planning that Joyah will ride the length of her Guiding district. That will be from Petone to Pahiatua, approx 150 kms. She will do this over 3 days and hopefully the guiding groups along the way will support her. At this stage of planning we would love the help of someone to help Joyah with some training to prepare for this and knowledge of the practicalities of such a ride.

As you can see there is a lot that will be going on in the next year or so. If there is anyway you can help please let us know everything is much appreciated. At the moment there is $260 in the account an awesome start! Please do sign up at the subscribe to posts at the top right. That way we can keep you informed about what is happening. We promise not bother you too much! It would be great if you could forward a link to this Blog to anyone that maybe interested and/or could help.