Charity

Last night my friend and I hosted a cocktail party. I was going to invite you all, but I forgot, and besides, most of you would have to travel a long way to get here!

So anyhow, the invitations (which were sent via evite, which is awesome) said Christmas Cocktails and Contributions. We invited over 100 of our friends. I don't say that to sound all cool and like "we have over 100 friends, we're so cool..." but because of what we wanted our friends to do. We asked everyone to bring a donation for the local Emergency Aid Food Bank. Yeah, like doing something nice for those less fortunate during this time of year.

So many wonderful things happened as a result of the party. First, the comments on the RSVPs were so touching. "...what a wonderful idea..." "...this is a great thing to do this time of year..." "...you two are so creative to think of doing this..." Just reading those made it worth while. When you call or write someone to RSVP, a little note or compliment goes such a long way.

Second, around 4:30 (1.5 hours before the party) a kid from one of the beer distributors showed up with 2 ginormous coolers and 2 more cases of beer for the party. One of our invited guests is "friendly" with the owner and wanted to send over beverages for the party. My friend and I almost cried. Seriously, how generous is that?

Third, the donations, holy cow for the donations! When I called the food bank to ask them what they were needing, the gal said flour, rice and noodles. So naturally, we put that on our invitation. Man did our friends show up with donations. We parked a van in the driveway with the back doors bedecked with red ribbons, and left them wide open. This way our guests were able to just leave their donation in the van before coming in the house. You can see below how generous our friends were. There were so many donations from guests who couldn't even come to the party. There were HUGE, industrial bags of noodles, cases of minute rice, and 25 pound bags of flour. See for yourself!

I think our party was a huge hit. Of course there were those who didn't come. Those who are never seen in charitable capacities, those who don't give of their time to not-for-profit boards, those who generally think they are above this kind of thing, but I am not going to let them get me down. Next year we will not invite them, and invite some others who will want to come and have the opportunity to make a difference in someone's life.

I think each and every one of you should have a party like this next year. Do something good for your community. It doesn't matter if you invite 100 or 5, the organizations you choose to support will be so grateful, and you will feel pretty darn good yourself...after you have loaded the dishwasher, taken your shoes off and had a drink yourself!