Choosing a Charity

As most of you know, we donate 10% of profits to charity every year.  We’re proud to say that our donations have grown from $200 in 2010 (our first year business) to over $2000 last year.  We know it isn’t a huge amount, but every little bit counts.  Our hope is that Whispering Willow will continue to grow and that growth will allow us to have a bigger and bigger impact each year.

Our past charities include:

2010 – The Nature Conservancy

2011 – Safe Alliance (formerly United Family Services)

2012 – The Humane Society of Charlotte

All that to say that it’s time to make our choice for 2013.  Our two options are:

Heifer International – Instead of sending money abroad, Heifer International provides those in need with animals in order to assist them in providing for themselves.  The charity started in 1944 with cows sent throughout Europe and has now expanded to provide 30 types of animals including goats, geese, bees, and water buffalo.  From their site: “Our animals don’t just provide project partners with a reliable source of food, but also a reliable source of income. Extra agricultural products, such as milk from cows or goats, honey from bees or eggs from chickens, can be both shared within the community and sold at market. This new income, coupled with the training in sustainable practices that our partners receive, allows partners to clothe their families, provide them with medical care and send their children to school.”

charity: water – It is startling to read the statistics on charity: water’s site.  Did you know that one in nine people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water?  As someone who can simply drink out of our tap, it is disturbing to consider.  This charity aims to help those in developing nations with simple solutions.  From their site: “We’re not offering grand solutions and billion dollar schemes, but instead, simple things that work. Things like freshwater wells, rainwater catchments and sand filters. For about $20 a person, we know how to help millions.”

Please kindly vote in the comments below.  Voting deadline is 3/31/13.  Have a charity you would like us to consider in future? Email us – we’d love to hear about it.  Thanks ever so much!

Update: Voting is complete, and charity:water was chosen as our charity for 2013.  Thanks to everyone who voted!

New Furniture

Some of you may know from Facebook that we have purchased our first official Soap Mobile.  We’re thinking of naming her Bubbles.  Seems fitting right?

 

 

Well, the reason for adding Bubbles to our lives was two fold:

1 – To avoid any more wear and tear on our personal cars (Wayne’s Civic is getting up in age and we’d like to avoid replacing it anytime soon)

2 – To be able to build out a slightly more upscale booth display

 

With that in mind, we used the first couple weeks in January to look for inspiration.  Oddly enough, we both managed to fall in love with the same piece of furniture at Pottery Barn:

Goregous right?  Unfortunately it also came with a gorgeous price tag to the tune of $1,300 or so.  We knew we couldn’t swing that for a booth setup.  We found one at the Pottery Barn Outlet in Gaffney marked down to $700, but it was still slightly too steep for us.  Instead, I challenged Wayne to build it. It seemed like a natural progression.  To make life easier, I even found plans online for him to use.  🙂

Here’s his first run:

Impressed?  I was.  I need to stage it to make it look a bit more Pottery Barn-esque and would like to find more subtsantial hardware that isn’t $75/pull, but otherwise I think it’s pretty snazzy and with mistakes, and a new saw, the total cost was around $450.

He’s already working on the second piece which will be a variation on this.  Hopefully in another week or so we can share our whole new booth design.  Stay tuned!