Wordless Wednesday - Beautiful Lengths

Chop 1 - June 28th - 1 week after surgery - easier to care for hair and in preparation for Chemo

First time I've had short hair in over 18yrs

Playing with wigs at Look Good Feel Good ...just for fun.

Now 2.5 months after the big shave , though I am on a different weekly chemo , the good news is my hair is slowly starting to re-grow - only 0.5 mm - still barely bald.
  

When they tell you will lose all your hair - it can leave you speechless and shattered.

Today I wanted to spread the word - even though it is Wordless Wednesday about Beautiful lengths.

Beautiful Lengths is a program by Pantene in partnership with charity Look Good…Feel Better, designed to encourage women to cut, grow and donate 20cm of their hair to create real hair wigs for women who have lost their hair to cancer treatment, and we’re calling on Australian’s to get involved and make the kindest cut of all.

Monday 12^th November will mark the launch of the inaugural Beautiful Lengths National Donate Your Hair Week in Australia kicking off with a hair donation event at Martin Place in Sydney CBD with Pantene ambassadors leading hairstylist, Barney Martin, and beauty expert, Zoe Foster.

The first 100 women to donate their ponytails will receive a free haircut from THE Barney Martin and his team of top hairstylists. A gift bag full of products will be presented to every woman who donates their ponytail as well.

In order to participate in the National Donate Your Hair Week event, hair donors must be able to travel to Martin Place for 8am on 12^th November and have at least 20cm of hair to donate.

Hair must also be less than 5% grey, and free from chemical treatments, hair extensions and permanent dye. A detailed list of donation requirements can be found on Beautiful Lengths website www.beautifullengths.com.au.

I'm donating my 4 ponytails !
I couldn't find a suitable wig for me so I opted for the nude nutt (only at home), beanies and scarves. I hope someone else will benefit from my hair donation.



Please visit other W W' ers and especially if you could visit the other 4 blogs that happen to be linking up in the same row as you ?

PS - Anyone who wishes to donate their hair but cannot get to Sydney for the event on 12^th November can find out how to hold their own donation party by downloading a party host pack from the Beautiful Lengths website.

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Thankful for Rahul and Divya

I know it isn't the done thing to toot your own horn but I will today because Eden - Edenland wants us to spread the word as far as we can ! Eden is in Niger with World Vision to raise awareness about the food crisis in Africa.

I have been a World Vision sponsor for over 24 yrs first it was one child, then in 2003 we got a second child.

Day to day, I don't think much about our World Vision children - sponsorship is debited automatically from our credit card.

We have had a few different children over the years. Divya  we have had for a long time, she is almost 12 (I think I feel terrible I don't know exactly)

In 2003 - we purposefully chose a boy the same age as our 11yr old son from Chile. Victor, was 6 wks younger . We wanted make connections with our boy and our sponsored child. So our son could understand his privileged life.

Victor grew too old or left the WV program in 2008 (our son is almost 19) and we chose another child - from South Africa ~ Ayanda was 5 days younger than my twins.

To be honest , I was considering canceling our second World Vision child sponsorship after they sent a letter saying Ayanda had left the program in 2011 and they were sending us a new sponsored child.

Till ..... I opened the letter and saw the birth date  - 1/9/03 - the same birthdate (though a year older)  as our stillborn daughter, Charlotte. Seriously !

I could not do it. Rahul was like a sign !

Read Eden's post , don't feel guilty about what you have but really think about how you could make a difference.

Raise awareness about this current crisis ~ Eden says 40, 000 children will die . I look at my children and I just cannot fathom the loss.

Donate a little or a lot - whatever you can give - will be contributing to the lives of children , families and communities

If you are able sponsor a child and create a huge impact in the life of a child.

My friend , her husband and 4 children went to Africa to visit their sponsored child - she can testify to the life changing impact.

I am thankful for everything we have, in abundance, for our health and that my children don't have to worry about hunger and malnutrition and the threat of disease and death from dirty water.

I am thankful for World Vision saving children , one at a time and thousands over the years.

I have pulled Rahul and Divya's pictures from my filing cabinet, to put on my fridge, to remind me ...we can make a difference one child at a time.

Follow Eden in Niger  #EdenInNiger hashtag on Twitter.


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A Mother's heart ...making a difference.

The inspirational Bec is guest posting today ...a special post on children in need which is dear to my heart and how you can make a difference this Mother's day.   

Child’s i Foundation (www.childsifoundation.org) was started by my friend Lucy Buck after she witnessed the huge problem of baby abandonment in Uganda.  She would have to attend funerals of young babies who were abandoned, knowing that no-one loved them, no-one cherished them and no-one knew they were gone.  Child’s i Foundation gives families another option and gives babies a chance of a future, instead of a life in an institution where they are an orphan and not a treasured member of a family.

I left my TV career and lived in Uganda last year for 3 months which was an amazing experience and I will be returning this year.  You can read about my time in Uganda on my blog - becinuganda.blogspot.com. 

My inspiration and strength comes from Lucy.  She made the courageous choice not to feel helpless nor to see these young women and children as beyond help.  She took the initiative, emerged from the safety of being behind the camera as a TV producer and stepped up to the challenge of making a change in the lives of these vulnerable babies and desperate mothers.

Child's i Foundation currently offers 3 services:

• Malaika Care is a transitional family & baby centre in Kampala which provides high quality and short-term care for abandoned children aged 0-2.  The children are provided with the best possible medical and educational care as well as responding to the emotional trauma and psychological damage of abandonment.

• Malaika House provides support to women and children to prevent baby abandonment.  It offers a community drop-in centre and outreach service offering support and advice to women in the local community. The aim is to help the women to become self supportive by offering them catch up education, skills training, counselling and health & nutritional advice.

• Malaika Family Placement aims to place all children in a family.  Ideally the child’s own birth family will be traced and explored as a placement option, however if their birth family is not a possibility then alternative adoptive families will be explored from the local community. 

Coming from a background of reality television, Lucy wanted to replicate some of the aspects of this style of program which capture the attention of people.  This became the ‘i’ in Child’s i Foundation which stands for interactive and the social platforms of Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and blogs are used to promote the charity and engage supporters.

The strength of Child’s i supporters and the power of social networking was realised when 3 month old Joey, who was abandoned in a taxi park, was the first baby adopted into a family and soon after was diagnosed with a heart condition.  Without an urgent operation he would not survive.  The team in Kampala set to work by creating a video about Joey, setting up a donation page and telling anyone who would listen that Joey and his family needed help.  Within 38 hours, Joey’s operation was booked in a South African hospital and $15,000 was raised to cover the life-saving heart operation.  Joey is now a healthy little boy and without the generosity of others he would not be.

There are many stories from my time in Uganda – emotional family reunions, seeing hope emerge from despair, comforting a new arrival who weighs only 1 kilo at 1 year of age, teaching a child with learning difficulties a new word, witnessing the transformation of a child who was sad and detached from being abandoned into a happy and confident child. 

This Mother's Day we are asking people to forgo the usual chocolate and flowers and purchase a gift that will help one of our beautiful babies and their family.  The gifts include cleaning drinking water, a carer's salary and a care bundle for a baby going home.  

Please visit the website to see what a difference your gift could make - http://gift.childsifoundation.org.  If you choose to purchase a gift we will send a handwritten card to your loved one to let them know what was purchased for them.

Having lived in Uganda I have witnessed first hand how even the smallest things can make a huge difference.  Please visit our website, Facebook page  and You Tube channel  to see for yourself. 

Please email me any time with any questions, would love to hear from you - bec@childsifoundation.org.

Will you please open your hearts this Mother's Day and consider a gift that will make the WORLD of difference.
 ♥ Never miss a post

Grateful Saturday - Friends and a great big internet hug

I'm grateful for the amazing friends of Tiff @Three Ring Circus who loving contributed a donation to help this family out. To give them a big community Internet  hug. Ivy has been in hospital the past 2 weeks and faces another two weeks in hospital.

Her surgery yesterday to remove the infected port was completed. The temporary PICC line was placed under /in her armpit (after 6 attempts) but is very unstable. It means they won't let her go home. Ivy also faces another surgery very soon.

What people might not know this is a gorgeous family of nine, seven children aged 5 to 14yrs (including two sets of twins). Ivy and her twin Noah miss each other immensely. I have twins and I can only imagine how hard this is for Noah & Ivy. Ivy is missing everyone and even school. Hopefully she will get to her Easter hat parade this week.

Tiff misses all her kids and her soul mate , the love and noise of her beautiful family banter.They live an hour from the hospital .Her husband took the first week off work to care for the other children , then the two Grandmas helped out last week. Who knows for the next two weeks ? Her DH has already had a lot of time the last year with Ivy being so unwell and hospitalised many times.

It's been a tough week with Ivy's surgery cancelled twice,  Nil by Mouth for a 5 yr old girl and her mum, all the waiting and worrying and a long time in surgery... 

Seven years ago today their angel baby ~William~ was born and lived  for 5 days. So being apart from her family this weekend compounds this grief as they normally celebrate ~Will's~ birthday in a special way.

As friends Sarah & I wanted to help ease the burdens on this family a little.We set up a donation widget HERE to surprise them... since we all live too far away to make a meal etc or help out practically. 

We privately asked a few people for a small donation to help them out with meals. To be honest I was overwhelmed some people were able to give more, collectively even the small amounts make a difference. We sincerely appreciate everyone's contribution.

Tiff was reluctant to make it public after we told her about the surprise donations.Sarah & I felt a few other people we didn't think or know to ask - might like donate too. So if you haven't already and would like to give something please go here ...


We plan to take the doantion widget down next week.

I'm also grateful we are here at the farm this weekend . It's quiet [as it can be with two 4 yr olds boys, tractor and tweeting birds] and relaxing. The boys and I had so much fun making our 'video' yesterday. Farm life is fun , except I do not like the mice ... dead or alive. 

I'm grateful ratsak works wonders and I hope the ultrasonic thingy my husband bought works soon (ask me in 2 weeks) because I just saw a mouse. PS I'm especially grateful the rat was dead.

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Carpe Diem and Mothers' day classic.

There are been so much sadness and tragedy the last week with floods of biblical proportions across 2/3 of Queensland , NSW and now in Victoria (and even in Brazil I heard this morning 300 lives lost to flood). Bushfires rage in Western Australia. When will in end ?

l've struggled to know what to say.

Across the internetz we have seen a wife (mum of 2 littlies) prepare to farewell her husband (today RIP Tony) and we've been reading heartbreaking stories of courage amidst the tragic loss of life & destruction.

We 've been watching horrific scenes on our TV's that will never be forgotten least of all by those who were there...

It made me contemplate my own worries and grievances more closely... really what do I have to complain about. Everything seems so small in comparison.

I just want to seize every day. Life is short we never know what is waiting in the wings for ourselves or the ones we love. We don't have to wait ...

Carpe diem ('seize the day') is a phrase from a Latin poem by Horace (see "Source" section below) that has become an aphorism. It is popularly translated as "seize the day". Carpe literally means "to pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather", but Ovid used the word in the sense of, "To enjoy, seize, use, make use of".Wikipedia

We each hold all the moments of our life in our grasp and what we make it of determines who we are. Every day we hold opportunity or excuses.

I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dripped it carelessly, Ah! I didn't know, I held opportunity. ~Hazel Lee

I have a goal to get fit and run the C25k running program. My weight is ok , though I have grown wider than I wanted to over the last few months :).

I needed a challenge and a goal to keep me motivated , to take this opportunity and use it purposefully.

I found it in the Mothers' day Classic. I am hoping to run and raise money for Breast cancer at the same time. An honorable cause because Breast cancer affects so many of my sisterhood.

I'm joining in with Naomi and others who are motivating each other to get fit and if we are able to walk or run the MDC on May 8th. We will link up and encourage each other. I couldn't post it on Tuesday and even yesterday I felt doubtful because talking about getting fit is kind of trivial at the moment.

Today I know life goes on ...and we should take every opportunity.

Life is too short and you only get one go , so kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly. Practice a little more prayer with a little less worry, a little more patience and a lot less hurry.

Think deeply about what you can do to lighten one anothers' load as you keep safe & laugh in the light today...

If you are financially able please donate to the Queensland flood appeal here

Win - 1 of 3 Logitech stylish fashion wireless mouse ['mice' ] each valued at $69.95




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Prayers for Tony

The gorgeous Lori @ Lori-RRSAHM is asking for your prayers.
Her beloved husband Tony is critically ill in intensive care fighting for his life.
I don't know any more details.
I can only imagine how terrified Lori is right now.
I really can. (without going into details).
If you would like to help - go here and read more & join this special FYBF blog hop.
There is a donation widget on a quite a few blogs already if you are financially able to give a few $.
I am off to donate blood but I'll try to add the widget later.



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Daffodil day

It's daffodil day today ...

with one in two Australians diagnosed with cancer by 85, there’s every chance your life will be affected. No matter who you are, Daffodil Day is for you.

& for all humnaity.

We want to defeat cancer ...
Together we can do it.
Please support those that need it. One planet One life, Give another person and family a chance to hope.
Fathers, brothers, mothers,sisters, children like Dainere (read her awe-inspiring story at Cate Bolt's)
The day , just over 3.5 months ago, my husband was diagnosed with malignant cancer was one of the worst ever. It is something I hope no family has to experience. I cannot begin to explain how it has affected us.
Yesterday, too was the 5th Anniversary since I lost my Dad to side effects of Leukemia ...a blood cancer.

Make a donation , buy some Daffodils, buy bears, balls or a pen ...



Even go donate blood ...that's were I am off to right now.
The majority of donated blood approx 34% goes to people with cancer and blood diseases.
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Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference

Today, I want to share with you about Laura and

Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference is an inspirational blog energized by a girl who is changing the world. She encourages kids and adults to find ways to make a difference. She also promotes and supports worthy charities.

I encourage everyone to visit this inspirational young lady,Laura who is honouring the memory of her grandfather .Laura is a 'keeper' who aims to change the world one project at a time ... every 25 days beginning first of every month with a new project. There are many more projects and ideas on her site too.

Get her badge for your side bar ...

She is also humbly asking people to vote for her in 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards - please go vote so she stays near the top and people will find her inspirational blog.A very simple pay it forward if you can't help her in any other way. The world needs more young leaders like Laura.

ps I re posted this as today because no one seems to have noticed ;)




pps we still need your votes at Top Momma too

Please help a girl ...

Veronica - @ sleepless nights and the very fairest of the Apple Isle' s sweet ladies has a competition going where you can win some delicious Cadbury chocolate amongst other things...

She also is doing this in aid of her friend B, who is going to Japan.

So please donate to help make a worthy young lady's trip of a lifetime - better , even if it is just one dollar - go and check out Veronica's link and competition. Hurry - today is the last day I think. She has paypal - so it is so easy.