Blessing Bags and Coffee

Let me start by updating you on my 40 Random Acts of Kindness before my 40th BD!  I’m just so super excited about this.  I love helping others, but what has really made this worth while is showing Mr. T that you can change the world, one small act at a time.  As I’ve mentioned before, several of the items are low or no cost, because I wanted to drive home the point to everyone that you don’t have to have a lot of money to make a big different in someone else’s life! You can see the full list here.

Today we dropped off a case of water at the local fire station.  This is the Fire Department that responded when mom and dad’s house caught fire when I was 7 mo pregnant and was storing all of my stuff at their place. So, they have a special place in my heart.  We ended up just leaving the case of water at the front door, as I couldn’t get in and didn’t want to go wandering through the fire house! But, Mr. T enjoyed it – he felt good leaving them a surprise!

If you took time to read the list, you’ll see that I crossed out “make a care package and drop it off at a homeless shelter” and made a note that I changed this to Blessing Bags.  If you don’t know about Blessing Bags, they are pretty awesome!  The goal is to make a little bags to keep in your car to hand out when you see a homeless person, sometimes I’m just not comfortable handing out money, so this is a great alternative.  These bags are all over Pinterest if you are interested, (and you can follow me by clicking on the link to the right!)

I read through some of the ideas and then headed out.  I did my grocery shopping with my handy dandy calculator on my phone and discovered that I was going to come out $30 under budget… so it was time to start! I bought what I could at the grocery story and then headed to the Dollar Store to fill in the gaps!

I grabbed brown paper bags and a case of water.  Then I grabbed:

• Kleenex,
• moist wipes,
• lip balm,
• snack crackers,
• granola bars,
• toothbrushes and paste,
• combs and
• band-aids.

I put out a call on Facebook that I was putting these together and taking donations of supplies and my mom responded almost immediately.  I picked up a big bag of sample size shampoo’s and lotion’s (Read: gathered up from all of the hotels she and dad has stayed at!) and I get to add those to the bags as well!  I’ll get the first 20 bags put together and these will go with Mr. T and his youth group at church the next time they go downtown to distribute food to the homeless.  I’m pretty excited.  Due to my mom’s donation, for about $2 each, these bags should be full of items to help someone out.  There is food and water to feed their insides.  There will be lip balm and wipes to take care of their outsides.  I have found a bible verse to put on a gift tag to help feed their soul.  I think that covers the basics.  And, hopefully, they will be appreciated and something that will last longer than cans of food.

Anyway, I’m pretty darn excited about it! I’ll keep a couple in my car to hand out, too.

Lastly, let me address the coffee part, since it is part of the title of the blog!

My Keurig broke several days ago.  I spent time trouble shooting it on Google, I called and spent 30 minutes on the phone with Keurig customer support and they finally let me know that it was not fixable.  Ugh.  They did offer me a “discount” on a new unit.

Well, after a little more time on Google and varies on-line retail shops, I discovered that their “discount” could easily be beat!  And, not only could their discount be beat, but I could get a different color…

Hello lovely!  Let me tell you – this beautiful purple joy was worth suffering through 3 days of decaf coffee!