Today is the last day to donate to our fundraiser to help the Edmonton Food Bank. That’s the bad news. The good news is that so far we’ve raised $426 of our $500 goal! Whoot whoot!

Because the Food Bank is able to buy food in huge numbers (and they are basically magic) they can turn every $1 into 3 meals for hungry people. That means so far we’ve donated enough for 1,278 meals! I’d really like to push it over to a nice even 1500 though — which is only $74 in donations away. Maybe it’s time to add an extra bit of incentive.

If we reach our $500 goal in addition to awarding someone a crocheted blanked from this:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I will… well, I’ll do something else. But I don’t know what. Let’s take a vote shall we?

1. If we reach our $500 donation goal for this fundraiser I will make D IS FOR DINOSAUR free for the first three days after its release.
2. If we reach our $500 donation goal for this fundraiser I will choose two extra winners from the Rafflecopter and give them a signed paperback copy of any one of my books.
3. If we reach our $500 donation goal for this fundraiser I will [insert your suggestion here]

Leave your vote as a comment to this blog post. If When we reach our goal I will read through them and let you know what I’ve decided to go with in Wednesday’s blog post — which is also where I’ll announce the Rafflecopter Winner.

Please go here and donate to help!

Between now and then, however, we’ve got lots of food-tastic blog posts for you to check out:

Christmas Baking and Gingerbread Bloodshed

Giftmas Bready or Not: Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge (Microwave)

Food, Glorious Food!

Giftmas Tour 2016

Christmas Lunch 

Snowed in: A Giftmas Guest Blog from Jennifer Crow

Fruitcake and Christmas Wishes

A Place at the Table 

The Worst Thanksgiving Ever

The Weight of Christmas Dinner

A Nontraditional Foodie Christmas

WOW! While I was typing up this blog post some anonymous awesome person made a donation to take us over the top! We’re at $501! Whoot whoot! So it looks like I WILL be adding something awesome into the prize pot (for lack of a better description), it’s just a question of what! So be sure and vote / leave a suggestion in the comments here. And do consider donating if you can spare even a little bit. Though we’ve met our goal for this fundraiser there are still a lot of hungry people out there who would thank you for your generosity if they could!

Check back Wednesday when I’ll announce the winner(s?) 🙂

So far, together, we have raised $209 for the food bank. That works out to over 600 meals! Whoot! But we’re not done yet — there are still just over three days left in this fundraiser so if you can donate even a couple dollars please

Go here to help feed hungry families this winter

and accept my sincere thanks 🙂

And then come back here and enter the Rafflecopter to win a crocheted throw by yours truly. As you can see, the odds are most definitely in your favour LOL

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The stops so far on the tour have really covered quite a spectrum. Our theme this year was food, and everyone touched on that but family is also a hugely recurring theme — go figure 😉

In case you missed them, check out these stops:

Snowed in: A Giftmas Guest Blog from Jennifer Crow

Fruitcake and Christmas Wishes by Eileen Bell 

A Place at the Table by Tiffany Michelle Brown

The Worst Thanksgiving Ever by Kara Reynolds

…and there’s more on the way!

The Worst Thanksgiving Ever by Kara Reynolds

People have strong, emotion-filled memories associated with the holidays, especially with the food we eat at those special times. It’s why I make sweet potato casserole every Thanksgiving—it’s my mom’s recipe, and making it reminds me of her. Every time I add a full cup of sugar instead of three-quarters of a cup I laugh inwardly as I imagine her cringing at how much delicious sugar goes into the dish. I am sure (I hope, anyway) that you have similar fond memories of holiday food.

For the first Thanksgiving that my husband and I spent together (before we got married), we went to visit my family on the East Coast. For weeks leading up to our trip, I regaled him with stories of my family and different holidays we’d spent together. I think my nostalgia started to make him miss his own family, because a few days before we left he suggested we eat dinner at a Country Buffet, like his family used to do when he was a kid. As buffets go, it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. I couldn’t wait to get home and eat my grandma’s food.

Later that night, my husband starting having stomach cramps. He spent the night on the couch in my living room. When I came back upstairs in the morning to check on him, he was in the bathroom. He had full-blown food poisoning, and it was kicking his butt. I helped clean up the mess (from both ends, people. It was BAD).

He recovered enough by the time we had to fly out, so we went on our trip. My dad’s family picked us up in Baltimore and took us to my aunt’s house in Pennsylvania. By the time we got there, my stomach was starting to gurgle…

I spent the next two days on the toilet at my aunt’s house, while my sister laughed her head off at me every time she walked down the hall and heard me spewing into the commode. My poor husband spent those days making small talk with my family, who he’d just met, and force-feeding me Gatorade.

It was a terrible trip, but I have fond memories of it because that was the week I realized I wanted to marry my husband. Because I could clean up his bodily fluids (and he mine) without being repulsed, it was clear to me that we truly cared about each other.

We’ve had nine Thanksgivings since then, and every time we sit down to eat we share a grin and remind each other how thankful we are that we can actually eat the meal that year—and that we’re thankful that we’re eating it together.

**********

Kara Reynolds is a stay-at-home mom of three who likes to spend her nearly-non-existent free time writing novels. Her weaknesses include James T. Kirk, lightsabers, and anything TARDIS-blue. She writes contemporary and light speculative YA novels. She is clearly a gigantic nerd, and if she could go back in time, she would tell her teenage self to embrace her inner geekiness. While Kara lives in Wyoming, she is not of Wyoming. But it’s growing on her.

Kara blogs about writing every week at Operation Awesome (http://operationawesome6.blogspot.com). You can follow her on Twitter @reynoldstribe.

Edmonton food bank. If you haven’t already, please click here  and donate to help feed a family this month — whether it’s a dollar, ten or more every little bit helps! And, as a bonus, all these donations are in Canadian dollars so if you are American, for example, your $10 donation might only cost you $8 (I don’t know the exact exchange rate). Also, if you use PayPal to donate they will add 1% to your donation. Once you’ve donated come back to enjoy the recipe I have to share and enter my rafflecopter to win a cozy prize!

Thank you so much for helping!

And if you can’t help monetarily, there is still something you can do — help us spread the word about this fundraiser. As with donations, every little bit — every tweet or Facebook share — helps. We can’t reach our fundraising goal without you!

To thank you for all your help I’m also hosting a giveaway. The winner will get a cozy crocheted throw (homemade by me!) in whatever colour(s) they choose. I will ship it anywhere in the world, and though the odds favour those people who donate to the fundraiser (even $1!), you can also earn entries by tweeting about the giveaway or just by showing up because everyone gets one free entry as my gift to you 🙂

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you, thank you!

Because of your generosity we’ve raised $66 for the Edmonton Food Bank — that’s just over 13% of the way to our goal!

The Food Bank was in touch with me yesterday and they said that they can turn every dollar that is donated into three meals for hungry people.

$1 = 3 meals!
If you can spare enough to provide three meals to hungry people in Edmonton this month, they — and I — would really appreciate it.

Go here now to help

And then enter the Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

But wait! There’s more!

Mine is far from the only blog involved in this tour. Check out some of the other Giftmas Blog posts I’ve come across today 🙂

Christmas Baking and Gingerbread Bloodshed with Stephanie A. Cain from Tiffany Michelle Brown

Giftmas Bready or Not: Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge (Microwave) from Beth Cato

Food, Glorious Food! from Eileen Bell

Giftmas Tour 2016 from Pamela Q. Fernandes

Christmas Lunch with Pamela Q. Fernandes hosted by Barbara Tomporowski

I’m thinking about adding something to the Rafflecopter if we reach say, 20 donors, and something else once we reach $250 (or half our goal). I’m kind of stumped as to what to add though. What would you like to see? Books? Crafty things? Critiques? Gimme a shout and let me know what you’re thinking.

When I was a kid money was tight but the food bank was there to help make ends meet–especially during the time my mom was a single mother of three. We were lucky in that we didn’t need to use it regularly, but every year we received a ‘Christmas hamper’ and they really made the holidays shine. There was always a big turkey, for starters, and then the rest of the contents were like an amazing surprise bag of food. I still remember the excitement I felt pulling things out of the box with my mom and either cheering or groaning. “Yay! Candy!” or “Eww… escargo? Who eats snails?” (Give me a break, I was a kid).

These days I’m in a much better position financially, but that’s not true of everyone. In fact, given the fire in Fort Mac, the current economic state in Alberta and the influx of Syrian refugees, I’d guess that more families than ever are going to need help from the food bank to make their holidays awesome. So this year, I’m dedicating my annual Giftmas Blog Tour to food–sharing favourite family recipes and collecting donations for the Edmonton Food Bank.

Although my fundraising page is open to donations now, at this point I’m primarily looking for people to participate in the blog tour.

What Is Required:

Participants will be asked to write two blog posts — one to appear on their own webpage, blog or social media page* and one to appear on another participant’s webpage, blog or social media.

• Blog posts will be between 200 – 750 words long and include (at a minimum)
  • a story about food during the holidays and/or a favourite family recipe from the holidays.
  • a Giftmas Blog Tour graphic
  • a link to the Edmonton Food Bank fundraiser page for this event
• Including a short biography with links to your website or work is encouraged.

Participants will be asked to host two blog posts — one that they have written themselves and one that another participant has written.

• I will need your permission to give your email address to the person you will be hosting so they can email you their blog post.
• Posting days will be determined ahead of time. You will absolutely get to provide input on when you post.

Timeline:

Sign-ups will be open until November 23rd.
The posting schedule will be determined by November 30th.
Guest blogs will be due to their host by December 3rd. (Participants are encouraged to write these early. Especially since December tends to be a busy month for many people.)
The blog tour runs from December 5th – December 12th.

To Sign-Up:

**Sign-ups are now closed. Thank you!**

*This is a new thing I’m trying out. Your chosen media platform will have to allow for blog-length posts so, for example, while Goodreads or a Facebook Page could work, Twitter most certainly would not