Latest and Greatest

Well friends- we are now one month and one day until the Date Auction! Ticket sales are officially underway which is always great news. There is always a sense of relief when the first ticket sales are sold. We've filled all our spots for ladies to participate in the auction. We still have a few more spots available for men. It always goes that way. This year was a little unusual because I started getting more men signing up in the beginning than women, but then the number of women signing up took off. One girl dropped out last night because she got into a relationship, but I had 3 more sign up over the weekend, so that wasn't a big deal. I was at the police academy today to recruit bachelors. I've been recruiting from there since our very first event. It is always a good group to visit with. I also get to talk to them about our work and how important it is to give stuffed animals to the children they encounter who are scared or upset. The Date Auction was in last week's Boston Event Guide newsletter, so we're definitely already starting to get the word out. We also might be getting a free ad in a Boston publication- nothing is definite, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Our Date Auction gift bags arrived and they are beautiful! They are the same style tote bag that we usually do, but I went with a bright yellow color. I am so happy that I chose the yellow- it is really eye catching. It is so important to listen to people- I only chose that color because I was asking one of the women who works at the promotional company if there was a hot pink bag- she said there wasn't but she suggested that I look at the gold bag because it was really popular and it looked great. I had looked at a sample color online and it didn't look very attractive. It was a dark yellow in the picture. I asked the guy that I work to send me a sample and he did. I loved the sample and placed the order. Our logo/website really stands out. I was so excited when I opened the boxes last week, I yelped in happiness. I've been using one of the bags and it makes me smile every time I look at it.

In other news- calendar photos are winding down. I'm doing a photo shoot tomorrow morning, then I have one more scheduled for next week and two more that I have to do. The calendar ads are all sold- I actually heard back from another potential sponsor that I had reached out to last month and she came on board to sponsor, so I moved some ads around and was able to make room for the additional ad space which was terrific.

Well, that's the latest for tonight. I'm off to catch up on some emails and submit some new photos of the auction participants to our web host, so we can get them on our site! Until tomorrow friends...