Happy Birthday to ME!

The Universe works in strange and wonderful ways! A few weeks ago I discovered I share the same birthday with Lindsay Nixon aka The Happy Herbivore. I offered to send her one of our JUST EAT
PLANTS tee shirts as a gift.

Lindsay preferred to accept the shirt for a "giveaway" on her blog, (she is soo generous). This was a fabulous boost for me and the tees! If you read my blog regularly, or if you read the HH post, you know we designed this slogan and t shirts as a means to generate money we could give to some worthy causes. We had no money of our own to give so the JUST EAT PLANTS product line was going to be the ticket! It has not been the money raising endeavor we had hoped, until maybe now!! Since the giveaway, JEP tees and other items have started to sell from our  Cafe Press store. As both David and I are challenged when it comes to navigating Cafe Press, we have a limited selection hence the grey tee you see me wearing in the photo above AND on the HH blog post are only available by emailing me directly. Also keep in mind, when you purchase a t shirt or other item through Cafe Press only a very little moola goes to the charity, most of the money you spend goes to Cafe Press. When you purchase from me, all of the profits go to the charities; WILDAID, GORILLA DOCTORS and PCRM. I split it up 3 ways at the end of the year. Thus far, it has not amounted to much money, but I see all of this changing! You can read more about this process here, here and here. We are happy and full of gratitude to Lindsay and her staff and to Mary and the Shirttales gang for printing our shirts.

Yippee! Silly, Happy David and MiMi

On another plane, the universe was conspiring to give back to me! As many of you Food for Lifers know, Hannaford Supermarkets has supported the FFL classes here in midcoast Maine for the last 2 years. This really helps keep the class costs down and makes the classes more affordable. Our last series, which ended in August, was the last supported by Hannaford. My contact and advocate no longer worked for the company. There were remodels going on at many of the local stores making it more difficult to find the "healthy" options in the store. I inquired about renewed funding with one of the new store managers and was basically turned down. Well, with another series starting on Oct. 2, and participation low this time, I decided to take a deep breath and inquire with Hannaford Corporate. I pulled out the old email trail which Mark, my former contact had printed out the last time he gave me the donation. These were printouts of emails which I had not been cc'd on during the donation negotiation. I was never sure if Mark meant to give them to me but I kept them anyway. They were filed in last years filing box. I looked on the email thread for an address to the person who actually granted the donation. It was the Community Relations Coordinator, Lori Hamilton. I wrote an email to her on Sunday and  yesterday she returned my email with the news she was sending us gift cards to cover food costs for the 2014 classes! This was the best birthday present ever! With this type of  synchronicity, I know teaching the Food for Life classes and encouraging a JUST EAT PLANTS diet is the right thing for me to do!!! Thank you Hannaford Supermarkets and SPECIAL THANKS to Lori Hamilton and Mark Castonguay!! Universe... keep it coming! :-)

Hannaford even featured a VEGAN FEAST in their Spring Fresh Magazine!!

Here's to the Best Birthday ever for all September 24 babies everywhere, every year!
Sláinte!