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OrphanS of the Month for September and October… Angel Crafts Shop…

So it has been 2 months since i last wrote about my Orphan of the Month. If you remember at the beginning of July, i said that July and August would be the last month we have to contribute to DENNY‘s adoption grant because he will be moved to the Older Boys Grant section on Reece’s Rainbow. See this post.

Well, in July and August, there was, again, no sales; which means i have not been able to contribute to DENNY‘s grant. 😦

Now i have been thinking hard about the direction i should go with Angel Crafts Shop. i do still want to continue with the shop and i do still want to continue contributing to the orphans advocated for via Reece’s Rainbow.

BUT… since running the shop and my other responsibilities take up so much of my time, my actual advocacy efforts (i.e. highlighting individual orphans so they get seen) have taken a backseat. Not what i wanted, really.

Now my heart is for orphans, and especially for special needs orphans, and even more specifically for older (6 years and up) special needs orphans, because they are usually the last to be seen.

So looking at the situation, i have decided that i will not be having an Orphan of the Month anymore! INSTEAD, Angel Crafts Shop will be giving 50% of all sales to the Older Child Grant (10+ years old) at Reece’s Rainbow. AND i will be highlighting 2 orphans every month from that list. So in a way, there will still be orphan of the month, just highlighting 2 of them (now it will be called OrphanS of the Month) and fundraising for the whole group of them.

orphansofthemonth20160904Giving will be split between Older Child Grant for Other Angels (other special needs) and Older Child Grant for Down Syndrome; September, October, January, February and March for Older Child Grant for Other Angels; April, May, June, July, August for Older Child Grant for Down Syndrome. November and December will be reserved for the child i get assigned to for the special Christmas fundraising event, Angel Tree. Please click on the respective grant titles to see details as well as a list of all the children on it.

In this way, i am able to keep on giving and also get back to active advocacy for individuals, and also not be overstressed if i don’t have sales for a couple of months, i know i have 5 months to try and raise some money for each group of older children.

So this month kicks off my fundraising efforts for the Older Child Grant for Other Angels!

i have also been thinking about the direction of Angel Crafts Shop itself; in terms of what crafts i would be making for sale. So stay tuned for news on that front because there will be big sales to sell off current stock and then launching of new stock in the new year!

In the meantime, keep shopping at Angel Crafts Shop so that you can help to grow these children’s adoption grants, which gives the family who steps up for any of them a better chance of reaching them before they age out of the system.

Thank you very much for your continued support!

syc

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Summer Hols 2016…

We have been back from our annual visit to Singapore for almost 2 weeks now. i was going to post this earlier but we had computer issues. So finally, here is a picture summary of our trip this year:

People often ask what we miss about Singapore. And number one for me would be our family and friends.

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Just as Meredith Grey is Cristian Yang’s person, these are our people!

i don’t often post pictures of people outside my immediate family but these 2 pictures show some special people.

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30 years ago, we were 12 and leaving primary school. 30 years later, we find each other and have tons of fun catching up, such friendships are hard to come by.

Now the next thing we miss about Singapore is the food! We ate ourselves silly, as usual.

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Top: Kuay Chap, one of my favourite dishes, Middle: Best Japanese food we had this trip, Bottom: Crabs and Suckling Pig!
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And this stand out dish deserves to stand by itself… half steamed, half fried fish… yummy!
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Various Hotpots! Left: Hai Di Lao Hotpot with 4 different soup bases, Middle: Traditional Steamboat, Right: Chili Oli Hot Soup.
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Of course, we had to have desserts!! Clockwise: Tobias with his Holy Smokes ice cream, dessert buffet at a Japanese restaurant, Bingsu (Korean Shaved Ice), Lava Cake and ice cream.
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But my absolute favourite is this lovely piece of beauty from Kki! Yummy, light and tasty!

What we did most of this year besides eating was spending time with family and visiting elderly relatives. It has certainly hit home for me that my parents and their siblings are not young anymore. We visited Walter’s elderly aunt, my elderly aunties and uncles; most of them have health issues and a few have mobility problems too.

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Left to Right: At the Future World Exhibition at the Art Science Museum, Checking out Walter’s Alma Mater, Learning more about Singlish.

Of course, we also did some more action-packed activities such as canoeing on the Singapore River (no photo cos i have not transferred it from my WhatsApp yet). We played squash and went swimming as well.

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And we did some catching too… Tobias caught a catfish (catch and release pond at Orto where we also enjoyed jumping at the Katapult Trampoline Park ), and of course, a Pikachu!
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We made a couple of cat-friends too 😉

Last year, my dad bought Tobias a couple of terrapins. They were tiny and cute, fitting onto my palm. 12 months later, they are huge and outgrowing their tank fast! So we gave them back to the shop we bought them from.

Tobias then talked my parents into helping him look after a hamster which he bought with his own money.

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Bye Bye Biscuit and Brownie. Hello Sparky!

And finally, i leave you with a lovely night view of the Singapore skyline from the top of the Esplanade.

summerhols2016lsyc

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Lessons from My Garden…

i have been gardening… and a couple of weeks ago, against the better advice of experienced gardeners, i allowed my OCB self to convince me into uprooting a young pumpkin plant and re-planting it further along the plot.

You see, i got these 3 pumpkin plants as a group from an experienced gardener who grew them lovingly from seed. They were all in the same pot when they came to me, i thought i will not risk splitting them up. So i popped them into the ground as they were, roots all entangled and everything. And they GREW!

lessonfrommygarden20160708aFrom the above picture, taken at the start of June, they have more than tripled in size. So you can see that the left side was getting crowded and if they grow some more and start fruiting…

Anyhow, i decided (yes, against better advice) to make the plot bigger and move the biggest one to the right.

WRONG MOVE!

It did not like it one bit, being taken away from its brother and sister, and being uprooted and moved. It went all brown, the leaves dried up and the flowers wilted and looked like it would not make it.

BUT i decided to try my best and care for it; i talked to it, encouraged it, loving gave it water and fertilisers. And LOOK!

lessonfrommygarden20160708bIt has come back; it has produced a lovely yellow flower and new leaves. i decided to leave its brown and dead bits because firstly, i don’t want to traumatise it further and secondly, it is a good reminder of what this little pumpkin plant went through to get to where it is today with its pretty flower and fresh new leaves.

This whole experience made me think about the orphans i advocate for – for DEAN, whom we pray for daily and wait expectantly for a family to come for him, for DENNY, who is my Orphan of the Month and we also wait expectantly for a family for him.

These children have gone through so much more than my little pumpkin plant. Yet time and again, i hear and see evidence given by adoptive families that LOVE can make a DIFFERENCE! They tell amazing stories of how their adopted children grow and change and blossom!

While adoption is not on the cards for my family at the moment, we love these children from afar and advocate for them; hoping and praying for a loving family to be brave and step up for them because we know they are beautiful children and they will bloom under caring parents, just like my pumpkin plant did.

So please join me in praying for these children, especially for DEAN and DENNY. Join me in sharing their stories across social media so that more can help, and who knows among those you know maybe the family for these boys.

You can click on their names to go to their profile pages on Reece’s Rainbow.

Thank you.

syc