Month: March 2011

Honduras Rummage Sale

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We have been working on raising money for our mission trip to Honduras this summer.  We have over 20k to raise so there’s a good bit of work to do.  Our first big event was a rummage sale.  We collected donations from people in our church to sell.  I was overwhelmed in both the quantity and quality of items donated.  The only real downside was storing all of it in our house.  It was easy when Beth was in New York but I think she was a little less than pleased to come home to piles of stuff covering our house.  We filled our spare bedroom and our entire family/dining room.  On the Thursday before the sale we had a group meeting and a few people came to our house to start pricing.  I forgot to take a picture after more stuff came in on Friday but this one will give you an idea of the mayhem that was our house.

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The sale was on Saturday and after a long day of final pick-ups and a late night celebrating a good friend’s graduation and job we got an early start on very little sleep.

Even if you plead with people not to show up early some just never get it.  We had people there as we were still bringing items out of the house.  They did buy 8 TVs from us so I guess it’s not that bad, but still. We were able to get everything out and the crowd was pretty constant.  We probably averaged 15-20 people at all times (from 7am to 2pm) and we pretty much had to run people off as we took the sale down around 4pm.

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The sale was pretty successful (we made ~$3000) but it sure was exhausting.  It would have been a little better if Arizona had pulled off the buzzer beater against UConn, but I guess you can’t get everything.  Now we’re selling some of the leftover items on Craigslist and planning our next fundraiser, a car wash on April 9th.  Hopefully it will be successful.

Nataliam Wedding

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Beth and I had the awesome opportunity to travel to Erie, PA this past weekend to celebrate Liam and Natalie’s wedding.  It was a lot of fun to get to meet some of Natalie and Liam’s good friends as well as their families.

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It was a beautiful wedding at an old theater in downtown Erie (Natalie’s hometown).  It was definitely a unique setting, but it came together amazingly and it turned out to be a great setting that really added to the ambiance of the night.

After the wedding, Beth and I decided to make a trip to nearby Niagara Falls.  The falls were crazy.  I have seen a lot of pictures over my life but they just don’t do it justice.  We tried to take some pictures but due to the cold and mist (which was messing with the autofocus on our camera) we didn’t hang around long.

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We then continued on to Toronto for the evening.  We got there fairly quickly and had most of the afternoon to look around Toronto a bit.  We were able to see the CN Tower, which at one point was the largest tower in the world, and Steamwhistle Brewery, where we tasted their famous pilsner.

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We then traveled over to what was called the Distillery District which is a quaint area with brick streets and brick buildings and a few little shops and restaurants.  We went in order to find a place called Soma.  It is a chocolate maker which is one of the only places in North America where they import raw cacao beans and make their own chocolate from scratch.  Beth and I got two little truffles (mine was filled with caramel and topped with sea salt, all from Madagascar and Beth’s was dark chocolate with Venezuelan oranges) and a cup of their famous hot chocolate.  It was just amazing.  I don’t even know how to begin to describe it.

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We later went over to Greek town for a gyro dinner before heading back all the way to Pittsburgh the next morning for our flight out.  Overall it was a fun trip and a really nice vacation for Beth and me.  We got back just in time to finish compiling donations for the upcoming rummage sale for our Honduras trip (with the piles of stuff in our house to prove it).