Hello, Friends!
This is going to be a very exciting week here on Comfortably Domestic! My bloggy buddies and I are working together to make a difference this holiday season. I am so excited that I hardly know where to begin…so I’ll start at the beginning.
In September, I had the privilege of seeing Gretchen Holt-Witt speak at our National Writer’s Series, here in town. Gretchen is an amazing woman. In February of 2007, she was told that her 2-year old son, Liam, had cancer of the nervous system. She explains, “It’s like a bomb went off in my life. As a parent, the last thing you want to hear is that your child has the C word.” After an extensive surgery and several rounds of chemotherapy, Gretchen learned that there was a treatment in the research pipeline that would help her son, but there was no money to develop it.
Gretchen was shocked to further discover that cancer is the number one disease killer of children, and yet it only receives 4% of the more than $5 billion dollars allotted annually for cancer research. The treatments ares out there, but they need funding in order to get into the hands of the pediatric oncologists to help the children. Around 25% of the children diagnosed with cancer each year do not survive due to lack of effective therapies, which is direct result of the lack of available treatments due to funding.
Twenty. Five. Percent.
After hearing those statistics, Gretchen wanted to raise awareness. She felt a little helpless, and she wanted to do something. So she decided to hold a bake sale–and bake 96,000 cookies. Yep, she figured that if she got 100 friends to buy a dozen cookies, and they got 100 friends to buy a dozen cookies, and those people told their friends…pretty soon she could sell 96,000 cookies. Once people caught wind of what Gretchen was doing, she had 250 volunteers helping her take orders, and bake cookies. Her bake sale raised over $400, 000 for pediatric cancer therapies! And here’s what floored me–that $400,000 was able to deliver an effective therapy into the hands of doctors a mere 6 months after her bake sale. Months, not years!
After her bake sale, the orders kept coming in, along will calls from people wanting to help. Gretchen & her husband Larry knew that they were on to something, and Cookies for Kids’ Cancer was born. Cookies For Kids’ Cancer is a non-profit organization that raises awareness and funds for pediatric cancer. CFKC partners with 7 major pediatric cancer hospitals in the US to bring effective therapies to the kids who need them. They encourage others to Be A Good Cookie by raising awareness through fundraising. That can be accomplished by hosting a bake sale, a tag sale, a golf outing, running a marathon, collecting spare change, or anything else. No effort is too small because every penny counts.
Believe me, I know that kids with cancer is an icky, scary topic. But after hearing Gretchen’s story, I knew immediately that I had to do my part, however small, to raise awareness and promote Cookies For Kids Cancer. Gretchen has experienced and lived through what I believe to be every parents worst nightmare; yet she shares her story again, and again, so that maybe other parents won’t have to experience the same loss.
She is an amazing woman. Although, when someone in the audience described her as such, Gretchen very humbly replied, “No. I’m just a mom that wanted to bake cookies to help my son.”
There are no words.
I am fortunate to have met some lovely lady bloggers that have agreed to help me with this effort. OK, it was more like I told them about it, and they were so enthusiastic that there was no way that I would be doing this alone. Don’t you just love friends like that?
So this week I, along with my friends–or as I like to call them The Usual Suspects–Jeanne of Inside NanaBread’s Head, , Megan of Wanna Be A Country Cleaver, Kat of Tenaciously Yours, Mads of La Petite Pancake, and Allison of Decadent Philistines are hosting:
Be A Good Cookie Week!
Beginning tomorrow, we will alternate featuring a cookie on our blogs from the Cookies for Kids’ Cancer Cookbook, and we are encouraging you to Be A Good Cookie this holiday season by helping us raise awareness for the cause. The Cookies For Kids’ Cancer Cookbook is a book that Gretchen wrote, and includes a compilation of the most loved bake sale recipes from Cookies For Kid’s Cancer bake sales. 100% of the author’s proceeds and royalties from the sale of the cookbook go back to Cookies For Kids’ Cancer for pediatric cancer research.
Also, Cookies for Kids’ Cancer has partnered with OXO to develop this super-cute, limited edition Be A Good Cookie silicone cookie spatula, in which a portion of the proceeds will help Cookies For Kids Cancer.
Raise your hand if you love OXO Good Grips kitchen utensils! (((Raises both hands)))
And if that weren’t amazing enough, Glad has partnered with Cookies For Kids’ Cancer by agreeing to donate 10-cents for every cookie sold or exchanged in the month of December, up to $100,000. Glad is also donating 10-cents for every virtual cookie exchanged on facebook!
The Giveaway!
This week, I’ll be collecting entries and giving away this sweet gift box will all the tools necessary to bake a difference this holiday season–including: a Cookies For Kids’ Cancer Cookbook autographed personally by Gretchen Holt-Witt, an OXO Good Grips Be A Good Cookie spatula, three super-cute Christmas tree shaped cookie cutters, and 4 bottles of the coolest holiday sprinkles that I could find.
Be A Good Cookie and Enter the Giveaway!
Entries for the Be A Good Cookie Giveaway involve the many ways that you can pay-it-forward by raising awareness of Cookies For Kids’ Cancer:
- Leave a comment on this post telling me that you want to Be A Good Cookie and win the prize box.
- Share a virtual cookie (from Glad) on facebook, and come back and leave a comment on this post telling me you did so.
- Share the link to this post on your facebook wall, and ask all your friends to Be A Good Cookie, and enter the giveaway. Then leave a comment on this post and tell me that you shared.
- Tweet about the Be A Good Cookie Giveaway, with a link back to this post, and encourage your followers to enter. Then leave a comment on this post telling me that you tweeted. You could say something along the lines of: I just entered @ComfortDomestic’s Be A Good Cookie Giveaway. #BeAGoodCookie and enter to make a difference with me! http://wp.me/pRmMY-1vb
- Register and hold a bake sale OR cookie exchange to benefit Cookies For Kids Cancer in the month of December, via Glad to Give, and then leave a comment on this post telling me that you did. ‘Tis the season for cookie exchanges, so why not register yours and earn 10-cents/cookie for pediatric cancer research?
- Buy a Cookies For Kids Cancer Cookbook and/or the OXO Good Grips Be A Good Cookie spatula for the bakers on your holiday gift list, and then leave a comment on this post telling me who the lucky recipient is.
- Donate directly to Cookies For Kids’ Cancer, and then leave a comment on this post telling me about it.
That’s a grand total of seven possible entries to win all that great cookie swag! In a nutshell: pay-it-forward, tell me about it in a comment in this post, get an entry.
Entries will be collected from Sunday December 12, 2011 until 5 p.m. EST on Saturday December 17, 2011. The Winner will be announced on Sunday December 18, 2011.
Oh! My friend Jeanne of Inside NanaBread’s Head is hosting a similar giveaway on her blog, so you can do all of the above and get a grand total of fourteen entries between our two giveaway’s. How cool is that?!
Not-So-Fine-Print: The way cool stuff included in the Be A Good Cookie Giveaway box were purchased by me, and are being given freely, without any form of compensation. The kind folks at Glad, OXO, Wilton, and the folks at Cookies For Kids’ Cancer have no idea who the heck I am.
Be sure to come back tomorrow, when I kick off Be A Good Cookie Week with a savory, 4 ingredient cookie that I just know you will love!
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