Let It Go Already!

For those of you who know me well, you know I don’t like to be late - technically, on time is late. I’m a “get there 10-15 minutes early” kind of gal and that goes for posting my blog. There are times in life when we just have to let go of the rules and regulations we impose upon ourselves and let things be. On Monday, there was no school but I had to work and Mason and I had lots to do to get ready for his Early Valentines Day Dinner fundraiser at a local restaurant. Mason did some fundraising and one of his targets is a local auto dealership (a big one) who is the big sponsor for the Auburn Rodeo. We learned this year that the rodeo will not be happening this year so Mason and I decided to see if the auto dealership would allocate some of those sponsorship funds to his kitchen project. We stopped in on Friday and the manager was not there but he asked that Mason come back today. We went back and wouldn’t you know, we missed him again! Well, our day would not wait so we headed off to get Mason prepping at the restaurant for dinner and no sooner did we get to work, the manager called and asked us to come back. We did and Mason gave him a very cohesive presentation, he made a point of noting that they have extra money due to the rodeo canceling - the manager found this quite impressive. As it turns out, this gentleman is an Auburn native. His family still lives here and he attended Alta Vista school when he was little. He told Mason to please call him back on Thursday and he will have good news for him! How cool is that? Mason had a little bit of time to relax before the big night and then it was time to go. We were hoping to sell 100 tickets and at $40 a ticket, that was proving difficult. We changed that plan to 50 and by Friday, we were only at 30 tickets sold. We decided to move ahead and as is usually the case, we had 48 people in attendance and it was a lovely, lovely evening. Several kids from school were there working serving appetizers, salads, and main courses. We had 3 kinds of chocolate fondue for dessert and live piano music. In the end, we made $1630 for the school kitchen in addition to a $500 donation from one of our guests - an evening generating $2130 for the AVCCS Kitchen Project was a resounding success.  I will post pictures when I get them back, but for now, we are gearing up for fundraiser number two, the Celebrity Chef Challenge coming up on March 6, 2014.

Did I share with you all Mason’s speech to one of our local Rotary Clubs? He did a 30 minute speech which I edited down to just over 11 minutes, it’s clear he is a natural public speaker. If you want to watch, here is the link.

I’m working like crazy trying to generate business selling real estate. One of the things I have been doing is writing a column for our local paper. My column is called “Love Where You Live” and I touch on all kinds of real estate related topics, such things as Am I ready to buy my first home? VA Loans, and Help for Homeowners. Interestingly, there still is help for homeowners in terms of loan mods, principal reductions, incentives to short sell, and more. With that, time to get the next article written and go sell some tickets to the next fundraiser. Have a great week!