Season to Give & Recieve

Since Christmas is the season of giving and receiving, I’d like to let y’all know about some of my favorite ways to give and to receive!

Give: Soldiers Angels

I read about Soldiers Angels in a Guideposts article in 2008. The article described how the organization was formed to provide care packages and support for American service personnel serving overseas. (The slogan is “May no soldier go unloved.”) I volunteered to “adopt” a solider for 1 year. The commitment meant sending 1 care package a month and 1 card/letter per week. Since then I’ve had three adopted soldiers. I joined the Letter Writing Team (sending letters of encouragement once a week to different soldiers) and most recently Cards Plus team (sending cards for special occasions to soldiers, veterans and their families).

I think that supporting our troops and their families is extremely important. I encourage you to take a look at their website and see if there’s anything you can do for soldiers this holiday season!

Give: Angel Tree

Inside WalMart stores there's a tree with small paper angels attached to it. On each angel are gift requests from children in need. Usually the items requested are clothing, shoes and toys. Consider picking up one of the angels and adding the gift to the collection there!

Receive: Goodreads

I love to read. It's easily my favorite hobby. Goodreads is a fantastic website for people like me who love books. It's very interactive - create a bookshelf with your favorite books, get recommendations, answer trivia questions, add friends and read author blogs.

The site has a giveaways section where you can enter your name to win new editions of books from the author or publisher. I won two books so far.

Receive: Amazon

Amazon is listing a free MP3 Christmas music download every day during December. They have a wide selection of free MP3 singles and albums. I already started my Christmas music playlist!