I hope you’re all having a good week. I’m having a great week myself, but I have a nagging feeling that I can’t seem to shake, and it’s about the 27,000 exotic animals that the SPCA is taking care of. Last week, I told you about the largest animal rescue in US history that took place in Arlington about six weeks ago. Since then, the SPCA of Texas has been caring for 27,000 exotic animals who were neglected and abused.
I got an urgent email from the SPCA this week, which said that the “people” (I use that word loosely) who owned the company have appealed the judge’s decision to confiscate the animals from them and award custody to the City of Arlington. Until that appeal is settled, the SPCA will continue to care for the animals, at a cost of $8,000-$10,000 per day. They are in desperate need of $150,000 ASAP!
If this situation touches your heart as it does mine, will you please consider making a donation to the SPCA? If I could do another bake sale tomorrow that would put a dent in this need, I would do it. But their need is much bigger than that. They need us all to come together for them, and contribute what we can. Thanks for considering helping these poor little critters!
BigSis added this note January 28 at 1:30 pm: I just found this great video on DallasNews.com, which shows some of the animals and gives you an idea of the lengths the SPCA is going to for these guys. Here’s the link: http://www.dallasnews.com/video/dallasnews/hp/index.html?nvid=412930
It’s short, so please check it out. I’m in love with the Ring-Tailed Lemurs and the teensy turtles.
Last week, several of us who worked on the SPCA Bake Sale had the opportunity to tour the SPCA of Texas’ new facility. We met the Chairman of the Board at our 2008 sale, and he offered us a tour but we never made the time to do it until our 2009 sale was behind us. We expected to see kitties and puppies, and were worried that we’d all leave with our arms full of furkids. What we didn’t expect to see was a facility full of 27,000 exotic animals.
You might have heard about the largest animal rescue ever in US history. A PETA investigator went undercover for 7 months in an exotic animal store, US Global Exotics, who sold to pet stores and chains like Petco and Petsmart. After gathering evidence of the neglect and abuse going on there, the investigator blew the whistle on the business.
On December 15, 2009, Arlington Humane Services swooped into the facility with a seizure warrant, with assistance from the SPCA of Texas and the Humane Society of North Texas. It took these agencies over 14 hours to rescue the thousands of animals. Many were already dead or dying, including over 200 iguanas who had been packed up for a trip to Egypt and then were left for 2 weeks with no food or water when the order was canceled.
Three days prior to the seizure, the SPCA began preparing a facility to receive all of these stressed animals. You can read more about the incredible lengths they went to in this Examiner article.
What kind of animals are we talking about? Turtles, snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, geckos and iguanas and all kinds of lizards, crabs, hamsters, rats, frogs, mice, gerbils, ground squirrels, sugar gliders, ferrets, guinea pigs, flying squirrels, coatimundis, agoutis, chinchillas, prairie dogs, hedge hogs, mini possums, ring-tailed lemurs, sloths, wallabies, and kinkajous.
Here’s SPCA of Texas President James Bias describing the situation in a local news video:
We were overwhelmed by the sheer number of animals we saw. Can you even begin to fathom what 27,000 exotic animals looks like? Then add to that the incredible variety of animals…over 500 species. Then imagine what all of those poor animals went through. It was really too much to comprehend. We were very grateful to have the chance to see all of these animals up close, but extremely sad that they were in this warehouse after this horrible experience, instead of roaming wild in their native habitat. At the same time we were thankful that the SPCA was taking such good care of them.
None of these animals will be available for adoption. They will be placed with accredited zoos, sanctuaries and rescue organizations.
So how can you help?
The SPCA of Texas is currently spending approximately $8,000 to $10,000 a day to provide proper nutrition and habitat for these creatures and it could take months before they are all safely placed. The cost of this rescue will be enormous. You can help by donating to the SPCA online at www.spca.org.
Volunteer if you’re in the area. With so many involved in the care of the 27,000 exotics, volunteer assistance is needed now more than ever. For volunteer information, visit www.hsnt.org or www.spca.org.
Never ever buy an animal from a store! Adopt from a rescue group or shelter.
Thanks to PETA, SPCA of Texas, Humane Society of North Texas, the judge who awarded custody of these animals to the City of Arlington, and to all of the vets, workers, volunteers and everyone else involved in the rescue and care of these animals. God bless all of you!
We have one more little topic to wrap up for 2009 just as we fly into 2010…the SPCA Bake Sale results, of course! The sale was held for one day only on December 14th, and we thankfully sold every crumb we had! We also had a web site set up for donations from out-of-town folks, or for local friends who just couldn’t make the sale.
So here are the results. Drum roll, please! The web site donations are $405, and the one-day sale of baked goodies brought in $3618. That makes our grand total so far $4023! Woo hoo!!
We are enormously grateful for the support of our friends, family, fellow tenants, our building’s management, and an awesome SMU fraternity. Thank you so much for showing your love to the animals and to the SPCA of Texas in a huge way!We baked our fannies off, but without all of you, it would have been for nothing!
Here are some photos from the sale. You can get an idea of how much we started with, but what you can’t see is that we have boxes and boxes of more goodies under the table! We sold it ALL!
Cakes and breads all lined up before the sale started at 8 am.
Bars and brownies are ready to be snatched up and gobbled up!
Cookies were all huddled together here.
All the treats were organized in happy little rows here.
Almond Toffee and Soft Peanut Brittle went into these cute little totes.
Cakes and breads were packaged in tall treat bags from PaperMart.
Brownies and other bars got these cute Treat Toppers from Hobby Lobby.
3 kinds of fudge were molded into shapes, and then decorated.
Cinnamon and Peanut Butter Fudge close-up.
Pretzels got a dip in chocolate, and then a swoosh and a drizzle of cuteness.
The cutest gift bags ever were donated by LilSis!
Thanks again to everyone! We can’t wait until next year!
The 2009 SPCA Bake Sale is now history. We started setting up at 6 am, opened the doors at 8 am, and left the building at 6 pm. It was a long day, but it was incredible fun.
Our goal was to beat last year’s donation of $3055. Our little team started baking 3 or 4 weeks ago, and we pulled out every trick in the hat to try to make our goodies irrestible to buyers. We emailed everyone we know, we sent out press releases, we lined up the most irresistible sample girls you could ever meet, and we talked about nothing but the SPCA and cookies for the last month. We decorated, packaged and labeled until we were loopy.
How did we do? I’m too fried to remember how to get pictures off my camera today, and we don’t have a final total yet because donations are still coming in online. I’ll just leave you with one little teaser for now. We are humbled and amazed and incredibly grateful. How much money do you think that 5 baking girls could raise in one day if their bake sale sold out? What if God showed up in a big way to answer their prayers? What could happen?
I’ll come back later to tell you. If I come down off Cloud Nine long enough to type again.
It’s finally here; the day we’ve been working toward and looking forward to since last year’s sale that resulted in a $3,055 donation to the SPCA of Texas!
The baking and packaging is all done, and now all we can do is sell these goodies! Our goal is another $3000 for our favorite charity, and we pray pray pray that we make it! Our secret fantasy – not so secret now – is that we sell everything we’ve made! How incredible would that be!
If you’re in the Dallas area, email me for directions at bigsis at bigsislilsis dot com. We’d love to see you!
If you’re not in the area and you’d like to help these little furkids, you can donate at http://www.spca.org/goto/bakesale. If you use this url, the SPCA can see that your contribution came through our event, and we can send you a thank you!
Thanks for your support, your well wishes, and your prayers for a successful event today!
I’ve been talking about it for a while, but in case you haven’t heard, our Bake Sale benefiting the SPCA of Texas is coming up on Monday. This Monday! Great googly moogly! So much to do in so little remaining time!
We want this to be the best sale we can possibly put together for the SPCA, and we’re pretty much driving ourselves wacka-doodle-doo over it. That’s what happens when a few OCD perfectionists come together on a project they’re passionate about I guess, but we’ve created a really stressful week for ourselves.
Hissy-Fit Photo by Vaughan
I freaked out big-time yesterday and had a little hissy fit about some things that weren’t going the way I wanted them to. By the end of a really long frustrating day, I was about to cry and decided to just go to bed and start fresh this morning.
I was thinking that bunches of us are hissy-fitting this time of year, not just me. I sometimes wish I could be more lackadaisical and nonchalant about things instead of giving myself an anxiety attack trying to get it all done. The challenge I think is how to arrive at a balance; how do you be more nonchalant and less compulsive without turning into a full-blown procrastinator who doesn’t get things done? I have no idea since I’m not good at balance and moderation; I’m all or nothing about everything I do. When it comes to the bake sale and other things I care about, it’s 100%-full-blown-all-I’ve-got.
How do you manage to achieve this kind of balance in your life? I really want to know. When I start melting down like this, all I know to do is try to slow my breathing down. It does seem to help. Also taking a minute to focus on what’s really important helps a bit too. Am I freaking about something that even matters? Probably not. Am I making too much of this right now and overreacting? Probably so.
If you have any tips on this topic, please send them on. I betcha I’m not the only one doing the Hissy-Fit Freak right now!
Our “little baking team that could” has been baking up a storm the last two weekends, and we have just one more week to get everything baked, packaged and organized!
We’re trying to raise another $3000 for the SPCA of Texas here in Dallas. Last year’s sale raised $3055 and we really hope we can do better than that for the animals this year.
It seems like an overwhelming task to prepare $3000 worth of baked goodies, and then sell them all in just one day. We all agree though that this is some of the biggest fun we have all year long!
So far, I have bunches of these things wrapped up in my freezer:
Cranberry Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts
Vegan Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts
Strawberry Bread with Pecans
Texas Pecan Pie Bars from the Pastry Queen
Texas Pecan Pie Bars with Chocolate and Bourbon from the Pastry Queen
Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies
Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies with Mint Oreos
Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies with Bittersweet Chocolate Chips and Walnuts
SisMama has made a whole slew of awesome pound cakes in lots of flavors, and K & P have made oodles of breads.
Next weekend, we’ll be making all of the candies and other treats that we don’t want to freeze. If you’re in the Dallas area, email me or leave a comment if you’d like to come visit us at the sale and I’ll send you the details. If you’d like to donate to the SPCA of Texas but you’re too far away to visit us, you can use the web site that’s been set up for our donations. It’s http://www.spca.org/goto/bakesale.
Meanwhile, wish us well! The SPCA of Texas – like lots of animal organizations right now – is in serious need of funds in this economy, and we’d really like to help!
With our SPCA Bake Sale looming on the calendar, I’ve been busy planning and test-driving a couple of new recipes. The last thing I need during the baking frenzy is a recipe that doesn’t work! I have a bunch of tried-and-true favorites that I’m making, but still wandered through my cookbook collection in search of some new goodies to try. I flipped through Carole Walter’s “Great Cookies”, and found a dark chocolaty recipe called Triple Chocolate Peppermint Bars that sounded crazy good.
You make a dark chocolate shortbread base and then top it with a dark chocolate brownie filling that has peppermint schnapps in it. Then you cover the whole thing with a thin chocolate ganache that has even more schnapps in it. How bad could that possibly be! It certainly deserved a test-drive!
I didn’t have schnapps so I used peppermint extract instead, and left the ganache layer off since I thought it might be too smeary and messy once it’s packaged in a cute little treat bag. The top got a sprinkle of crushed candy canes instead.
Can I just say YUMMY?? Oh, mommy, these have an incredible chocolate flavor! Maybe I loved them so much because I adore chocolate shortbread and brownies and peppermint.
Only one little problem…my bars didn’t come out looking anything like the photo. I expected the bars to be kind of chunky and thick, but mine came out very thin; only about 1/2″. Phooey. I can’t figure out what I might have done wrong, if anything, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I think the bars are too thin and fragile to work well for the bake sale, which is a bummer, but this recipe is a keeper! If I make them again and don’t need to package them, I’ll definitely add the ganache layer!
We’re already gearing up for our Third Annual Bake Sale, which will be held on December 14th. This is the second year that 100% of the proceeds will go to SPCA Texas, and we’re beyond excited to get crackin’ and bakin’! We have a lot of work ahead of us: shopping, baking, wrapping, labeling, transporting, and promoting, but we all agree that we have more fun doing this than pretty much anything else all year!
The little-baking-team-that-could this year is me, SisMama, my coworkers K and SAA, and K’s sister L. Our goal for the one-day sale is $3000 again! Last year, our final total was $3055, so we’re hopeful we can exceed the goal again. We’re not totally crazy though, so the goal isn’t increasing!
To help us reach our goal again for the SPCA, we could really really use your help! We know what recipes worked for us last year – and which ones didn’t move – but we’d love to know what your favorites are.
Pretend that you went to a fund-raising bake sale at Christmas to buy cute packaged homemade gifts to give to your babysitter, hairdresser, postman, Bunco friends, kids’ teachers, kids’ friends, Secret Santas, etc. What would you like to find? Traditional items like gingerbread, pound cake, biscotti and sugar cookies? Or indulgent items you might not make yourself like almond toffee, fudge, pecan pie bars, and fancy brownies? Would you be interested in something savory like a spicy snack mix or nut blend? Or something else altogether?
Maybe you’ve had some great success yourself with certain items at bake sales. What works best for you? Or maybe you have specialties that you think would be an awesome hit at a Christmas bake sale?
If you have ideas, please pass them on to us! Thanks in advance from us – and all of the animals at the SPCA – for your suggestions!
Drum roll, please! Our goal for the SPCA Bake Sale was $3000, and our total so far is $3005!! We have commitments for more online donations before the end of the year, so we may see that total go even higher! Woo hoo!!!
We are SO thankful for the wonderful response of the other tenants in our office building, for the online donations from friends and family, and for the support we received from the building management staff. Above all, we know that this tremendous success is humanly impossible. A few girls working for a week or so cannot logically bake enough goodies and sell them in one day to make $3000. It just doesn’t make sense. The only answer is that God did this, and we give Him all the glory for this event!
I talked about the brownies and bars the other day, and thought you might like to see a complete list of what we had for sale. Here’s what came out of my itty bitty kitchen:
Pumpkin Cranberry Bread
Vegan Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts
Strawberry Bread with Pecans
Chocolate Sheath Cake
Gingerbread
Root Beer Bundt Cakes
Outrageous Oreo Brownies
Outrageous Brownies with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts
Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Caramel Bars
Texas Pecan Pie Bars
RazzMaTazz Bars
Soft Peanut Brittle
Almond Toffee
Fudge in Christmas tree and gingerbread man shapes
Here’s what K and her sister L did:
Banana Bread (with and without nuts)
Cranberry Orange Bread (with and without almonds)
Spice Cake
Snickerdoodles
Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Rice Krispie Treats
German Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats
Chocolate-Dipped Pretzels
Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch
Santa’s Whiskers
Peanut Butter Cookies
Sugar Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Our coworker SA did some incredible cream cheese pound cake and peppermint bark, as well as crafting our lobby signage that was so crucial in driving people up to our location.
So it was truly a team effort, and we’re all just THRILLED with the response we got! Beyond thrilled!
Here is a photo of our goodies just before the customers arrived. There were also two other cookie areas out of camera view so this isn’t even a complete picture of the massive amount of goodies we started with. You can see that we had a TON of stuff all packaged and labeled, and even had some backstock stashed in cabinets since it wouldn’t fit on our tables!
SPCA Bake Sale Goodies!
And here is what was left after 8 hours of sales! That’s it! Are you kidding me?!
This was all that was left!
So, after celebrating a great day that lasted 12 hours from set-up to clean-up, I stumbled home to face the mother of all messes in my kitchen. These were just the items that had to be hand washed! When, oh when, will those cats earn their keep and learn to do a dish or two during the day! ^..^
Mother of all kitchen messes!
Before I sign off this topic for a while (and start to plan next year’s event, God willing), I wanted to share a little of what we’ve learned about bake sale success during our 2 experiences. We aren’t experts by any means, but we’ve definitely learned some things!
People love chocolate, especially brownies. Have plenty! Have more than you think you can sell!
People love peanut butter.
People like things that are decadent and that they wouldn’t make themselves.
Lots of people dislike nuts so leave them out of recipes if they’re optional.
People like BIG items – big slabs of bars, big pound cakes, big cookies. Our smaller items sold the slowest, even though the recipes were incredible. The small size just couldn’t compete for the attention of people up next to the hefty items, even if there were lots of them in the package.
People love rice krispie treats! Go figure, they aren’t an item I especially care for, but I’m in the minority. They sell like hotcakes.
Items in colored treat bags that can’t be seen clearly don’t move well.
Cute packaging sells great though, even if the item can’t be seen through it.
Putting out samples of an item lights a fire under it’s popularity.
If you’re doing cake or bread, frosting or even a drizzle of glaze will pretty it up and help it sell better.
Some items are just too unexciting to sell well. For example, I thought that good traditional gingerbread would be a great seller at Christmas. It turned out to be really slow. It just couldn’t compete in a world full of rich brownies!
Pray, pray, pray!
So, one last shout out to K, L and SA for their hard work. You girls worked like crazy women, and it paid off! Thank you to building management for your fabulous support of this project. Thank you, of course, to our fellow tenants, friends and family for buying our goodies and contributing online! And most of all, thank you to God for blessing this event. We are SO thankful and humbled that You answered our prayers!
Imagine two forty- something sisters; separated by 3.4 years in age and 1,300 miles in distance. Give them completely different lives, backgrounds, and experiences. What could they possibly talk about? Plenty! More about us...
~BigSis
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