3 in 30 October Update #3 and #4

During October for the 3 in 30 challenge, I set three goals. There is also one that is a carryover from September which I never completed. Here are my goals for the month as well as the progress I've made on them so far: 

1. Work on organizing and creating the book with all of my Dad's homilies, prayers, and invocations. When my Dad died in January of this year, he left behind files of things he wrote and presented while he was a Deacon. I want to organize these items; and then have them printed and bound. The final books will be given to family members at  Christmas as well as to people who may be interested in reading what he wrote.

I finally finished organizing all the different elements of the book, writing an introduction, numbering the pages. This was a very time-consuming - but worthwhile - project; and I'm so happy to have it finally have my part in the project done.

The book in a bin. 

It was ready to go to the printer at this point.

On November 2nd, I brought the 808-page book to the printer. After a rather stunned look from the employee as I explained what needed to be copied, I told her what the book represented and included. She said she would personally copy the book and didn't want to have multiple people working on it. 

The anticipated date for its completion is November 6th. My mom has been very eager to see the book, so I will bring it to her this week. The rest of the books will be distributed before Christmas since that will already be an emotional and difficult holiday (it's the first Christmas that my Dad isn't with us).

2. Do at least 8 activities that celebrate autumn and Halloween. There are family traditions that we do each year that I want to continue as well as some ideas that I've read about that I'd like to do. The girls enjoy trying new recipes, so making some new food that includes apples or pumpkins, and/or food that is orange and gold/yellow will be part of this goal.

I made Olivia's costume based on a picture she saw on Pinterest (a sheep). She was very happy with her costume and enjoyed being a part of the creation process. She was very patient as I hot-glued small clumps of fiberfill onto a black shirt (with a piece of newspaper between the shirt and her skin).

Olivia in her costume on Halloween. 

She was supposed to have a black dot on her nose, 

but she had a cold and didn't want it to get smudged.

I also went through my Halloween board on Pinterest and clicked over to the source of the pins so I could either get more information and/or the recipe for the autumn/Halloween item featured. From the 18th-30th of October, Sophia, Olivia, and I did between 1-4 activities per day based on a different theme.

One of the craft projects the girls did.

This was done on the pumpkin theme day.

The overview post with the different themes and links is HERE. There are many pictures, recipes, and ideas.

We made these easy candy desserts on the

candy corn theme day.

This was a fun countdown and we plan to do it again next year. Some of the activities and recipes we'll make again. However, I'll be looking for new ideas to do and perhaps some other themes for a couple of the days.

3. Work on the African Library Project. We collected quite a few books during September for the library that we are going to establish in Lesotho, Africa. We still need to do a count of the books so that we can determine if we reached the goal of collecting over 1,000 books. At that point, we will need to sort them, pack them, and mail them to the African Library Project. We need to raise $500 to off-set the cost of postage to mail the books first to the ALP in California. They, in turn, put the boxes in containers and mail them to Africa. 

We now have over 1,000 books that we collected for the library that we are creating in Africa. We sent requests to a few Rotary and Lions Clubs. One of the clubs responded quickly with a $200 gift! We also received a $20 gift from a family who had donated books to the drive and wanted to help ship them.

So, now we have $245 towards the $500 that we need for shipping. Although we had wanted to have all the money raised by the end of October, we are still hoping that by mid-November we will have enough funds to ship the books.

We still haven't heard from a couple of clubs yet regarding if they will support the project. We can only hope that this week we will hear from them...and the response will be positive.

Carryover from September:  

1. Organize fabric. Most of the fabric I use for projects are in bins grouped by color. However, there are some pieces of fabric that are in bags that I want to put in the bins. Also, I'd like to go through all the fabric and donate the pieces I don't care for any longer and/or plan to use.

I did not work on this project. The other projects and activities that I did this month with my Dad's book and with Halloween as well as homeschooling Sophia and Olivia took the majority of my time. Perhaps next month I'll finally get around to doing this project.