Leah’s Cafe

My cousin Veronica recently got married and had a grand wedding reception with 500 guests. It was a big event, I thought my cousin must have hired a wedding planner to do the job as her father could certainly afford it. When I found out she single-handedly organizing the whole event by herself, I wanted to take my hat off and give her a salute, man. (never mind that I was not wearing a hat) :-)

The most amazing thing was, there was no hiccup at all throughout the wedding. From the guest sitting arrangement to all the unique wedding favors she has prepared, everything just flow so smoothly. I told Veronica that if I ever get married again (opps..), she will be my wedding planner.:-)

My friend Jo runs a non-profit organization for unwed mothers and single mothers just called. She wants to know whether I can take in a teenage girl who is 6 months pregnant for a week while they setup a place for her.

They started a help line that provide counseling for unwed mothers few months ago and the response was overwhelming. I think Jo underestimated the physical needs for shelters for this unwed mothers who are mostly teenage girls from dysfunctional families. While Jo is getting more volunteers to set up a shelter, she is calling us to help to take them in temporary.

Many of us who are middle class live in our comfort zone and never realize that they are many people who are destitute and need God unless we get involve with them. They are many ways one can get involved with a ministry that helping the marginalized groups of people in our society.

One way you can help is to get involve with the Car Donation Ministry (www.carangel.com) to help the single mothers, homeless, troubled teens, adult rehab and prison reform. You can Donate a Car and they will use it to raise fund to spear head projects for the groups of people they are involved with. The current project is using the car donations to raise fund for creating Free Children’s DVDs, anti-drug documentaries and distributing uplifting books into prisons.

Nowadays, people may not get much from selling their old cars and hence, find it more meaningful to do a good cause. Car Donations have become the choice of a lot of people considering the amount of work one has to deal with if they dispose off their cars to used car dealers. Sometimes, one end up wasting a lot of time plus the stresses of putting up ads, finding willing buyers and getting rid of the car. Why not get involve with a worthy cause and get help to dispose your car at the same time?

In addition, it will help you with saving in tax. You will receive your IRS tax deduction. Now, isn’t that a good reason? You help someone and at the same time, you get a tax deduction. On top of that, the Car Angel Ministries will take care of the paperworks.

I hope you will go over and learn more. If it compels you, please do share the link with your friends.

Two more classes tomorrow and Friday, then I would be done for the year. Since I started the tutoring center three years ago, this is the first time that I am taking a month break at the end of the year.

Enough of  teaching non-stop whole year round and running holiday program during the school break!! It’s time to close the center for a month and take a break, thanks to all the extra income from blogging, I can afford to do that!

Our current kitchen cabinets are falling apart, we want to tear them down and rebuild. We would like to add a concrete counter-top and an island. Since it’s not a big job, many contractors we have contacted were not interested to do. We have tried in vain to get a contractor interested to do the job in the last few weeks!

As I was looking that this concrete table, benches and planters, I wonder do they have factory made kitchen counter top and island that need no building but we can just fixed ourselves? May be I should search the internet on how to pour concrete and remodel the kitchen the DIY style. That would probably save us money and save us more time than getting a contractor to do the job!

It turned out that it’s so difficult to find someone to do the kitchen remodeling. I am still stuck with all the utensils in boxes waiting to be organized. And I didn’t start organizing them because I didn’t want to do it twice.

Have asked friends for referrals and contacted a few builders or contractors, some said they were busy and would call me back but never did. One even made an appointment with me, but never showed up at the time we agreed, he said he came, the next day, when I was not home!

So far only one came to take measurement and gave a quotation. He probably thought he got a big fish and this woman won’t know anything about building cost!! He must be kidding me to charge 3-4 times of what my neighbors paid for and told me he gave a fair price. I would have suggested him to go rob a bank if I was not in a good mood that day.:-)

Now is probably the busiest time of the year for the contractor, as many people are trying to get their renovation and remodeling done before the year end and before the holiday season. May be I should wait till next year? But, I really cannot stand the kitchen cabinets that falling apart, the hassle of searching through boxes for kitchen utensils and the MESS.