Updates

I've registered for one race this year so far. It's the Puppy Love Virtual 10k. It benefits the Humane Society. Here's the information: http://www.active.com/rochester-ny/running/distance-running-races/the-puppy-love-run-a-virtual-5k-10k-half-marathon-rochester-2014.  You get sent a bib and then you can run outside or inside as long as it's on February 8th.  I'm all set to sign up for the Mess a Dress race on Jan. 15th. Here's the information: http://www.trailsroc.org/messthedress/. I'm still up in the air about registering for the half marathon. I'm still training and up to 8 miles. I have until around the 15th I believe to register at the lower rate. We'll see what I decide. :)

Below is a clipping from a new group that has been creating dresses and dolls for the Dress A Girl Around the World Rochester site.  I just happen to drop off about 40 dolls that the institution I work for made. I taught some of the Occupational Therapy students and clients how to create the dolls and then later the OT club made a bunch to donate.

Other news is that I was asked to be the Art Therapy Club Advisor for a group of students at the institution I work for. We spent fall semester jumping through all of the hoops to become an official club.  We go before the Senate of the UA at the end of January and I have full confidence that we will get accepted and become an official club on campus at that point. I'm very excited to be a part of this new adventure.

In addition, I applied for an open Board position for the Western New York Art Therapy Association (WNYATA). http://www.wnyata.com/ It is the Delegate position and is for two years. I found out just prior to Christmas that I was accepted and will attend my first meeting as a Board member tomorrow evening. Again, I'm excited to be a part of this initiative but feeling a little anxious as to the amount of work it may add to my already overflowing plate.

Women Roc, Makerspace, Summer Freebies, and more...

Summer has continued to be jam packed with many new adventures. Here's a taste of some of the things I've been up to:

1. Paddle Boarding (SUPPing) at Bay Creek Paddle; www.baycreek.com/‎.  I went one time last summer and it was fun. It was even better this time becauses I knew what I doing and was able to go with and teach a friend.

2.  Women Run the Roc 5k race- a part of Fleet Feet running; http://www.yellowjacketracing.com/women-run-roc .  This was for a great cause- Operation School Supplies for Inner City after school programs. I dropped off a bag of school supplies and got to run with over 365 women.  I set a seriously high goal for myself to run the race in 26min. minutes. To my awesome suprise I met that goal and then crushed it coming in at 25min.46sec. I improved on my last race by 2 min..  I wore my very bright colored new running shoes and ran with a friend so that was fun. Lesson learned this time- it was positive to study the map race route ahead of time. I knew when I hit the 2 mile mark and could kick it into gear.  I came in 42nd out of 365 runners overall and 15th out of 62 runners in my age catagory. Not to shabby!

3.  A visit to the newly established Makerspace; http://www.rochestermakerspace.org/.  Not sure what to expect and due to the location I conned a friend into coming with me to an open house night at Makerspace (thanks Marcy!).  This was a cool place filled with a bunch of geeks (like myself). We received a tour by one of the founders, Rob. Some of the cool things going on in this space are: an awesome wood working room, a sewing machines, stain glass making, a soon to be art framing section, electrical stuff, machinist corner, a children's play area, information library and perhaps the coolest part a 3D printer!  We learned how the 3D printer works and we hope they offer a class in it soon. Marcy and I felt right at home sharing in the sci fi quotes floating around all evening.  We were even asked to participate in a practice class for an electrical course being offered this weekend. We got a free course which fried my circuits. :)

4. I made it back to a Stampin Up Technique Geek class a week ago. Learned some useful techniques, got inspired and had fun catching up a couple of my friends who also took the class. We all planning in heading to the next Geek class in Aug.. :)  http://stampinwithnicole.com/

5. I attended the monthly Dress A Girl Around the World through Angels of Mercy Inc..  I also attended their Stop Sex Trafficking awareness event where there was presentations, the video "Chosen" was shown and lots of great cookies and beverages followed.  I'll be running in the 5k race for this project/awareness event the end of September.  www.angelsofmercyny.org/‎

6. Rochester has a lot of awesome free events during the summer. I took advantage of some of these events by attending the Wegmans Concert Series called Music on the beach where a friend and I brought our chairs and drinks and listened to an Irish band and watched Irish dance troops on a breezy hot summer night.  That same week I attended Movies at the Park (Highland Bowl). I went because it was retro night and they were playing the original Ghostbusters! Awesome!
http://www.monroecounty.gov/parks-ontariobeach.php
http://www.rochesterevents.com/

*** Stay tuned for upcoming projects and adventures: building of the Little Free Library and the much anticipated Zombie 5K race!!!

February and March Art Project Donations

I spent and evening in February and an evening in March at the college I work at working volunteering and working with students from various Civic Engagement programs teaching them about Dress A Girl Around the World and how to create the dolls.  In the first evening we made about 33 dolls. The second evening brought in a bigger crowd throughout the College because a group of 4 students taking a Women and Gender Studies class picked up on the project and asked if they could host the event and invite other students. Of course I said sure!

I taught them how to prepare all of the materials and the night of the event we had about 25 students participate from student athlete's to a nursing major and her 5 y/o daughter. I gave a presentation about the program and then their was a host at each table that gave instructions on how to create wish dolls. My wonderful co-worker spent hours making "doll" cookies with homemade frosting that we served that evening.  And the hosts were so pleased that the founder Angels of Mercy, Inc. and her partner showed up at this event and talked with everyone about the wonderful work they were doing.

All in all that evening we probably made over 40 dolls. Swear I took pics of dolls and cookies but can't find. Will add if I ever do. Here's some links to check out if you are interested in this project:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dress-A-Girl-Around-The-World-NY-State/158301277640749
angelsofmercyny.org/‎
www.dressagirlaroundtheworld.com/‎

Dress A Girl Around the World & Save a Life

At a local weekend arts festival a few weeks ago I came across this non-profit organization called Angels of Mercy; http://angelsofmercyny.org/ . They have a mission with a couple of different goals/projects and one of them is called Dress A Girl Around the World.  Once a month women from all over the city get together at a local church, bring their sewing machines and supplies and create dresses from pillowcases. They also create little dolls that go in the pocket of each dress.  These dresses are then sent all over the world to third world countries and distributed to little girls who need clothing.  If these girls are clothed nicely, they are viewed as having caring families and are less likely to be targeted for sex trafficking. An important part of the dress is the label that is placed on each one.  The label on the dress gives predators the message that these girls are under the care of an organization.

Often times there are over 90 women that get together once a month to create dresses and dolls. Dress A Girl programs can be found in other states and can be created any where. Together this project has dressed more than 105,000 girls. Our chapter has created over 31,000 of those dresses since they began the program two years ago.  I was asked to take part and began my volunteering this past Tuesday.  It was an amazing experience. Volunteers spend between 3-8pm that day creating and are served dinner.  My goal was to make dolls since I was familiar with how to do this. (As an art therapist we create these dolls with clients and they are called worry or wish dolls because in the head you write a wish or your worries on paper and crumple it up to make the head).  I made 3 complete dolls from start to finish and then they had an entire bin of dolls that needed outfits made for them so I preceded to create dresses for about 50 dolls.

Often times individuals continue to create dresses and dolls on their own and bring them to the monthly meeting.  It was pretty much all women but all different ages from teenagers to elderly ladies and different ethnicities (you could hear many languages being spoken- it was awesome).  It felt wonderful to be a part of this amazing project.  One of the things I'm now working on is getting a large group of students together at the college I work at (through are community service department) and get them to create dolls that we can deliver to the organization. I hope to be able to accomplish this by the end of October. I'll keep you posted.  For now below are pictures from Septembers get together.

A finished dress with doll in pocket.

A couple of women at my table. On the left the woman has been making dolls since the project began 2 years ago.

This is only a view of half of the room where we worked.

Dresses made out of pillowcases.  The longer off white dress was made from a curtain!

One of the dolls I made from scratch using just a piece of fabric, yarn and then fabric for the clothes.

Another finished doll I made.