Six Volunteer Events Your Company Should Consider

1. Animal Shelters. This is always a fun thing to do! Helping out some furry friends is always a great way to give back and have fun with your co-workers. You can also collect supplies like, paper towels, puppy pads, dog/cat food, leashes, and much more! Think about it and partner with your local animal shelter today!

2. Food Pantries! Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit committed to feeding hungry children. Volunteers hand-pack meals that are specially formulated and sent to more than 70 countries world wide. Start your finger exercises now!

3. Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit that believes every person should have a decent place to live. Habitat for Humanity builds, renovates and repairs houses over the world using volunteer labor and donations. Stretch out your limbs and pack up your toolkit.

4. YMCA focuses on youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. Y volunteers give men, women and children of all ages and walks of life the resources and support they need to be healthy, confident, connected, and secure.

5. United Way believes every country should have a good education, every citizen should feel financially stable, and every community should be healthy and strong.

6. National Night Out promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make neighborhoods safer, better places to live. Neighborhoods across the nation host block parties, festivals, parades, cookouts and other various community events with safety demonstrations, seminars, youth events and visits from emergency personal and exhibits.

The list of volunteer events goes on and on. Why not get away from work and have some fun while giving back to the community!

10 Ways to Save This Holiday

Save Money Now!

So, there's this holiday coming up. You may or may not have heard about it. You know, Christmas. Have all your ducks in line yet? Have you even started thinking about gifts? If not, no worries! You still have plenty of time (sort of). Get into the buying mode and save money now before you go out and get your big ticket items! Here's some ways to save big this holiday season!

ONE

Decide on a budget and stick to it. From this budget, you want to create your purchasing list. Remember, everyone doesn't need a gift. Maybe get a bottle of champagne or wine for your neighbors, bake some homemade cookies for your children's teachers, and do a pot-luck or secret Santa with your co-workers, and set a price limit of $10 so the gifts aren't out of hand. This will leave you with a pretty manageable size of people you are buying presents for.

He sees you when you're sleepin'

TWO

Give a homemade gift! Nothing cheesy of course! Pinterest is full of clever homemade gifts! Check out lovegrowswild's blog for a DIY Mint Sugar Scrub! There's only four super easy ingredients, and three instructions to make this Christmas gem! Maybe you'd like to go more traditional and give the gift of hot chocolate. Buzzfeed has a great recipe for hot chocolate, and there's even a little extra surprise. Age appropriate of course.

This holidays going to be fantastic!

THREE

Volunteer! Don't be pressured to give if that's not what you want! It's always nice to give back to those who aren't fortunate and can't provide for themselves. There are plenty of charities looking for help this holiday season. So pack up the fam and show them the real meaning of Christmas!

FOUR

Reduce, reuse, recycle. I can't stress it enough. Just like making homemade gifts for your friends, find old junk that's still nice and make it into something new you can use in your home. It's an environment friendly decoration. You can make some adorable bottle cap snowmen! You can cut up old CDs and make some disco ball ornaments, those are awesome. Or how about these awesome Wine Bottle Christmas lights?!

FIVE

Don't go out and buy expensive wrapping paper, recycle your newspapers, magazines and wall paper to use to wrap your gifts. Also, cereal boxes are great for making gift tags. Check out, 1 Dog Wolf for some super adorable homemade gift tags!

SIX

Buy in bulk. Do you bake a TON!? Stock up on the ingredients used most often when you use them go on sale. Most things are good if you can keep them in the freezer! Just rummage around for your next gathering and restock when necessary.

SEVEN

Crock pot meals. They're delicious. Who doesn't like to cook in their crock pot. Also, who doesn't like to cook in a crock pot when they don't have to put all the ingredients together and everything is put together already! Just sayin'. Your friends and family will love you forever!

EIGHT

Gift cards anyone? Have a friend or family member who wants a high ticket item? Get them a gift card to the store they want to purchase the item at. Much cheaper than going out and purchasing the item yourself.

NINE

Reuse your turkey, ham or meat of choice by making some delicious soup that can be frozen and saved for later! Your tummy will thank you later, and so will your budget.

TEN

Secret Santa. This is a great concept because everyone's name goes into a bowl and one name is chosen per person. Secret Santa saves on your budget by assuring that everyone sets a maximum spending price. This way there's no Christmas spending remorse and everyone is happy!

So, no matter what you do this holiday season, remember, there are more ways to save than there are more ways to spend! Don't break your budget trying to make everyone happy. It's the little things that count! Until next time! :]