For Love and Coffee

When you think of meeting with friends, catching up, or just hanging out, let's be honest, what do you usually do at the same time...eat or drink.  My husband and I love having people over to the house to hang out on the back porch by the fire, roast marshmallows, drink wine and make coffee or hot chocolate for guests.  Food and beverage always seem to bring people together.  When I heard that there was a fundraising plan involving coffee, I thought that sounded like a great option to offer to our friends and family.  So many people drink coffee, and so many people love to try gourmet or boutique versions that this company seems like a perfect match.  Even if you don't drink coffee, maybe you have a friends that does, and it does smell good :).  We would love for you to try some products from our personal storefront at  "Just Love Coffee Roasters", our latest partner in our adoption journey.  

 This company was founded on great principals and strives for quality in their coffee.  You can purchase organic, sustainable, fair trade products and support a great cause as well.  They say it best themselves:

The Mission of Just Love Coffee

"At Just Love Coffee Roasters, our mission is to bring out the unique qualities inherent in each coffee bean. We do this by taking a small-batch artisan approach to all of our specialty coffees. We don’t use automation or computers during the roast process, but instead carefully roast every batch to perfection using smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste. We’re always searching for the best Fair Trade, organic, and shade-grown coffee beans available.
And as passionate as we are about creating outstanding artisan coffees, we are equally passionate about helping those in need. Every delectable cup of Just Love Coffee you drink has a portion of its proceeds go to someone who could use a helping hand. In our first two years of business we have given over $200,000 to adopting families, non-profit organizations, and the arts. "

So, if you're looking for something different or are adventurous with your coffee (not just sticking to the local Starbucks)  We would love for you to try Just Love Coffee.  They are very open and transparent on their website about how the fundraising proceeds are set aside:

What are the Proceed Amounts?

13oz. Coffees (non-small lot): $5
8oz. Coffee (non-small lot): $3.50
Tastes of Africa (4) 8oz. Sampler: $7
Tour of The World (4) 8oz. Sampler: $7
Coffee Cupper's (11) 8oz. Sampler: $19
Jamaica Blue Mountain (small lot): 4oz. ($3)  13oz. ($9)
Special Blend–I Love Mom: $5
Special Blend–Pinky Beans (Available in October only): $0
T-Shirts: $5
Sale T-Shirts: $3
Sale Hoodie: $4
Beanie: $3
Hat: $3
Stoneware Mug: $2
16oz. Steel Tumbler: $2
Aeropress: $5
Aeropress Microfilters: $.25
Coffee Scoop: $1
Chemex Brewer: $3
Chemex Filters: $0
LaMarzocco Espresso Machine: $0


If you can't remember these links, you can always bookmark them and come back to them when you're interested in making a purchase.  Thanks again!!

~Adrienne and Will

These Past Few Weeks!

Phew! What an exausting and fruitful 3 weeks! We have made it through alive!  We are both very excited at the progress we've made toward our fundraising goals.  We have been collecting donations for about a month.  We started with the plan of just having one weekend of garage sales, but we quickly realized that we had way too much stuff - it barely fit in our garage- and needed some extra days to sell.  Luckily Stephanie (Adrienne's sister) and Pam's (Adrienne's mom) neighborhoods both had community sales that we joined in on.  We moved heavy furniture and probably asked too many favors of friends and family members (borrowing pick up trucks, packing and unpacking boxes, storing stuff in their garages).  So thank you immensely for your help!  Also big Thank You to both of our moms and sisters for sitting with us during each sale.  Adrienne finally came to terms with selling her high school car - A Chrysler Sebring Convertible.  It went to a very happy and appreciative home - but a little sad none the less.  But hey, selling it helped us take a big step towards our goal, so have a sweet new life convertible!
 
A huge thank you goes out to all of YOU who came out and supported us, who bought items you needed, wanted, or didn't really need :).  We even had some anonymous donations given to us along the way. We managed to have productive sales every day despite rain, heat, early mornings etc.  It was pretty stressful at times to get everything moved to 3 different households in 3 weeks and set up and be ready for sales to start early every Friday and Saturday.  We just had to keep remembering our end goal and try to make the best of every tough situation.

Now that we've had some time to relax afterward, we can appreciate how good it feels to reap the rewards of hard work.  We also have heard so many encouraging stories from so many families who have adopted, who are adopted, who are trying to adopt as well, or who are birthparents.
The greatest outcome of all of this is that we officially filled out and signed the application and registration form and wrote our first (of many) checks to the adoption agency we have chosen:  The Independent Adoption Center. We will attend a weekend workshop at the end of June and get this thing started.  Now the real work starts - the emotional work of having our lives scrutinized on several fronts to prove that we are willing and able parents.  Please keep the words of encouragement coming as I am sure it will be much needed in the months ahead.  We are open to all forms of positivity: prayers, good karma, good vibes, wishful thoughts and crossed fingers.  Thanks once again to everyone who supported these garage sales in any way.  We can not begin to tell you what it means to us to be able to start this process and really feel like we are on our way to being parents.

 

 

As always, please keep sharing our page and our story with friends and those who might have an interest - while we've raised enough to begin this journey, we still have not reached our fundraising goals.  Unfortunately, there are many more expenses to come.  After we officially start in a couple of weeks, there is the small chance that everything could happen very quickly, so we want to be sure we are prepared for that possibility as well.     Continue to support us by clicking on the links:  Amazon gives a portion of all products purchased through our links back to us for our fund. Also, if you love coffee, check out this link as a sneak peek:  https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/AWbaby/  (More on that later!). 

And you can always make a direct donation to our go fund me account:  http://www.gofundme.com/2kie64?utm_medium=wdgt

Thank you all so much again!  And we're sorry we haven't given you a blog update in awhile - the business of preparing your life for the adoption process is pretty much all consuming. Seriously, we filled out the agency application on top of a pizza box so we could multi-task squeezing in a dinner while completing the official paperwork to finally get started.  I'm pretty sure the agency will see that we'll be great parents because we managed to not get one grease stain on the forms - so if forms and babies are anything alike - we'll definitely have a grease-spotless baby (and all the parents out there are laughing).