Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Walking for Lupus

I’ve mentioned my best friend Sharon in numerous blogs over the years, but i don’t believe I’ve ever talked about her living with lupus. She was diagnosed in 2002, while we were at the height of enjoying our final year in college. Talk about a life changing disease! I have watched her, strong as ever, fight off random flare ups over the years. The most recent having one of the greatest impacts of all and forcing her to leave the new life she had built on a dream she pursued, to return to our hometown of Detroit where she’d be closer to family.

To help lift her spirits I practically forced begged her to join Facebook to get reacquainted with old friends. She ended up loving it and has some of the funniest status posts and conversations on there (along with that First Grade picture Marquis posted that is absolutely hilarious). April came up with the great idea of signing up a team for the 2009 Detroit Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR) Walk with Us to Cure Lupus Walkathon. To get us started on our “team expansion” and “donor solicitation” we created a really cool blog to tell her story and encourage others living with lupus by showing them they are not alone. If you get a chance, check out the blog at the link below….but we warn you, you may need a few tissues when you read her story in the right column!!

http://teamcakesylupuswalk.blogspot.com

Here are a few pics my Dad took of us playing around on the Riverwalk…

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and my favorite photo of the bunch…

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Please feel free to pass along this post or the link above to anyone you know that may be interested. The responses have been overwhelming and we’re already getting donations and pledges to walk with us from all over the country.

As for the Item of the Day, I recently made my “investment” purchase of the year. I had been looking for a black purse and narrowed it down to 5 choices. Turned out, one of the choices came up in a Gilt.com sale recently! I was soooo excited! If you haven’t checked out gilt.com yet, its a website where you can purchase high end designer items up to 70% off of retail price. The “sales” are announced at noon each day, include a limited number of hand-picked items from select designer labels, and then last only 36 hours. So my purse that was originally listed at $580 (currently on sale at botkier.com for $297) cost me even less than the current sale price – WITH shipping!!

botkier jackie satchel

If you’re interested in checking out the sales on gilt.com go to my sign up link to set up your own account and brose the daily sales.

I am so in love with this handbag, and really happy I got it at half of the price I had budgeted for my 2009 investment piece. I decided to take a portion of my savings (is that really considered savings????) and buy these Coach Gillian gladiator sandals in the color “Sand”, with Gold hardware. They were half off during the Macy’s sale and after trying on nearly 30 pairs of gladiators, these were by far the most comfortable I found.

coach gillian sandal