Sharing Love This Christmas...

Today, I participated in a gift-giving program organized by our city's vice mayor for the less fortunate kids in Parañaque. Earlier this afternoon, while we were having merienda (that's around 3PM), a lady came inside our office carrying two small x-mas trees. The trees were not adorned by the usual plastic christmas tree ornaments we were all used to seeing, but with neon green angel-shaped papers. A closer look and it revealed to contain names of kids and the baranggay where they came from at the back of the cut-outs. 

I found out that every year, an employee will get to choose from the trees the name(s) of kids that they want to give a gift to for Christmas  You can choose one or two or as many as you want, and you can even select the gender. One tree contain names of girls and the other, the names of boys. The kids' ages ranged from seven to eleven years old and they all came from District 2 of Parañaque City. When I asked why they don't have kids from District 1 (my district), it dawned upon me that the answer lies in the coming election. Now, I wouldn't go talking about that or my political views for the time being. Anyway, I chose two kids, a girl (Erika, 9 yrs. old) and a boy (Joshua, 10 yrs. old) as my gift recipient. I based my selection according to which names I liked the most and didn't even realize, until I was actually writing my name as the "santa", that they were both from Barangay Sun Valley. I wanted to change it but I like the names!!! Hehe. Erika and Joshua. Erika is a name that I personally like, and Joshua for Joshua Jackson, whom I'm a fan of since his Mighty Ducks days. 

I've never done this kind of thing before, so I'm very excited (and a bit anxious) at the thought of making kids (other than my siblings and cousins) happy this coming Christmas -even with just a simple gift. There were actually no rules regarding the gifts. There's no minimum nor maximum amount, no guidelines, no wishlist... so it's really up to you if you want to go all-out and be generous or be simple and practical. I have to admit that I'm at a loss as to what I'll be giving. But one thing's for sure, I want to give something that is useful and something that they will appreciate. No worries though as I still have three more weeks to figure something out. ♥

Photo A Day Challenge

I recently discovered this project while I was searching the web for an alternative to the 365-day photo project that I'm supposed to be doing. Most of the search results have linked me to Fat Mum Slim's website, and in there, I found this:

I know I'm a late participant (as in five days late), but I still want to give it a try. I'm also thinking of doing the photo-a-day challenges from January to October just for practice -and for fun! Just to see how creative I can be. And instead of using my phone (Instagram), I'll be using my trusty old digital camera. It's a sure way of testing how good I've become at taking pictures. It's kinda like being enrolled in a photography class. Wish me luck!