Here's a great fundraiser that will last about another week! It's celebrity-designed dollhouse auction to benefit one of my favorite nonprofits (and one I have donated services and money to), Women In Need. Women In Need provides much-needed shelter for the thousands of homeless women and their children here in New York City.
The auction is adorable! My favorite dollhouse is the one designed by Isaac Mizrahi:
Here are others designed by JLo, Kate Spade, and Dylan Lauren (from Dylan's Candy Bar) - they are easy to identify. Please visit the auction to see more dollhouses and hopefully also to bid on them!
Monies raised will go toward The City of Joy, a safe house and leadership community under construction in Bukavu, DRC. A joint effort between V-Day (the global movement to stop violence against women and girls) and UNICEF, the City of Joy has been designed to make the women living there feel secure, calm, and empowered. To foster a feeling of community, the grounds will mimic the setting of a typical Congolese village, including a cluster of structures where women will live and sleep, an orchard, an area for livestock, and many places to gather. Residents will be referred by hospitals and NGOs throughout the region, allowing for a diverse group of 100 women survivors to be served for periods of 4-6 months. Women will have access to programming in group therapy, storytelling, dance, theater, self-defense, sexuality education (covering HIV/AIDS and family planning), gardening, public speaking, leadership and advocacy, human rights, ecology, and horticulture. When women transition out of the City of Joy, V-Day will provide them with support as they return to serve and lead their communities.
Here is a really fun thing to plan on doing on a Wednesday afternoon (May 13!): it's Brooklyn's annual wine festival called Brooklyn Uncorked, which is sponsored and hosted by Edible Brooklyn.
Here are the details:
Stroll the halls of the Brooklyn Academy of Music while sipping on Long Island wines and nibbling on samples from your favorite Brooklyn restaurants.
There will be austere steel-fermented whites, robust reds and varietal roses--all without getting on the L.I.E.
And this year Brooklyn Uncorked will spill over into the lobby of BAM, making way for much more food, from barbecue to cheese, from oysters to carnitas.
That means a whole evening of food and wine for just $40 (or half price if you subscribe to Edible).
Last year's event sold out, so reserve your spot now.
The event runs from 4-8 p.m. and tickets to the general public are $40 or buy a subscription and get your ticket at half price ($20). You can purchase tickets here!
My husband and I just finished the 4 mile run for the Colon Cancer challenge and I am happy to report we ran at a pace faster than we anticipated! It was a beautiful (albeit slightly chilly) sunny morning in Central Park, and we ran with 6,000 other runners . . . thanks to everyone who donated to our team's fundraising goal! Happy Sunday, everyone!
Here is a lovely vision of beauty for your afternoon: the Viktor & Rolf runway show for the Spring/Summer collection, 2009. In lieu of doing a traditional runway show, they filmed the exquisite Shalom Harlow in the collection in a lovely film . . . 
On Saturday, Sept. 27, from 12-6, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is having its annual Chili Pepper Festival! 
There is music (including Pete Seeger, isn't that cool?), food cooking demonstrations, workshops, contests, and, of course, food and beer to eat! It is happening rain or shine, so as it calls for some showers on Saturday, you can check out the festival and then pop inside right next door at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for some art and more entertainment. Both are located right off the 2/3 line, "Eastern Parkway" subway stop which is about 15 minutes into Brooklyn from Manhattan. And since you are in the 'hood,walk up Eastern Parkway to shop at the Saturday Greenmarket, to enjoy Prospect Park, and to play around in Park Slope! While you are at it, come over to BAX for the Hip Slope Mama event if you have kids (see my last posting below!).
This year is the Third Annual Brooklyn's Best Family Fest. Please join HSM for a day of family fun at BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) on Saturday, September 27, 2008 from 11am-6pm. In addition to the popular BAX Family Fest, Hip Slope Mama is collaborating with BAX to sponsor a fun and informative tabling event for parents and kids at the event. BAX is located at 421 5th Ave - 3rd Floor, corner near 8th St, Park Slope, Brooklyn 11215. Call (718) 832-0018. There will be information, music, puppets, raffles, Halloween mask-making, all sorts of wonderful things!
For more information, please visit here!
Tables will include:
* Joyce Szuflita, a School Consultant from NYC School Help will be there to answer questions you might have about her services including "How to find the right school for your child – whether for Pre-K, Elementary School or High School".
* Galia Gichon, of Down to Earth Finance will provide mini-consultations to a few families and talk about the cost of raising kids, family budgeting, saving for college, etc.
* Get Fresh, of Park Slope, Brooklyn will be there with free organic cookies that the kids can decorate themselves. They will talk to parents about the cooking classes they offer to kids (3-9) and adults. Get Fresh provides ready-to-cook meals made with healthy, sustainable, and seasonal farm-fresh ingredients
* Professional Photographer, Hilary Mchone, will be on hand to take free, fun "Make a Scene" family portraits.
* Park Slope Eye is one of the only InfantSEE® member optometrists in Brooklyn. Under this program, they provide a comprehensive infant eye assessment within the first year of life as a no cost public health service. Be sure to come to the event and sign up for a free eye assessment for your child. They will also be available to provide parents (with kids aged 1-10) informational material on the importance of eye check-ups and they'll bring a variety of stylish children's glasses to try on too.
* Melissa Lopata, the Founder of Hip Slope Mama, will be there handing out a free gift to each family! Additionally, if you sign up for the weekly HSM E-mail Newsletter at the event you get a chance to win a Casio Baby G Women's Watch valued at $150.
TICKETS: The concerts are $12 for Adults, $8 for kids, and kids under one year free!; BAXtivities are an all inclusive ticket price of $8 children, adults come free; An all day family pass for activities and both concerts for an unlimited number of children in one family is available for $45.
Call 718-832-0018 or click here to make a reservation, to buy tickets or to find out more about BAX.
hen
in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and
to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
