Photo Shoot with my Lunch

Last year, my pottery studio held an event called “Soup for Syria”.  This year we’re calling it “Soup’s On”.

You come join us, pick out a beautiful homemade bowl to take home and we fill it with soup!  Last year’s donation went to a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. This year we are helping closer to home.  The proceeds will support refugees settling in Rhode Island as well as the Granola Project which gives settling refugees a place to work and job train right here in RI.  They produce granola, package and distribute it.  It’s been a terrific success and delicious to boot!

What’s crazy is we selected our charity before all of this national political conflict errupted.  Coming together and supporting people fleeing very serious conflicts, seems all the more relevant these days, unfortunately.

For me, the fun comes when I get to create the flyer using some of my own pottery.  I get to “play” graphic designer and set up a photoshoot right in my very own kitchen. LOL.

On closer inspection, you can see I was working with a peasant blouse and two scarves. Did you notice I chose red, white and blue?  Yeah, that was no accident ;)

I am so darn lucky.  My husband is a crazy-good-cook.  There isn’t a day I can’t pull something  yummy from my fridge.  So that part was easy. This is my Dad’s recipe for Tuscan Hunter Chicken.  Red wine & rosemary… one of the best parts of winter!

So without getting all political… (I lied, I’m getting political :)  Let me just throw it out there.  Maybe you can’t make it to my teeny little willage in RI to come to our soup event. But, you can band together with like-minded people and create your own!  All it took was one woman in our pottery studio reading a newspaper article she connected to.  People trying to help with a local problem. She called and asked if we could contribute money.  What agency would say no?  From there it’s easy.  We pick a date and all start working towards it.  For us potters, we make bowls, but there are others.  Last year 15 crockpots of homemade soup showed up.  Some from people who could not even attend, but still simply wanted to help.  Panera Bread donated a giant table of diverse breads.  The room was filled with food and good folk.  It smelled amazing! –tasted pretty darn good too!

Do you belong to a bowling league?  Do you knit?  Are you part of a book club?  A corporate division? Walker? Soccer mom sitting on the sidelines for way too many hours? Of course there’s churches and schools who are already organized, but it’s amazing what even 10 people can accomplish.

Local. Lots and lots of little local can become something bigger. A difference.

You should definitely try this whole community service thing -It’s madly addicting!