Yesterday was my first Giving Tuesday. Although it was officially kicked off in 2012, I hadn’t actively participated until this year (yes, shame on me, I know). Let me just say I really enjoyed digging around to see where I could help out in the community.

Every year as a company, Becca and I run a special that we like to call #GiveLOVE. Ok, so it started without the hashtag, but here we are in 2014 and you, dear reader, are lucky that #thiswholeblogpostisn’tinhashtags. The way our special works is that for each client who books with us from Thanksgiving through the end of the year, we will donate 15% of our entire fee to the charitable organization of their choice. We have a few favorites that we recommend, but we are happy to oblige any client that has their own favorite. This year, we wanted to ramp up our #giveLOVE campaign by actively getting out and giving some additional love in our community, just because. And the perfect way to kick that off was with Giving Tuesday. We’d love to tell you a little about our experience and the three amazing organizations we visited yesterday.

We started our Giving Tuesday out at Thistle Farms. Thistle Farms is the social enterprise of Magdalene, an organization that provides a residence, therapy, food, education and job training to women who have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction. While in the program, women participate in job training at Thistle Farms, where they learn valuable skills creating, manufacturing, marketing and selling natural bath and body products. This place is so great. Every Tuesday they do Teas and Ties, where volunteers can come help get products packaged and ready for order fulfillment. Yesterday, we got to work with some awesome, incredibly kind women, helping package candles, wrap gift sets, create lavender sachets and more. My hands have never smelled so good. Afterwards, we had super yummy sandwiches in the adjoining Thistle Stop Cafe.

Apparently I make this same face a lot in photos. Also, this is the biggest tub of lavender I’ve ever seen!

After leaving Thistle Farms, we headed over for a quick stop at The Hope Clinic for Women. I had several unopened packs of diapers, now too small for my Lil’ Bit, and this was the new home I found for them. The Hope Clinic is an organization that provides support, education and options for unplanned pregnancies, pregnancy prevention, loss and postpartum depression. They are in constant need of baby and maternity items for new mothers in their program.

We had a photo of the huge load of diapers, but it mysteriously disappeared from my phone…

Our last stop for the day was at the Nashville chapter of the American Red Cross, where we both gave blood for the very first time. I’ve always been a little nervous about giving blood, despite the fact that my hubs does it somewhat regularly. Well, yesterday was the day. We both sucked it up, pushed up our sleeves and gave a pint. And you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. And you get cookies. So there’s that.

We were both super pumped and energized about our #giveLOVE #givingtuesday combo and sad at the end of the day that we couldn’t go do more. So you know what? We will do more! We have some more fun things up our sleeves throughout the month that we’ll be doing to continue to give love in our community beyond Giving Tuesday. We can’t wait to share them with you!

How do you plan to #giveLOVE this holiday season?