My last Friday message

As I celebrated Christmas and reflected on the past year, I once again realized just how really blessed we are in Quail Creek.

After 6 ½ years as your President, I want to thank you all for your outstanding support of the various projects we have undertaken.

Some of the projects we tackled seemed very ambitious—for our first cookbook, A Taste of Quail Creek, I thought I was being a tad optimistic when I said we hoped to give $4000 to the Food Bank. We raised over $8800 with the first printing and in the end donated just short of $11K to the Food Bank.
Our aprons and canvas totes, plus the burgundy thermal totes enabled us to give over $4K to Genesis House for victims of domestic abuse.
Each year because of your enthusiastic support the annual clothing drive for homeless veterans has grown by leaps and bounds.
The ladies at the National Guard marvel at the creative baby shower we host every year.
A Shared Table enabled us to donate $7K to Genesis House.
With your generous piggy bank donations and the green thermal tote sales we are about to give two $1000 scholarships to young ladies graduating from Sahuarita and Walden Grove High Schools.
So many of you have clipped and sorted coupons over the years helping military families overseas and in the Tucson area save money when they go grocery shopping.
You have been so enthusiastic about saving all those travel sized toiletries for the homeless and hospitalized veterans and bringing all those note pads and calendars to our meetings.

And the list goes on. It is you who have made the club the great success that it is. It has been my honor to serve as your leader. Somehow being in the driver’s seat released energy in me that I didn’t know I had. Will I slow down now that I am no longer president? I doubt it—rather I will just switch gears a little. And I trust that you will give Carol Mutter the same support you have given me over the years.

A special thanks to all the Board members who, over the years, tried to keep me on the straight and narrow when I would come up with a new idea or project and to the Program Committee for coming up with some fabulous entertainment. And, a huge thank you to Marianne Cobarrubias for making our website come alive and keeping it updated, for establishing a TWOQC Facebook page and for all her embellishments to the Friday Morning Messages.

FASHION SHOW

Tickets for the February 12 Fashion Show will be on sale in the Madera lobby on Friday, January 8 from 1-3 p.m. Tickets are $25 each. They can also be obtained by calling Nancy Jacobs at 970-946-3910.

Tickets for the 50-50 raffle will be on sale at the same time. Raffle tickets cost $1 each, 6 for $5, 14 for $10, or 30 for $20. Cash or checks payable to American Cancer Society. For that raffle, one does not have to be present to win. Bring address labels to make filling out the tickets easier. Or you can make labels with just your name and phone number.

We are in need of baskets and more importantly prizes for the raffle to raise funds for cancer research and programs for survivors. If you received something for Christmas that is not you, please consider regifting it to the Fashion Show. Or if you got chocolates and have weight loss as a New Year’s resolution, the Fashion Show committee will graciously accept them. Prizes and baskets may be dropped off at Ginny Hutcheson’s house, 2494 E Bluejay Bluff Lane at any time. Please put your name, address and items donated on the form in the box so we will be able to acknowledge your donations.

The Fashion Show decorating committee needs some empty wrapping paper, paper towel and toilet paper cardboard rolls to make firecrackers for the event. The wrapping paper and paper towel size are what is needed most. They also need metallic wrapping paper in gold, silver, red and purple. They do not have to be full rolls. If you can help, please drop things at Ginny’s house at any time. Better to put those empty rolls to good use rather than in the trash.
[ link: FASHION SHOW ]

Our fund raising for the 2016 scholarships is now over.

The next project for the scholarship committee will be to review the applications which are due by January 31.
[ link: SCHOLARSHIPS ]

EQUINE VOICES FUND RAISER

Equine Voices (remember the presentation last April?) is having a Rummage and Tack Sale on Saturday, January 9 from 8-2 at the ranch located at 1924 Dove Way in Amado. In addition to items for sale, there will be food vendors on site and they will be raffling off some fantastic items to raise funds for those special animals.

Some of the items needed to make the sale successful include Christmas decorations, furniture, appliances, kitchen items, Western/Arizona clothing/décor/books, tools, bikes. Items can be dropped off at Angie Warner’s House, 1924 E Orinda Lane. They can still use more volunteers to organize and price the donations. Questions or to volunteer, contact Angie at angelawerner214@yahoo.com or 402-309-5467.

TWOQC FACEBOOK PAGE

Don’t forget to check out our Facebook page and Like us and Share us with your relatives and friends. Within the next week we will be adding another short video about the upcoming Fashion Show. Click here for a direct link to the page: TWOQC FACEBOOK.

FOOD BANK

Since we do not like to waste things, the candy canes and Christmas Luncheon table decorations were donated to the Food Bank to add a little holiday cheer for the families that shop there.

HOMELESS & HOSPITALIZED VETERANS

I’d imagine the homeless veterans are really appreciating all those warm clothes we donated during our recent clothing drive. If you traveled over the holidays and brought home some of those travel sized toiletries, please consider donating them for the homeless and hospitalized veterans. If you got more calendars than you can possibly use, I can take those to the VA too. You may bring items to the meeting on January 25. If you won’t be at the meeting, you may drop them at my house at 1908 E Longspur Place. Here is the latest thank you we received from the VA acknowledging our donations from our November meeting. [ link: VA THANK-YOU ]

GENESIS HOUSE

Thanks to all who brought gifts for the ladies at Genesis House.

Thanks to Claudia Ullevig who had to make two trips to DaZee’s to drop off gifts. The Club also donated the left over necklaces from the luncheon for the residents.

DUES

As of today, if you have not yet paid your 2016 dues, you are on the delinquent list. Don’t panic. You can still renew with no late fee charged.

Checks for $25 made payable to TWOQC can be dropped at Carol Mutter’s house, 482 Alexis Loop at any time—she has a box by the door so you don’t have to worry whether she is home or not. Registration forms can be found in TWOQC’s slot in the hallway as well as on the website.
[ link: MEMBERSHIP FORM ]

The first planning meeting for the 2016 Baby Shower for Military Moms will be held on Monday, January 11 at 11:00 a.m. in the Kino Conference Center. The shower will be held on June 25.

Remember, if you want to attend the shower, you must be a member of the committee.

PLASTIC POTS NEEDED

The Green Valley Gardeners will be having their annual plant sale in March and they are in desperate need of pots of all sizes but especially one gallon or smaller. The little plastic ones that plants come in when you buy them work great. It’s okay if they are dirty. They can be delivered to Desert Meadows Park, on Huerta Drive, just off Abrego near Prestige Assisted Living. Questions or to arrange for pick up, please call Megan Todd at 207-0402. It’s OK to leave a message.

SOME INTERESTING FACTOIDS

Here are some interesting 2015 year-end statistics, a report generated from WordPress that reflects our second year using the WordPress blogging site as our website:

–Crunchy Numbers

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. TWOQC blog was viewed about 7,100 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
There were 693 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2 GB. That’s about 2 pictures per day.
The busiest day of the year was February 10th with 242 views. The most popular post that day was 2015 Fashion Show (Feb. 6): Photos & Videos.

–Posting Patterns

In 2015, there were 52 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 53 posts.
Best day: Friday, with 51 posts total.

–Attractions in 2015
These are the posts that got the most visitors in 2015:

Membership
2015 Fashion Show
History of Green Valley
Calendar of Events
Monthly Meeting

–How did our viewers find us?
The top referring sites in 2015 were:

quailcreekhoa.org
quailcreekpoa.org
facebook.com
webmail.q.com
webmail.gci.net

–Where did our website visitors come from?

Most visitors came from The United States.
Brazil & Italy were not far behind.

Follow this link to see this colorful stats report online. Report will load immediately following the quick “firework display”: TWOQC Website 2015 Annual Report. (Once on that page, keep scrolling down as you read each short section which corresponds with the information above.)