And the award goes to.....

Proximidade is described as follows: This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes for self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!' The rules are: This blog award should be sent to your favorite eight bloggers and they, in turn should forward to eight of their favorites. You should include the text for Proximidade (above) in your announcement blog.

Over a week ago Jan on her blog In my spare time made me one of the recipients of this award for helping out with the OZBushfireAppeal shop. Thank you Jan! Although I have to say I do feel a little unworthy.

Anyway I am meant to pass on the award to 8 other people, but I am going to break the rules and pass it on to a whole group of people - the DUST team. For those of you who don't know DUST stands for Down Under Street Team. We are made up of Australian etsy sellers and if you want to find out more about us you can check out the DUST website.

I am giving the award to the DUST team as a whole because of the way everyone has banded together to set up the Bushfire Appeal store and help raise money for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

As well as Emma and Carely who took the main responsibility for running the store, there were DUSTers helping to list the items, donating items, marketing the store to everyone they knew and of course buying all the lovely products. It was a great team effort and wonderful to be part of it.

The OZBushfire Appeal shop has stopped taking donations and will now run until the 31st March. So far the shop has raised $15,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire appeal which is an amazing effort. There are still 216 items in the store to sell so the final money tally will probably be higher.

$12,000 Raised So Far

In a little over a week the OZBushfireAppeal shop has raised $12,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

That's an amazing effort for everyone involved.

feliciafairy and vanillapixe are putting in a mammoth effort running the shop and are being helped by members of the DUST team (including me!).

It is not only Australians who are donating items and buying, but also people from overseas which is really heartwarming.

Victorian Bushfires

I guess I am feeling like a lot of Aussies at the moment when I say that I am shocked and saddened by the devastating effect the Victorian bushfires have had on the community. It is heartbreaking to see houses and whole towns turned to rubble and hear peoples stories of loss and tragedy. So many people have lost their lives.

If you would like to help out the people affected by this there are ways to do so here.

Another way to help is by buying an item from OzBushfireAppeal on etsy. Products have been donated to the store and ALL proceeds will be donated to the Australian Red Cross. So you can shop and not feel guilty about spending money because it is going to a good cause.

Edit: the OZBushfireAppeal shop is temporarily on hold as we are waiting for permsision from etsy admin to continue with it as it violates some of their Terms of Service. Lets hope they see sense and let us proceed.

Update: Etsy admin have allowed us to carry on with the shop so it is up and running and being stocked as we speak.