Wednesday night I had the pleasure of hanging with a bunch of cool CLE blogging babes while raising money for charity and clearing out the ALU beauty closet. You may remember that I hosted a similar event last year benefiting my local Dress For Success. This year I decided to coincide the event with my Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, donating the money raised to Living Beyond Breast Cancer.

This past year a local blogger, Allison from Green Dog Wine started organizing regular blogger meet-ups and was kind enough to include me in the group even though we hadn’t met.  It’s been wonderful getting to know other women in the community who have a passion for our city and blogging.

I decided it would be fun to host one of the meet-ups and combine it with my charity sale.  It was a blast having everyone over for wine and snacks and watching them head to the basement to clean me out of product samples.

At the end of the night everyone went home with a bunch of new beauty loot to try and I raised $1,085 for Living Beyond Breast Cancer bringing the total amount raised by ALU to $3366. Amazing!

I couldn’t have done this without of the incredible support of my blogging community and friends so thank you to Alana from The Dawg’s Dish, Alexa from Cleveland’s A Plum, Allison from Confessions of a Cohabitant, Allison from Green Dog Wine, Charity from I Heart Cleveland, Heather from Mile 26 and more, Jocelyn aka @Legalesque, Michelle from Cleveland Foodie, Molly from Food n Such and Suzanne from Life on Mars.  And of course I have to thank my good friends Christine, Jen, Sandi and Steph for coming again this year and supporting my fund raiser!

If you want to check out some of their hauls click on over to
Cleveland’s A Plum – Cleveland Beauty Blogger Sale, Green Dog Wine – All Lacquered Up, Mile 26 and more - CLE Blogger Beauty Sale and The Dawg’s Dish – Girls Night Out: Blogger Beauty Sale. Of course the biggest haul of the night went home with my friend Steph who doesn’t have a blog. She needed an extra bag just to take everything home. Love it!

image credit: Alexa from Cleveland’s A Plum

I’ve been bursting at the seams wanting to announce the results of this year’s BCA Month fund raising drive and the giveaway winners.  I am at a loss for words over the outpouring of generosity from the ALU reader community.

Together we more than surpassed my expectations and I’m truly thankful to each and every one of you for supporting my efforts to raise awareness and funds for such a worthy cause.

Your donations in the Think Pink – Donate & Win Giveaway raised $2,131 for Living Beyond Breast Cancer almost THREE TIMES what we raised last year.  And thanks to all your wonderful comments, I personally donated another $150 to the cause.  Together we donated a whopping $2,281 which is simply amazing.  Thank you so so much!

Now for the winners…
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Before we get to the fun stuff, let me first thank all of you for your support of my BCA Month efforts. Your comments and donations truly help make a difference towards finding a cure for breast cancer. Even in a time of economic crisis we managed to raise more money than last year for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and for that I am truly grateful.

We raised $758 through the Think Pink – Donate & Win Giveaway with a total of 152 entries.

Combine that with my personal donation of $150, due to your support of my Comments For A Cure Campaign, and that’s a total donation of $908. Incredible!!

Now for the giveaway winners. Valerie D. is our Grand Prize Winner and Karin H. and Lisa B. take home the Runner-Up gift packs. Congrats ladies! Enjoy your prizes!