Meet Our Interns!

Hey, it’s BigHouse!

Hey everyone, it’s BigHouse again! Something you may not know is that each semester we have new interns from Auburn University come and work with us. Typically, these interns are seniors at Auburn majoring in Human Development and Family Studies. We are so thankful each semester for these hardworking, devoted students! In our last blog, we gave a brief introduction of our interns, but since they are going to be familiar faces around BigHouse we wanted to give them the chance to tell everyone more about themselves.

First up we have Emily McCarron! Emily is senior at Auburn University majoring in Human Development and Family Studies with a concentration in Middle Childhood and Adolescence. She is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Emily first heard about BigHouse through a previous intern, and learned more about their mission from Micah when she came and spoke in several of her classes. Emily was immediately intrigued by Micah’s excitement for BigHouse foundation and loved what BigHouse stands for.

Emily has had an interest in pursuing some type of work with children in foster care and their families, so she felt that this would be a great opportunity to learn more about this spectrum of work. She has already learned so much about the foster care system and about all that BigHouse does and how positively that impacts Lee County and beyond. Emily is very excited to be able to help and serve the community, but also to learn how to be a better person to those around her. Through her internship, Emily is hoping to gain a clearer idea of what it is she wants to do after she graduates in May and apply all the skills and knowledge she will have learned from BigHouse over the course of the semester!

Our next intern is Hannah Gipson! Hannah is from Prattville, Alabama and is a senior majoring in Human Development and Family Studies with a minor in Social Work. Some of her favorite things are Jesus, coffee, good friends, and all things Auburn. Hannah wanted to intern at BigHouse because she completed her practicum here last semester and absolutely fell in love with everything about it. It solidified her call to serve foster and adoptive communities through her career, and she cannot wait to see what this semester holds.

Hannah first heard about BigHouse through a sorority sister who was running for Miss Auburn and promoted BigHouse for her platform. After that, Micah came and shared more about BigHouse to some of her HDFS classes at Auburn. She knew then it was something she wanted to be involved with. Hannah has learned so much about the needs of foster and adoptive families and ways to help to meet them. She has also experienced the goodness of The Lord in ways that she had not before she began working in this field. Hannah hopes to learn more in depth about what it takes to run a non-profit, and more about foster care in general. Day to day, Hannah hopes that to be able to show the love of Jesus to each person that walks into BigHouse, and work toward making BigHouse the best it can be. By the end of the semester, she hopes to learn more about non-profits and foster care.

We are so thankful to have these two young ladies with us this semester and can’t wait to see how well they are going to serve!

                                               

 Hannah  Gipson                                    Emily McCarron

We're back!

Hey, it’s BigHouse!

Hi everyone! We hope you all have had a wonderful holiday season with your families and are excited for the new year. BigHouse is back and ready to start this new year off right! With the coming of this new year came some exciting changes that we would like to tell everyone about.

First off, we have a new staff member on our team! Tatum Meadows has recently joined our staff as the new Assistant Director. Tatum is an Opelika native and is looking forward to being back in her hometown. Tatum attended Troy University and graduated with a degree in Human Services. She developed her love for non-profit ministries during her time at Troy, and was thrilled to join the BigHouse team!

Our interns for this semester are Hannah Gipson and Emily McCarron. Emily is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Hannah is from Prattville, Alabama. Both are seniors at Auburn University and are excited to be working with BigHouse this semester. We are excited to have them with BigHouse for this spring semester and see how well they serve!

This semester comes with lots of fun and exciting events to be on the lookout for! The annual BigHouse banquet is February 23rd and is a great opportunity to learn more about what we do and how get involved. Glitz, Glam, and Gowns will be on March 10th in Birmingham and is our formal dress shopping event open to high school girls in foster care. Our monthly Kid’s Night Out and Mom’s Meet Up nights are back in full swing so keep an eye on our newsletter and website for those dates! Lastly, the annual Swimsuit and Towel Drive is right around the corner and more information will be coming soon on details and deadlines for it!

BigHouse is excited for this new year! We are hopeful that it will be a year full of serving new and existing families, successful events to help support our families, a growth in community knowledge and support for BigHouse, and a lot of FUN! For more information on BigHouse, our upcoming events, and ways to get involved you can check out our website, www.ourbighouse.org, and our Facebook page. BigHouse is beyond thankful for the ways the Lord blessed us in 2016 and is

excited to see how He continues to bless us in 2017!

Glitz, Glam, and Gowns Tour 2014

As the new interns of BigHouse, we were thrilled to be a part of the third annual Glitz Glam & Gowns event! This year, we had the crazy idea to take GGG on the road to five separate cities across the state, in hopes of reaching as many girls as possible. For those of you who don’t know, Glitz Glam & Gowns is a free shopping event for teen girls in foster care to receive items for prom. We collected over 700 formal dresses for the girls to choose from, as well as shoes, jewelry, and other prom accessories. We also provided a cosmetic “goody bag” for each girl filled with lip gloss, eye makeup, nail polish, perfume samples, and other beauty items. We had a blast putting the bags together, and really enjoyed giving the bags to each girl. We even searched through over 50 bags to find the perfect nail polish shade to match some of the dresses that the girls had picked.

 

BigHouse hits the road. Thanks Harvest Thrift Store for letting us borrow the trailer!

  

Over 700 dresses donated!

Our first stop was Montgomery on March 4th. Frazer United Methodist Church let us use their bridal suite for our event. The area could not have been more perfect for Glitz Glam & Gowns! There were two large bathrooms where girls were able to try on dresses and massive full length mirrors. Two women from Mary Kay volunteered to give the girls makeovers once they had finished shopping. All 18 girls left with a dress and other accessories. Two social workers had brought girls from 2 counties in south Alabama, each driving over 2 hours to bring them to the event. We admire their dedication! One of the workers took her 9 girls out to a nice dinner in their dresses. They also spent time taking glamour shots. They looked beautiful and we got an email the next day that they had a fantastic time!

Mary Kay consultants offer their expertise.

Red carpet entry (the stars had the girls' names on them).

Getting ready for a special night!

On Thursday, March 6th we headed north to Calhoun County. First Baptist Church Jacksonville hosted the event, and their college . We had 14 girls attend this event, including one group home. We enjoyed working with the girls from group homes because they were able to help their friends pick dresses, as well as get opinions from more people than just the volunteers. There were several college students that volunteered with hair and makeup. Although the weather was nasty, we had a great time and the stop was a success! However, we learned the hard way that prom dresses drag through puddles easily! A member of their congregation paid for us to stay at a hotel in town, which was such a treat.

Just a few shoes!

Each girl enjoyed special treatment from the volunteers.

The lovely ladies of engageJSU that gave their time and talents.

Friday morning we traveled on to Huntsville. Latham United Methodist Church in Huntsville hosted the event that night. We had a great time at this stop, due to lots of volunteers and a huge selection of delicious food. Although we only had 9 girls shop at this event, social workers and parents were able to shop for some additional girls who did not attend the event. We were also able to find homes for our two incredibly large princess dresses! We were thrilled to see how beautiful the girls looked in their dresses. We even had a volunteer to do alternations on the dresses, which was a huge help. The pastor and his wife were generous enough to offer their home for us to stay at for the night. They even made us a delicious breakfast! One of the volunteers wrote about her experience on her blog.

Adorable decorations and delicious food!

Girls had an opportunity to pick out polish to match their dress.

The last leg of the trip was Northpark Baptist in Trussville. We had a great turnout with 20 girls in attendance. We enjoyed this venue because the girls modeled almost every dress they tried on for us. Our red carpet turned into a catwalk! It was also fun getting to reunite with past BigHouse interns. Overall, we were able to provide over 50 girls with formal dresses and other accessories. We had a great week off for Spring Break and are now ready to round out the tour with our Auburn event in two weeks!

Birmingham shoppers.

Showing off her dress.

Allison trying to stow away back to BigHouse!

Thanks to everyone who donated to this event, coordinated volunteers at our various locations, helped with lodging, and spent time with the girls showing them that they are loved by their community! We couldn't do this without you!

Written by Emily Jennings and Ashley Scott, 

BH interns Spring 2014

Called to Care

At BigHouse, we believe foster parenting is a calling. It's not something that comes naturally to anyone - to care for children that have no connection to you and have nothing to offer in return. We believe that God has called His people to care for the weak and defenseless among us, which in America include children who have been removed from their natural homes due to neglect or abuse from their birth families.

He calls some to care by becoming foster parents and bring a child or children into their home temporarily while others work with biological parent(s) to create or restore a stable and secure environment in order for them to return. He calls some to care through their profession as social workers, lawyers, police officers, counselors, pediatricians, nurses, therapists, and teachers. In some of these cases, choosing to make children in foster care your professional focus means that you may work harder and be paid less than you would for serving other clients. He calls some to care by advocating for these children in various levels of government, to make changes in laws or provide adequate funding to offices that make critical decisions for the youth in foster care. He calls some to care by supporting organizations like ours that work directly with the children.

He's calling us all to care for children in foster care. This month is foster care awareness month. On Monday we held a drop-in prayer vigil as part of the Cry of the Orphan's 2013 National Foster Care Prayer Vigil. They have a free prayer guide that you can download. We want to encourage you to pray not only for the children that we minister to, but to also open your heart and mind to listen to what God is calling you to do. Then get busy! We love the quote that says, "God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies those He calls." Don't worry about how all the details will work out, just take the first step.

Mobile Clothes Closet: Canton, GA

Mobile Clothes Closet

What It Is:

A partnership between BigHouse and a local church or organization serving foster families to provide a one-day shopping event for foster families in their area.

For our trip to Canton, we worked with First Baptist Church Canton's new foster care ministry, PURE, to arrange the location of the event. Through PURE we got in touch with the Cherokee Co. Foster and Adoptive Parent Association and Division of Family and Children Services in order to get the word out to foster families in the area. The families registered online via BigHouse.

What Our Partners Did:

We were able to set up the clothes shopping area in their church library, and use the hallway and a few Sunday School rooms for other items.They already had clothing racks for us to use. They bought new socks, underwear, and pajamas for all the kids who were registered. They had a team of six adults who helped with the event from set-up to break-down. The church also provided food and drinks for the volunteers. We spent the night with a host family nearby so we didn't have to spend money on hotel rooms.

What BigHouse Did:

In Opelika we collected new and gently used children's and teen's clothing items, sorted them by size, packed them in bins, and loaded all of it into a truck, loaned to us by H & W Motor Co. We recruited a team of four volunteers, along with our two staff members and their families (total of 8 adults and 1 very helpful preschooler). We coordinated the registration for the families to get their kids' names, ages, and clothing sizes. We had 24 families register, and a total of 52 kids shopped.

                                                                                     

Set Up:

10 six foot, bi-level clothing racks on wheels. 10 long tables, one round table - all provided by the church. (We are having our own racks built so we can go to places that don't have racks.) It took about 4 hours to set up, including sorting and hanging donations we received once we got to Canton (everything we brought from Opelika was already on hangers and sorted by size).

Shopping:

The families selected a 2-hour block of time to shop (9-11am, 11am-1pm, 1-3pm). Some families brought the kids with them; some made arrangements for childcare. On average, the families took about 30 minutes to shop. Each child was allotted 12 items (5 outfits plus 2 pairs of shoes) from the clothes closet, plus a new duffle bag with extra goodies: new socks/underwear/pajamas, book/stuffed animal/small toy.

Relationship Building:

One goal of the Mobile Clothes Closet is to provide an opportunity for the local organization to meet the foster families in person. We believe that once you put a face with foster care, people are much more inclined to get involved. We got to talk to the families about their experience with foster parenting. We talked with the kids over cookies and juice and found out what things they really wanted (for one little guy - a superhero toy; for a three-year old girl - a pink jacket; for a teen boy - new jeans and Polo brand shirts. Want to know how awesome our God of the fatherless is? We had those exact items for them to choose from.)

Packing It Up:

We put all the leftover items back in our bins, loaded up the truck, put the church back in order, and pulled out of the parking lot at 3:30 (half an hour after the event ended). Wow! The whole process was so smooth, we'd love to go back to First Baptist Church Canton again. We loved working with PURE and Cherokee Co. Foster and Adoptive Parent Association.

We Want to Come to You!

Email us at bighouse@ourbighouse.org about hosting the Mobile Clothes Closet for foster families in your area. See more pictures from our trip on our BigHouse Foundation facebook page.

BigHouse is on the move!

This weekend, we're taking our Mobile Clothes Closet program on its maiden voyage to Canton, GA to serve foster families in the North GA area. We'll be loading up a truck full of new and gently used kids' and teens' clothing from our Clothes Closet and presenting a one-day shopping event with help from First Baptist Canton and the Cherokee Co. Foster and Adoptive Parent Association. We'd like to thank H & W Motor Co. for loaning us a box truck for the trip! Look for pics from the trip to be posted to our facebook page this weekend.

Our next big news is that we're expanding to Birmingham, AL! We are planning to do four events for foster families in that area in 2013, the first of which is our 2nd Annual Glitz, Glam, and Gowns event to be held at The Church at Brook Hills on March 2nd. Last year, we had girls who drove from 3 hours away to attend the event, so we hope that having it more centrally located in the state will help make it accessible to more teens in foster care. Equally as important, we hope to engage the Birmingham community in this fun and much-needed event to provide new and gently used formal and semi-formal dresses, shoes, and accessories to high school girls in foster care who may not otherwise be able to attend their prom. Check out our website for more info on Glitz, Glam, and Gowns 2013 including drop-off locations where you can take donations through the end of February. 

Keep up with the development of BigHouse Foundation - Birmingham through our new facebook page, and show your support for bringing BigHouse events and programs to the mid-state area. This an exciting venture that wouldn't be possible without the continued blessing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We just celebrated our 4th birthday as an 501(c)3 non-profit. Did you know that only one-third of non-profits survive their first 5 years? We're so grateful to be GROWING rather than throwing in the towel. Thanks so much for your support!

Speaking of support, have you checked out our Neighborhood? This is the visual representation of the monthly donors who have come alongside us to provide valuable programs like the Clothes Closet, Kids' Night Out, Birthday Club, Statewide Swimsuit and Towel Drive and events such as Glitz, Glam, and Gowns, Back-to-School Bash, Family Beach Retreat, and Breakfast with Santa. You don't have to live in Opelika to be part of the BigHouse Neighborhood - we have monthly supporters across the nation! The easiest way to donate is online through Razoo.com.

Favorite Fall Recipes

In our last volunteer newsletter I asked for people to send in their favorite fall recipes to share with our families. Here are a couple of great ones:

Mulled Cider

Ingredients:

1.       1 qt. apple juice

2.       1 cinnamon stick

3.       10-20 black peppercorns (optional)

4.       10-20 whole cloves

5.       1 to 2 Tbs. brown sugar

6.       Lemon zest (optional)

Process:

1.       Select a pot or pan large enough to hold all the apple juice. Toast the cinnamon, cloves, and peppercorns to bring out their distinct flavors and aromas. Do this by heating your pan over medium heat with the spices in the pan. Toss the spices in the pan occasionally to prevent burning. The spices should become very fragrant within a minute or two.

2.       Pour the apple juice into the pan and bring to a boil over high heat. When the apple juice gets warm stir in the brown sugar so it fully dissolves.

3.       Once the apple juice is boiling, reduce the heat so it just simmers. Add the citrus zest at this time.

4.       Maintain the simmer for thirty minutes.

5.       Pour the mulled juice/cider through a fine mesh strainer and into the container of your choice. If your cider has a great deal of particulate matter, you may want to place a cheesecloth or coffee filter in your strainer (or sandwiched between two strainers) to filter out the fine particles. Serve hot. (Only necessary if you have used the lemon zest).

Popcorn Balls

Ingredients:

1.       ¾ cup light corn syrup

2.       ¼ cup margarine

3.       2 tsp. cold water

4.       2 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

5.       1 cup marshmallows

6.       5 qts. plain popped popcorn (unpopped kernels removed)

Process:

1.    In a saucepan over medium heat, combine first five ingredients. Heat and stir until the mixture comes to a boil. Carefully combine the hot mixture with the popcorn until it is all coated.

2.    Grease hands with vegetable shortening and quickly shape the coated popcorn into balls before it cools. Wrap with plastic wrap and store at room temperature.