Birthday Wishes

In my EBay adventures I happened across a great organization www.birthdaywishes.org. As a seller you have the ability to donate some or all of your profits to a organization of your choice, and I thought this was a great idea. I was looking specifically for a local group to benefit, and this is when I found Birthday Wishes. Birthday Wishes was founded in Newton,MA in November of 2002 by Lisa Vasiloff, Karen Yahara, and Carol Zwanger when the three women started volunteering at homeless shelters, and noticed that children's birthday's came and went without recognition. Birthday parties, something you & I take for granted and often grumble about having to plan, are a luxury to the homeless shelters and families that live there.


Having taught preschool, worked in after school programs, and run various birthday celebrations in the past, I've always enjoyed ambience of the celebration. It is my opinion that a birthday is part of your identity, and something that should be a staple in your childhood. You never really appreciate something as simple as a birthday cake and a song sung off key until you expierience situations were it doesn't exist. When you emmerse your self in that situation its something that hits you in the gut, and definatly pulls at your heart strings.


My first birthday party was tough, because as I arrived at the transition housing, it honestly looked like a crack motel, and couldn't believe that people, never mind children, lived here. It was one step above being homeless, between the very outdated appliances, the smell, and just over all atmosphere I was saddened to know that people lived like this. Its easy to judge families in that situation. I'll be honest, when I saw a new mom holding a baby my daughters age, in nothing but a jean jacket and diaper on that cold September night, I was pissed and heart broken at the same time. I was pissed because I was thinking to myself "why is the baby out here dressed like that!" and heart broken because I knew that she probably couldn't help her situation and I could never imagine bringing my family up that way, even though she could be you or I in a heart beat.


It really is an amazing feeling to watch these kids get excited over gifts, because they truly appreciated everything given to them. These kids were beside themselves over things like pajama's, back packs and lunch boxes, items some kids would turn their nose up at. For the first birthday party we were able to get a moonwalk donated, and the kids went bats for it. They bounced until it got dark and the mosquitos came out to feed, and came in to the communal kitchen for cake and gifts. The second party I volunteered at was in the Angel House in Hyannis. The Angel House is a shelter that helps reunite families recovering from substance abuse and traumas of homelessness. We were fortuneate to have a DJ donate his services, he played all kinds of games with the kids, provided a bubble machiene and dance instruction.The electric slide was painful for me, hillarious to them. After we were all successfully covered in bubble soap, feasted on my mosquitos and handed out prizes from the limbo contest, we made our way into the main house for the long awaited cake and gifts. After cleaning up the cake plates, spilled capri suns and melted hoodsie cups, one of the birthday boys came up and gave us a hug and a high five. His mom said he had the best day ever. It was totally worth the incessent scratching from bug bites that followed.


All the parents were so grateful, and were great to talk to. Many would probably be hard pressed to talk to these people, as human nature, forming an opinion about their situation. Naturally you want to ask "how did you get here?". I don't think many of them know, nor do I, and a lot of times people in this situation do not know how to help themselves. Thankfully, there are people out there who do, and I feel priveledged help out in something as simple as giving their child a birthday party.

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How To Create The Worst Possible Listing On EBay

After surfing EBay for the first time in months, I've come across some questionable listings, many are well meaning but clueless sellers. I came across this post on EBay and thought it was hillarious (written by seller suityourselfinternational):

HOW TO WRITE THE WORST AUCTION LISTING ON EBAY

1. Confuse the bidders at every opportunity.

2. Decide what you've got to sell. But forget about it when you create your listing.
FOR EXAMPLE, when selling a sweater, forget what color it is and just make up a color instead,
and never remember to include measurements like bust size and length or fabric content for concerned allergic people.

3. Take a photo of your item, but be sure there are lots of other distracting things in the picture too.

4. Post a photo of only part of your item in your listing, so bidders have to bid sight unseen, and even
better yet, post a picture in your listing of something else entirely, out of focus. Like your dog.
OR DON'T USE ANY PHOTOS AT ALL.

5. Make sure the gallery photo you use contains an image that bears no relationship whatsoever to what you're selling.

6. Post your gallery picture so your item is pictured on its side and not upright. Better yet, take your picture
of the item with the item upside down. Even better, hide the item under the sofa and just show the sofa in the picture.
You can point to the hidden item with big yellow arrows.

7. For the auction's title, don't describe the item -- people might find it! Never state what the item it or what size or color it is.
Keep 'em guessing.

8. For the description of your item, tell everybody you're on vacation and don't know when you'll return.
But you'll ship when you get back.

9. OR for the description of your item,
try telling them about your recent eBay purchases instead, or a bit of your life's story; for example, go into
great detail about why you are being forced to sell this wonderful thingy in the first place. BUT NEVER SAY WHAT IT IS THAT YOU'RE
SELLING AND NEVER GIVE AWAY ANY DETAILS ABOUT IT. NEVER POINT OUT FLAWS.

10. DO NOT USE CORRECT ENGLISH SPELLING OR PUNCTUATION. Tell buyers to
SNED NO NEMOY until you bill them.

11. Better yet, forget the item description entirely and just take up two full pages with your Terms Of Sale, family photos,
and ads for other items in your eBay store, not in correct English remember.

12. If you have to say what size something is, be sure to indicate only those measurements for the opposite sex of the item you're selling.
For example, when selling a sweater, women want the chest measurement underarm to underam across the back,
but men want the shoulder seam measurement along the top of the garment.

13. Overcharge outrageously for shipping. Better yet, state PICKUP ONLY with only a Puerto Rico P.O. Box for an address.

14. Run the listing lots of times, add counters every time, and never edit them so bidders can see
you're run the listing for months on end with nobody in the least bit interested in all that time.

15. Add an appendix to your listing, several times---and make sure it has nothing to do with the listing. Adding a CHAIN LETTER
at the bottom of your listing is sure to get buyers (and eBay's) attention.

16. Be sure to use an auction listing service that blocks buyers from successfully clicking on any of the links in your listing.

17. Do NOT accept PayPal. Do NOT accept Money Orders or Checks. Tell buyers you want your money sent to you at your PO BOX address
via the US Postal service in a plain brown wrapper with NO RETURN ADDRESS and inside the envelope,
you want NO information as to what the buyer bought or what the money is for. Keep 'em guessing!

18. If you feel you just have to reply to a customer email inquiry about your item,
be sure to point out to the customer how their question was rude and / or stupid and how wrong they were
to ask it of you and your item in the first place. Tell them you are trying to educate them, not be insulting, and include a little smiley face at the end.

19. If a customer asks you for measurements or some basic fact you forgot to put in, or didn't care about,
just tell them you can't measure, or don't know how to measure, or don't have a tape measure, or are away from your desk (and your item)
and will get back to them whenever you and the item are closer together.

20. TRY TO NEVER EVER REPLY TO CUSTOMER EMAIL INQUIRIES. Someone may actually buy something from you!

21. If somebody does buy from you, DO NOT SEND THEM AN INVOICE. If they pay you anyway, DO NOT RESPOND.
If they write you after 2 or 3 weeks asking for their stuff, reply with a sob story and say you've already shipped it, but just yesterday.
Say you shipped it Friday if they write you over a weekend.

22. When you finally do get around to shipping, DO NOT SHIP THEM WHAT THEY THINK THEY BOUGHT!! Just ship them something
else that you don't want. And remind them there are NO returns and NO exhanges.

Good Luck!!

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Personally I have yet to come across anything truly horrific, but I have seen poor photography skills, or my personal pet peeve, taking only one photo of one big pile of un folded clothes .... seriously. As enticing as that is, I'm going to have to pass on the biding of the contents of your laundry basket. And the selling of underwear. Ick. I don't care if it was "only worn once". There is a line of decency you don't cross. Unless the skiives are in a sealed package don't bother.


I love how some people think that they can reel people in with a collection of clothes from 1992 and sell them at full price. Um no. And don't be sneaky with ridonkulous shipping charges. And is UPS really necessary for a small lot of kids clothes? I personally hate UPS bc they are so damned expensive, unless you're shipping something like furniture or a zoo animal, you don't really need it, they suck.


And for the love of god, don't sell stuff that your kid projectile puked on. I say this bc someone actually sent me a sweater with dried chunky puke on it. Tasty.