pghsavesxmas Archives

chs-square First of all, I want to thank everyone who donated to the CHS (Community Human Services) Christmas Fundraiser this year and who attended the event at Hough’s earlier this month. Your generosity this holiday season is greatly appreciated. I’ve just heard back from the folks at CHS and we have only raised HALF of what is needed to make sure that each of the people they serve have a gift for the holiday.

For the past several years, I have joined with other Pittsburgh bloggers to support CHS holiday gift drive. While all of the efforts to support worthy causes are important, CHS stands out for me because they serve many fellow Pittsburghers who don’t receive any holiday cheer from programs that cater to kids and seniors.

I was just about to share a blog post with my favorite Pittsburgh gifts – but I’m turning this into an opportunity for you to help CHS and to win some awesome Pittsburgh holiday gifts. As of today CHS still needs to raise $2500 to save Christmas. Currently we are only about 25% to the total goal!

Rather than just tell you about great Pittsburgh gifts, I’m going to give them all away! For the next 3 days – I’m going to launch a new raffle where you can enter to win great Pittsburgh gifts that you can keep for yourself or give as a gift. (I’m going to try my hardest to get all of these delivered by 12/24).

There are lots of ways to enter to win – the best way to help is donate to CHS, but you can also earn entries by tweeting, pinning and blogging about the 12 Giveaways of Pittsburgh!

5 entries = donate $10 to CHS
10 entries = donate $20 to CHS
1 entry = tweet about the 12 Giveaways of Pgh and include the #pghsavesxmas
5 entries = write a blog post that links back to this post
3 entries = leave a comment
1 entry = pin this image to pinterest and tag it with #pghsavesxmas
1 entry = like CHS on Facebook

You can donate to CHS online here and use the Rafflecopter box below to enter to win! We’ll draw four winners for this giveaway.

Here are the first four giveaways:

$25 Gift Certificate to Pavement Shoes – locally owned boutique in Lawrenceville that sells shoes, clothes and accessories
A Digital Subscription to Rustbelt Almanac – a beautiful quarterly magazine about the best section of the country
Pierogi Pillow – a huggable version of Pittsburgh’s favorite food made with love by Commonwealth Press
Copy of the Alternate Histories of the World Book by Matthew Buchholz – Entertainment Weekly’s book gift guide describes this book as “blazingly creative.” – and it was authored by a Pittsburgh resident.

12giveawaysofpgh-border

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Some additional ways to help!

Donate directly to CHS
Donate a prize for the raffle – if we have more than 12 giveaways – that is ok. We’ll keep running these until we reach the fundraising goal. (email lindsay@iheartpgh.com)
Be an elf – volunteer to help deliver prizes next week (email lindsay@iheartpgh.com)

I wanted to post a reminder about supporting Community Human Services Holiday Gift Project. The response to my post earlier this week has been amazing. This is a great way to highlight some local business owners that have donated items for the raffle as well. Here is an update on the event and on the online fundraising campaign & raffle – we’ve added some more great Pittsburgh items to give away.

IheartPGH has been a supporter of the CHS Holiday Gift Project for the past 3 years and we hope you will take a moment to learn more about this organization and check out some of the great local businesses and bloggers that have helped to support this project in 2012.

What is Community Human Services (CHS)? CHS is a Pittsburgh based non-profit that in located in Oakland and serves the entire Pittsburgh area. CHS is over 30 years old and offers a variety of programs for Pittsburghers struggling with homelessness, mental illness, health issues and more.

What is the CHS Holiday Gift Project? CHS will use the funds raised to provide a small gifts for the individuals and families they serve. Many of these individuals and families are not included in other holiday gift programs which are geared towards children and the elderly.

Party @ Hough’s Tonight

The Community Human Services Hoilday Gift Project Party today (Thursday, November 29, 2012) @ Hough’s in Greenfield. We’ll be there 6-10pm. (Facebook Event Link) There will be christmas cookies and some great raffle prizes…

a tote bag full of about $100 worth of goodies from Fleet Feet in Squirrel Hill (one of those goodies is a $25 gift card!),
a great (and fun!) “Wizard” basket from Eljay’s used books, (which also includes a gift card), that has some pretty neat stuff,
a bath & body basket

Donate Online or Tweet about the CHS

Click Here to Donate Online

We know not everyone can make it to Hough’s this evening but you can still help support the cause! I’ve been looking for a way to give away some of our favorite Pittsburgh things here on the blog – and this is the perfect excuse for a raffle. There are lots of ways you can enter – check out the Rafflecopter widget below (if you are reading this post in an email you will need to click on the Rafflecopter link).

$25 Gift Certificate to East End Book Exchange Pittsburgh’s newest used book shop opened 2 weeks ago on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfied. In addition to local books the East End Book Exchange has a section of new books by local authors. Follow East End Books on Facebook for update and events here.
Pittsburgh Love T-shirt Special Edition Printed by Commonwealth Press This t-shirt has been available from our online shop for years – but we had our friends at Commonwealth Press print up a special order of this design. You can pick from sizes S to XL.
Autographed Copy of the Food Lovers Guide to Pittsburgh This is THE book on eating local published by the bloggers who write eatPGH. The authors have kindly agreed to sign a copy of the book for our giveaway.
Bike Pittsburgh Membership We think Pittsburgh is a better place thanks to the work of Bike Pittsburgh. Even if you aren’t a cyclist – making Pittsburgh safer for people to be outdoors on bike or foot is good for everyone. Since we are already a card carrying member – we want to give away a year of membership to someone else who loves Pittsburgh and bicycles too.
A Pair of Pierogi These little dumplings are made by Pittsburgh artist and author Alicia Kachmar and available on Etsy here or can often be found in the Pittsburgh-Craft-o-Tron Machines.