Beer View Mirrors Goes Camping! 9/9-9/11

This past weekend, the Beer View Mirrors went camping at Lake Crescent, located in the Olympic National Park. We wer
e very lucky to have amazing weather all weekend!

Quite the drive it is to get to Lake Crescent, everyone arrive by night time on a Friday after work. Of course it would would't be right if you didn't start your night with a cold beer, the team name is Beer View Mirrors after all. :)

8 people from the Beer View Mirrors enjoyed a whole weekend of bonding, sharing stories (you can learn a lot about each other in a small amount of time, plu

s throw in some beers...) hiking, a ton of eating, lots of Kings Cup and a huge tournament of beer pong. (We're not alcoholics, we swear!)

After a whole weekend of laughter, dirtiness, stuffing stomachs...I'd say it was a pretty epic camping trip!

Enjoy the photos!

Walking on a nature trail.

Taking a breather for a group photo!

The gorgeous mountains.

Hiked the waterfalls, just the ladies!

Jenny, Erica, Florence, Emily, Serena and Erin

Saturday Morning Breakfast

Relaxing...

Your Beer View Mirrors

Back Row L-R: Emily, Jenny, Erica, Erin, Erik

Front Row L-R: Serena, Florence and Ben

Helping Out @North Helpline Emergency Services & Foodbank 8/20/11

Written by Ben Peters

On a sunny day in Seattle, we arrived at the North Helpline Foodbank. We were assigned to various places on the distribution line, handing out canned goods, frozen chicken, and fresh fruit. A few of us also helped people to their cars or nearby apartments. When things slowed down, we composted some bread that was going bad. By 1:30, we were all very hungry after hanging around all that food. So after helping with clean up, we went to a local place that was suggested by a fellow volunteer.

And here's our team photo of us grubbin and drinking beer!

P.S. In case you're wondering who is North Helpline:

North Helpline Emergency Services and Foodbank started in 1989 by a small group of volunteers who noticed many of their neighbors were not able to pay rent, cover bills or simply put food on the table. This group of people started collecting food and financial support to distribute it to those who needed it the most - awesome! the group grew to 600+ of volunteers who have contributed over 20,000 hours of work on a monthly basis (isn't that amazing!?). You and I will be helping North Helpline do work in continuing their mission to provide the community with basic human emergency services to promote dignity, self respect and hope. Check out their website if you have a chance http://www.northhelpline.org/index.html.

Cheers!

Community Orchard of West Seattle

So today was the first of the volunteering sessions for this quarter.

This time we would be going to help out at a community orchard to help build out the orchard. From making bean tepees from bamboo poles, creating a new garden to take advantage of ground and metal shipping container heat, planting edible vegetables, to making the field pretty, we did it all!

Pretty worthwhile cause because most of the proceeds do end up going back to the community, and the lady that debriefed us was pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing.

So the 10+ of us worked through the rain, and in record time, completed beyond expectations of what they hoped for us to achieve.... Yes, we rock!

Hard at Work...


Planting Perennials...


Teepees Galore!...

Their website is here.

Afterwards, onwards to the usual happy hour to warm up near a nice fireplace with some ginormous pizzas.

The NW Chamber Chorus Auction

Hello Friends!

This past Saturday was our last team project for Spring Round 2011. And we had a ton of fun working with these awesome singers. Didn't have a lot of time to take photos since we were really busy and had only a two hour window to get everything set up prior to the rest of the auction...

A little something on the Chamber - check them out when you can!

The Northwest Chamber Chorus: We are a 40 voice choir in our 44th season of presenting classical choral music. We started having an auction about 10 years ago and it raises about $25,000 for us. We'll have about 150 guests at the Mount Baker Community Club in Seattle. We have a silent auction that has 3 closings followed by a live auction. We do our own decorations, prepare all our own food (buffet), and run our own bar. We even sing a couple of songs during the evening. Its kind of a chorus family affair, and now you're part of the family!

The guys...they did a lot of the heavy stuff..sort of.

Erik, Manson, Tesh and Zach

Our final product - amazing what we can do in such short time!!!

Kobe Terrace Park

This month our volunteering project was with Seattle Parks and Recreation at Kobe Terrace Park,

Group Hike - Boulder Creek Trail

On Sunday April 17th Beer view mirrors decided to venture into the woods.
The trail we picked was a trail filled with old growth trees and known for being a great year round hike and water falls.
Right away we found interesting areas of the trail, filled with trees much older than all of us combined towering over head.
The running river along the trail kept a peaceful background sound the entire hike. There were a number of water falls along the trail.
Some pretty cool structures were made to bridge some gaps.
Some that Mother nature decided to put in place.
Even with having to climb over a number of blow downs that were wider than we are tall we had a pretty fun time.

Missing Pet Partnership

This month our volunteering project was with Missing Pet Partnership, which is a national nonprofit organization that reunites lost companion animals with their families.



The group was founded by Kat Albrecht, a police detective-turned-pet detective and author. The 'detective' above is Karma, and she is specially trained to find missing cats.



Our task was to clean and prepare a massive stack of old political signs to be used as missing pet placards.




Karma kept us company while we worked.


As a group of animal lovers we enjoyed the chance to help families find their missing pets.

From left to right:
Back row: Erica, Uyen, Clint, Emily, Arin, John, Serena, Matt, Tesh
Front row: Marissa, Erin, Susie, Zach
Very front: Karma




And of course after a long day of dirty work our aptly named team ended the day with beers at a local brewery. Overall a great event.

Cheers!

Beer View Mirrors