In This Issue:
Pint Size Designs Sponsors a Room Make-over!
Mark your Calendars for May 7th and 8th!
Family Nights at Monika’s House
Ways to Support this Spring
More Collaboration to Come
Pint Size Designs Sponsors a Room Make-over!
First Room Sponsorship of 2011
On March 6th and 7th, local community members Amanda Barnett and Melanie Hernandez brought a team of volunteers to help clean out one of our older rooms. They brought it to new life, by painting walls, splashing the room with colorful bedding and art, and creating a small “nook” in the room for parents and children to spend time together reading and playing. This was the first of many new Room Sponsorships Monika’s House will receive this spring.
This room sponsorship was the project of Amanda and Melanie’s new business called Pint Size Designs, an interior decorating company focused on environmentally-conscious, whimsical designs that encourage healing for children. They chose Monika’s House Shelter as the recipient of their work because it fit seamlessly with their mission of creating healing spaces and supporting healthy development for children.
Prior to beginning the project, Amanda and Melanie researched how to bring about healing through interior design, relating to themes, colors, and creation of physical space.
The theme they decided on revolves around transformation and renewal, ideas often associated with butterflies, which Melanie and Amanda have painted on the walls. They chose violets, blues and greens to color the room, for their various attributes.
“Our focus was to provide a sense of healing through a visual language, color,” they explained. “Blues are calming, lower blood pressure and have been proven to decrease respiration. Greens are soothing; relaxing mentally and physically helps with depression, anxiety and nervousness. Violets create a peaceful environment and are good for helping migraines.”
They had the support of various community members, and revamped this family room in less than two days. What’s resulted is a beautiful space that we truly believe can help bring healing for the many families that will stay in this room over the next many months and years. We couldn’t be happier with this new partnership and the fabulous makeover that came from it!
We want to extend a huge thanks to Melanie and Amanda, as well as their volunteers Kim Drake, Susan Ranger, Karen Drake (who also provided artwork), Julia Murray, Emily Murray, Lorenzo Hernandez, and Chris Adams.
Amanda Barnett is the CEO of Pint Size Designs. She holds a certificate from the Interior Designers Institute in Interior Design and is pursuing her Masters of Fine Art in Interior Architecture and Design at the Academy of Art University. She is also a member of the NAEYC. She is committed to providing children with spaces that will encourage them to grow, learn and play and are unique to each child. Amanda is also finishing a certificate in working with young children at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She’s the mom of three fun boys ages 4, 2 and 4 months.
Melanie Hernandez is the Creative Director for Pint Size Designs. Melanie holds an AA in Design from FIDM Los Angeles and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies: Design, Cultural Studies and Business Leadership from Marylhurst University. Over her twelve-year career she has successfully managed the design elements of several children brands including Bratz, Yummi-Land, Rescue Pets and Little Tikes. Melanie was honored to be a guest artist at Los Angeles’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Summer Night Lights 2009 anti-gang and anti-violence youth program. She also attended the CAEYC 2011 conference and expo. Her creative vision is dedicated to promoting quality learning and development for children while encouraging an over-all optimistic and healthy standard of living through whimsical, playful and inspiring design. Melanie is currently married to her career, and in her spare time she enjoys dancing, international travel and time spent with family and friends.
Pint Size Designs’ website is www.pintsizedesigns.com, which will be live and running in the near future.
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Mark your Calendars for May 7th and 8th!
Eat Strawberry Shortcake and Help Prevent Domestic Violence!
Join us Saturday and Sunday, May 7th and 8th from noon-4pm at any New Seasons Market to enjoy scrumptious strawberry shortcake and support your local domestic violence agencies! Each year, local members of Soroptimists International host this annual fundraiser for eight agencies in the area that work to support survivors and end domestic violence. Domestic Violence Resource Center is excited to once again be a part of this fabulous event!
Staff and interns from Domestic Violence Resource Center, Soroptimist members, and community supporters will be selling delicious Strawberry Shortcake at all New Seasons Market locations. For a mere $4, you will enjoy a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on freshly made New Seasons Market shortcake, covered with Driscoll strawberries and topped with whipped cream. 100% of the proceeds will be evenly distributed amongst Domestic Violence Resource Center, Bradley-Angle, Clackamas Women’s Services, Raphael House, The Salvation Army West Women and Children’s Shelter, and the YWCA Yolanda House.
Tell your family and friends, and invite others to join the Strawberry Shortcake Facebook Page. This is a fantastic event that raises awareness of domestic violence, provides a tangible way for our community to get involved, and is a great way to treat your mom for Mother’s Day!
Family Nights at Monika’s House
Staff hosts weekly programming to bring families together
Over the last few months, advocates at Monika’s House have started offering two new activities in shelter. Every Friday and Saturday night, staff members join with clients, offering games, activities and shared meals to bring parents and kids together. Brittany Reuling, the Children’s Program advocate, explains a bit of the background and shares some themes coming up in the next few weeks of Family Nights and Dinner Nights:
“Both events are in an effort to facilitate positive relationships between parents and their children and between peers. Family Night is an opportunity for parents to relearn how to connect with their children through play. We host a variety of events from Scavenger Hunts, playdough-making, and family collages. These are all relatively inexpensive and just take a little bit of imagination. Staff facilitates the interactions and encourages families to work as a team. During this night we see the stress levels of parents go down and they are able to have fun with their children.”
A few of the more recent themes at Family Night have been around making playdough and scavenger hunts. Brittany shared a few reflections on how each night went: “The children enjoyed making different colors and discovered how certain colors combined can make a new color. Children learned about measurements and even if you add too much salt, it still makes playdough! “It smells like macaroni!” one child observed when the hot water was added to the dry ingredients. Children and parents talked about how to knead the playdough and its similarity to kneading real dough to make bread.”
On the Scavenger Hunt Night, families worked as teams while staff hid toy worms and frogs throughoutthe living room, dining room and other common spaces around shelter. Each family was tasked to find either worms or frogs, and after much communication and team effort by staff and families, all items were rounded up and staff offered small prizes to each family member.
Other recent themes of the Family Nights have been family collages and baking 101. We’ll post updates periodically on other fun Family Night themes going on at shelter!
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Ways to Support this Spring
In-kind donations and yard-party volunteers!
This spring, support new clients coming into Monika’s House shelter by providing them with a few necessary items. We are looking for:
•New Twin Sheet Sets, so clients can take bedding with them after they transition out of shelter
•Twin- sized Mattress Protectors
•Women’s Deodorant
•Large Drawstring Trash Bags
•Dishwasher detergent and dish soap
•Laundry Detergent
•Conditioner
•New Bath Towels
•Gift Cards to stores like Michaels or Dollar Tree, to purchase craft supplies for future Family Nights at shelter.
Check our In-Kind Donation page for the full updated list of needs!
We also will be doing some ‘spring cleaning’ of the yard around Monika’s House in late April and may need lots of helping hands! If you’re interested in joining us for a volunteer project in the yard, please email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)with your availability of either weekday afternoons or Saturdays. We’ll try to plan for day with sunshine (or at least we can hope!).
More Collaboration to Come
DVRC partners with Safeway Classic and West Coast Bank
Domestic Violence Resource Center will be a partner on the annual Safeway Classic Golf Tournament, coming up this August 15-21st at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Course. This event features some of the best female golfers in the world.
West Coast Bank coordinates the ticket sales for this event, in the program called (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). This is fundraiser that supports numerous non-profits around Portland, including Domestic Violence Resource Center.
You can support Domestic Violence Resource Center by purchasing tickets to the Safeway Classic, and 100% of your ticket price will be donated to our agency. Be sure to indicate you want your payment to go toward Domestic Violence Resource Center when you purchase them online. This is a fabulous way to support our work in promoting safe and healthy relationships in the County, and yet another example of the fabulous collaboration happening in the area! Mark your calendars and be on the lookout for more updates as the Safeway Classic gets closer.
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Happy Spring to you all!
Questions or concerns? Contact us!
