Giving Back This Year with Friends for Life Guild

Today I want to talk about a cause (and Christmas present idea!) that is very close to my heart. Every year, an organization called the Friends for Life Guild sells beautiful glass-blown ornaments and candle votives to help raise money for pediatric cancer research. These ornaments and votives make a wonderful Christmas present, especially for mothers, and they do more than just look pretty—they help fight childhood cancer. To read more about the Friends for Life Guild and where to buy these stunning glass pieces, keep scrolling!

The Friends for Life Guild is a completely volunteer-run organization formed in 2006 to help fund pediatric cancer research at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Each year, the guild selects an ambassador—a child who is either fighting or has fought pediatric cancer—to design a glass-blown ornament and votive to sell. Fifty percent of the sale price of these ornaments and candle votives goes directly to Seattle Children’s Hospital Research. As the guild’s website puts it, they believe “hope is in the research.” To read more about the Friends for Life Guild, click here.

On a personal note, I actually grew up in the Seattle area and attended school with Natalie, who designed the very first Friends for Life Guild ornament in 2006 and whose mother founded the guild. Additionally, my own brother battled childhood cancer from ages five to eight and received many treatments at the Seattle Children’s Hospital. I am grateful to say that he is now a happy, healthy, almost-25 year-old.

As you can imagine, anything to aid the fight against pediatric cancer is an important cause to my family, and the Friends for Life Guild is a very special way to do that.

Each of the ornaments has the child’s name attached on a little tag, as well as the year the ornament was made. As you can see, the colors and textures of the ornaments create a beautiful variety, and as the Friends for Life Guild website states, “Each ornament and votive is as unique as each child and their childhood cancer experience.”

While the ornaments would look gorgeous on a Christmas tree, we usually hang them on these stands instead to create conversation-starting center pieces. If you’re a long time blog follower, you may remember me talking about the Friends for Life Guild in my post Signe. That year we decided to decorate our dining table with a line of the ornaments. This year, we decided to separate the ornaments and votives by color and disperse these “clusters” throughout the house, everywhere from shelves to the bathroom to coffee tables to the entryway to our piano. They make gorgeous decorations anywhere you put them!

This year’s pretty green and purple ornament was designed by Kaylee, who recently celebrated her one year cancer-free anniversary. To read more about Kaylee’s cancer story, as well as the other ambassadors’ stories, click here. Today, Kaylee’s ornaments and votives are still available for purchase, as are many of the previous ambassadors’ designs. To start your collection off or to give a very special Christmas gift to someone you love, click the link below!

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE ORNAMENTS AND VOTIVES

I hope you find these glass pieces as beautiful as I do, both in appearances and significance, and that you enjoyed learning about the Friends for Life Guild today. Have a wonderful Thursday, and please let me know if you decide to purchase anything! I would love to hear.

As always, thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy holiday season.

Miles of smiles,

Grace