Home Depot #GiveGood & $500 for local military family

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Last week I was invited to attend a special Veteran’s Day event with Home Depot in Atlanta. The Home Depot Foundation has been giving back over the last 2 months with hundreds of service projects nationwide. Their Celebration of Service started on 9/11/2011 and ended on Veteran’s Day with projects all over the country in celebration of Veteran’s Day.

The event I attended in Atlanta brought together employees from all areas of Home Depot, local volunteers, and community members to help improve homeless and veteran housing in Atlanta. The neighborhood we were working in once consisted of abandoned buildings, but with the help of the city, donors, and Home Depot local nonprofit Quest35 was able to completely refurbish the current buildings, and they have big plans to make even more housing available were vacant lots with older homes currently sit.

Members of different teams worked on various projects including landscaping, building benches (2 different types), building a paver path, and laying sod. My team was assigned the task of a flower bed, and 2 benches. We knocked those out, and kept working making an additional 3rd bench and landscaping a previously untouched area.

It was fun to get my hands dirty, get to know the folks from Home Depot and Quest35, and the other bloggers. I’ve listed them below so you can get to know them too, though I promise you bonding over power tools is definitely the way to get to know someone.

Here are some photos I took while we were working.

Home Depot didn’t stop there though! They surprised all of the bloggers with $500 gift cards to give to a local military family in our community who could use some holiday cheer, and some cash to spend at Home Depot.

Since I have such an awesome community of readers I thought I would turn to you to help me find a family to give back to this holiday season.

I’m thrilled to offer one family in the Philadelphia community this $500 gift card AND the chance to win a $20,000 home makeover from Home Depot!

Here’s the scoop:

Family must be homeowners (due to the nature of the makeover you must own your home)
Veterans or active military members
Must be in the Philadelphia area (so I can present you with your gift card in person!)
Must be willing to be on camera
Willing to be entered into the $20,000 makeover sweepstakes!

How to enter to win a $500 Home Depot gift card:

Simple leave a comment telling me about your family, and what you would want to do to add some holiday cheer to your home (or improve it).

Make sure to include your email address (not in the comments) so I have a way to get in touch. If you prefer to email me privately send an email to kelly@thecentsiblelife.com.

More about the Home Depot $20K Makeover
Winner will be entered into a contest to have Home Depot fulfill their “Wish List” of home improvements up to a retail value of $20,000. Items on the “wish list” are things that will make a real difference in the long term efficiency and comfort of the family’s home, including things like a new HVAC system, new carpet, a new roof and new windows. The winning family will be determined by votes on a Facebook application on The Home Depot page Nov. 29-Dec. 9 and announced on Dec. 14.

Rules of Entry:

Entrants must be local to the Philadelphia area, over age 18, own their own homes, and be a veteran or active duty military member. All entries must be received by November 20th, 2011 at 10pm EST . Winner will be selected from valid entries and contacted via email (must use valid email address to win). Winner must reply within 24 hours with information requested by Home Depot. For full list of rules for the Give the Gift of Good $20,000 sweepstakes please email kelly@thecentsiblelife.com.

I can’t wait to give back to a local family! It’s a small way to say thank you for their service, and the sacrifice they make for our country.

You can also help the rest of the #GiveGood Team by sharing entering or sharing this info with friends and family you may know who are in these local areas. See their posts for more info:

Anywhere in the US: Military Avenue
Northern Connecticut area: My Military Life
Pensacola, FL area: Wife [Widow] of a Wounded Marine
Knoxville,TN area: Wife of a Wounded Soldier
Austin, TX area: Living with Lindsay
Salt Lake City area: Not just a Housewife
Montgomery, AL area: Perfectly Imperfect Blog
Northern California: Centsational Girl

Kelly

Disclosure: My trip to Atlanta was paid for by Home Depot. This giveaway and all posts related to it are not sponsored. Home Depot provided the $500 gift card for a local military family in my community.

About Kelly

Kelly Whalen is the founder of The Centsible Life, a blog where motherhood and money meet. Her goal is to help readers live well on less. Kelly is a mom to 4, and loves that she can stay at home with her kids, and still pursue her passions for writing, personal finance, and social media. You can often find her on twitter and Facebook talking money and motherhood.

Tagged as: Giveaway, givegood, home depot, military, veterans

Desiree Cortes

First of all I would like to thank Kelly and Home Depot for this wonderful opportunity. I would like to enter my family of 5 for this give away. I myself have been in the Army for 9 years and I served in Iraq in 2009. My family consist of my husband and our 3 young boys ages 6,4,and 3. We live in the Philadelphia region and own our home. We could really use the $500 gift card to help do some patch work inside the house as well as the roof and fix some leaky faucets, this would bring Holiday cheer to us. As far as a big improvement for the home would be new windows. The ones we currently have are old and don’t help keep the heat inside in the winter. Thank you, Desiree
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=623073518 Heidi Trammell

I would like to enter my family for this give away. Being a military family, it’s hard to buy appropriate decorations for your home, when your home moves. Everything has to be inexpensive and portable. We own our home here in Cape May, but nothing we have gives a tasteful holiday cheer. Most of all, this house has difficult lighting. $500 would go a long way to putting two huge smiles on our five and six year old boys. Gratefully yours, Coast Guard Family in Cape May.
http://waterwatereverywhere.net Sarah Hubbell

I have got THE. MOST. PERFECT. FAMILY. in mind for this. I guess I have to get their permission to enter them. The wife/mom just passed away from cancer about a month or two ago, and the dad is active military, and they have three little boys and live in a tiny little house. I believe they own the home outright because they were Financial Peace University facilitators and I talked to them about that. They lived next door to me when I lived in the Philly area. They are THE most serving, giving, community oriented family you will ever meet. Dawn impacted hundreds if not thousands of lives through all her community service and what happened to my dearest friend was a tragic, but I sure would love for her husband to win this. I’m SURE he could put it to good use, maybe renovating their basement to make it more comfortable for the boys to use. Several years ago they added a small master bedroom/bath onto the home. I’m telling you, the house is TINY and old but they have lots of land and more than enough love to go around.