ChipIn and the eBay Store!

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to take a moment or two to mention a couple of updates we’ve made to the site, including new ways you might be able to help.

First, you’ll notice the new “eBay Store” tab in the horizontal menu running across the top of the screen. As many of you have suggested, we’ve opened up an eBay store as yet another means to whittle away at Anikka’s upcoming medical bills. Most of the items up for sale are Anikka’s old baby clothes, etc. (sorry, but no more Playstation 3’s). Silja (Ani’s momma) tries to add a couple of new items every day, so please check back often if you’re looking to purchase something for your own special little lady.

Second, we just learned about a fantastic fund raising site called ChipIn.com this afternoon (thanks to Josh Koenig for pointing us in their direction). Once we took a look at what they were offering, we had to include their widgets on this page. You might notice the new ChipIn area in the upper-right where the old “Donate with PayPal” link used to be. Donations that come through that link still come to us through PayPal, but we now have the ability to dynamically display our progress on the page. The downside, of course, is that they currently don’t have a way to add to the graph any donations made outside their system, so to the naked eye it would appear that nobody’s donated a dime yet. Not true. As of today, generous friends, family, and strangers have combined to contribute roughly $1700! Still a long way from our goal of $15,000 (approximately half the expected cost of the procedures), but a great start!

In addition to the pretty graph, ChipIn also makes it easy for other bloggers, MySpace users, etc. to use their own site to help. If you click on the “Copy” link in the ChipIn window, then click “more options,” you’ll find step-by-step instructions for adding that code to your own site.

Thanks again for all your help and support!