Our Team Shirts!

Things are really moving here at Relentless Optimism headquarters, with the Boston 3 Day for the Cure stepping off in just five days!  Our team banner was delivered, our article was published in our hometown paper and now, our team shirts have arrived!

The Official Relentless Optimism Walker shirt!

We are incredibly excited to have our own team shirts this year to wear throughout the 3 Day event.  This will be my third 3 Day event and it will be the first time that my teammates and I have had matching shirts for the walk.  We truly feel like a team now!

Our team shirts were generously provided for our team by Mag Mom Diana Moreland and her company Diana's Costume Closet who we cannot thank enough for her support of our team.  The shirts feature another version of the Relentless Optimism logo on our team banner that was again created for us by Robyn Torkewitz.  If you would like Robyn to design something for your team, you can see more of her work and find her contact information here.

Kristen playing supermodel in our team shirts before a training walk.

For our shirts, we worked closely with Custom Ink to get everything just right.  If you are interested in ordering something similar for your team or event, I highly recommend them.  They will work with you to ensure the clearest possible printing of your design and will check in with you at every possible.  I worked with a wonderful guy named Neil who was incredibly patient with me as I made change after change to our design.  Even after five different proofs, we still received our shirts three days earlier than expected.  I really can't say enough great things about Custom Ink!

For those who are wondering, our shirts are the Augusta Lades Performance Sleeveless Ts.  I tried mine out on a training walk and it was great!  No weird seams and no pulling.  If you are looking to order shirts for the 3 Day, this really is an excellent choice.

A closer look at the back of shirts, featuring our team sponsors (click to enlarge).  

Some small changes were made from this proof to the final versions of our shirts for clarity.

I can't wait to hit the streets of Boston in our new team shirts.  If you see us out walking, please be sure to say hello!

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We're Famous!

This past week, we were incredibly honored when our hometown newspaper, the Cortland Standard, chose to run a long feature about our team for the Boston 3 Day for the Cure.  Our article, which was titled "Beating Breast Cancer in a Big Way", was written by Life and Living editor Katie Hall.  The feature took up almost a whole page of the paper and included two photos.  The first photo was taken by longtime Cortland Standard photographer Bob Ellis of our teammate Melissa Moreland Campos on one of her early morning training walks and the second photo was one of my photos that shows the four of us walkers at our 10 year high school reunion in 2008.

Unfortunately, there isn't a digital copy of the article available.  However, my mom (Karen Sager) was nice enough to scan the article for us so that we could share it with all of you.  Larger versions of each image are available by clicking on the photos.

Enjoy!

Melissa on her training walk in Homer, New York

 Our article!  Click to enlarge so you can read it!

We are incredibly thankful to Katie and the entire staff of the Cortland Standard for featuring our efforts.  While most of us have moved out the area now, we are all true Homer girls at heart.  Our hometown is small and tight nit and having this kind of publicity can really go a long way towards helping us to reach our fundraising goals.  As you can tell from this article, this is a cause that is very near and dear to our hearts.  Having the support of our community behind us as we take to the streets next week in Boston truly means the world to all of us!

If you have been moved by our story and would like to help us reach our fundraising goals, you can make a donation at our team fundraising page on the 3 Day website.  You can also reach each of our personal pages directly by clicking on our names in the right hand side bar. 

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Our Way of Saying Thank You!

All of us here at Relentless Optimism are incredibly grateful for every donation that we have received this year.  We would not be able to do this crazy thing that is the 3 Day without the support of our friends, family and generous strangers.  The primary goal of the Breast Cancer 3 Day is to raise money to help find a cure for breast cancer.  It is because of the generosity of all of our donors and supporters that we are now that much closer to achieving a world without breast cancer.

We are incredibly thankful for and overwhelmed by the number of donations that we have received in pursuit of our team goal of raising $20,000 before the end of August.  We are thankful for every single person that entered one of our fundraising contests or bought flowers through Flower Power.  We are thankful for everyone that supported us through Tastefully Simple or Mary Kay.  If you bought some stuff through our Amazon link or clicked on our Google Ads before they were shut down, well, we're thankful to you too.  It is because of all of you that we have been able to raise so much money for such an important cause.

Because we are so touched by the enormous generosity that has been sent our way, we want everyone to know all of your names.  Shouting all of your names from a hilltop is little too difficult and hiring a skywriter to write all your names in the clouds is a little too expensive.  So instead of all that, we have chosen to instead recognize each and every one of our donors and sponsors on a large banner that will be proudly on display between our tents during the Boston 3 Day for the Cure!

Our team banner, courtesy of Vistaprint!

(Click to enlarge)

I am thrilled that we are able to recognize all of our supporters in such a public way.  If you donated to us in any way before July 1st, then your name is in there and everyone in Boston will know it.  We are truly honored that you have all thrown your support behind us and we hope that we can make you all proud as we walk up and down the streets of Boston in just under two weeks time.  

I also would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge my cousin Robyn Torkewitz who designed the spiffy new Relentless Optimism logo that you see on our banner.  She also designed a second logo for our team shirts that we will be showing off in Boston as well.  Robyn is a very talented graphic designer and we're thrilled that she donated her services to us in this way.  If you would like to see more of her work, you can find her personal website here. 

Finally, if you will be walking in the Boston 3 Day for the Cure, please be on the look out for our banner!  If you happen to spot us in the sea of pink tents, please be sure to stop by and say hi!

THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!

Image courtesy of Leanne Johnston.

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Flower Power Wrap Up - THANK YOU!!

This past spring, we collaborated with Flower Power Fundraising to host our most successful team fundraiser to date.  With all of the money that we raised now in, we are thrilled to announce that we raised $835 through this fundraiser - an amazing success!

For those that don't remember, Flower Power Fundraising is an online direct sales company that sells flowers and other garden plants to help raise money for your specific charity of choice - in our case, the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure.  Flower Power sells top-quality, best-selling flower bulbs and plants and in exchange for helping to promote their company, our team for the 3 Day received a full 50% of the proceeds from each sale made through our team link.  We could not have had a better experience with Flower Power Fundraising and we made a ton of money for breast cancer research to boot!

All together, we sold $1669 worth of plants through this fundraiser, resulting in $835 for our team.  We ultimately had 25 people purchase flowers through Flower Power with an average sale of $67.  It is because of all of your generosity that we were able to raise so much money so we wanted to take a minute and recognize all of our friends and family that took the time to buy their flowers from us:

Andrea Cecconi Barb Ries Cathy Warren Connie Steger David Moreland Deonie Finkbeiner     Diana Moreland Corky Wrisley Janet Rabbitt

Jennifer Glass Jennifer Perrin      Jennifer Rabbitt Judith Smith Karen Sager Kathy Cincotta Laura Lo Russo Laurie Yaw Lorraine Sheeder

Mark Pasquini Melanie Fraites Miguel Campos Nancy Beakman Patricia Segien Patty Fredenburg Phyllis Hatfield Tabi Sebastino Tommy Schenck

I also wanted to take the time to recognize Relentless Optimism team member Melissa C. for discovering Flower Power Fundraising and acting as the main point person throughout this fundraiser!  She did a ton of work getting us all set up and we are incredibly thankful to her for her efforts.
Finally, thank you to everyone who helped us to spread the word about this fundraiser.  As always, our efforts live and die by the strength of word of mouth.  To all of you who reposted on Facebook, retweeted on Twitter, sent out emails and just generally spread the word about Flower Power on our behalf, thank you so much!
As always, if you would like to make an additional donation to Relentless Optimism, you can find the links to each of our individual pages in the right hand sidebar.  You can also find our team page on the 3 Day website by clicking here.  All four of our walkers have now surpassed their fundraising minimums.  However, we are still a long ways away from our team goal of raising $20,000.  Please help us to reach our goal by making an additional donation today! I hope that everyone's plants are providing them an endless amount of joy and beauty this summer!  Thank so much for supporting Relentless Optimism!!

Image courtesy of Leanne Johnston of Leanne... The Walker.  Thanks Leanne!

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THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

If you have spent any time on our team fundraising blog over the last few months, then you know that we kicked off our fundraising for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure by running a series of fundraising contests.  All told, we ran seven contests starting with our test contest in November and concluding this past week with the March Madness and Fug Madness contests.  The entry fee for each contest was a $10 donation made to our team and the winner of each contest won a cash prize equal to half the money collected for each contest.  The rest of the money went to our fundraising goals for the Breast Cancer 3 Day.

I am now very happy to report that this series of contests netted Relentless Optimism $580 towards our fundraising goals for the 3 Day in Boston in July!  We could not have raised this much money without each and every person that entered our contests, so thank you thank you THANK YOU!!

Obviously, this has been a big undertaking and we have a lot of people to recognize for their contributions!  First and foremost, I wanted to specifically recognize the winners of each of our contests:

• The Baby Q Prediction Contest was won by Relentless Optimism team member Jen Rabbitt.
• The Golden Globes Contest was won by Rex Sager.
• The Super Bowl Contest was won by Cliff Michaels.
• The Fantasy Winter Olympics League was won by Dennis Roesch.
• The Oscars Contest was won by Paul Jarnagin.
• The March Madness Pool was won by Catherine Prince.
• The Fug Madness Pool was also won by Catherine Prince.

All told, we had 56 different people that entered at least one contest, with many of you entering more than one contest.  I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize all of you one more time and to again extend our immense gratitude to all of you!  So thank you again to the following people:

Aleece Hoeslcher Amanda Rabesa Andy Rabbitt Barb Ries Bill Rabbitt Catherine Prince* Cliff Michaels* Colin Fink David Moreland* Dawn Mazzanti Dennis Roesch* Diana Moreland* Donald Collier Dustin Davis Elaine Pranski Emily Ryan Hally Trementozzi*     Heidi Foster JT Shoemaker*

James Lee Janet and Tim Shoemaker*      Jeanine Collier Jeff Proulx Jen Rabbit* Jon Trementozzi* Karen Sager** Kathy Cincotta Kelly Langford* Kristen Cincotta** Kristin Moreland* Laurie Yaw* Leah Roesch Linda Velott Lindsay Collins Mara Heppen Meag and Any Jenkins* Melissa Campos* Melissa Querry

Miguel Campos Mike and Caroline White* Mike Cincotta* Nicholas Hatch Patty Hicke Paul Jarnagin Rebecca Rofman Rex Sager* Robyn Torkewitz* Roger Sager* Ron Barrows Sara Dodson Sarah Barrows Suzanne Tydlacka* Tamara Campbell Tammy Dowdle Tommy Schenck* Troy Humphrey

Please note that those designated with stars entered more than one contest and those with two stars entered all seven contests.  It is worth noting that the additional entries from those of you who entered more than one contest accounted for more than half of the money that we collected during the course of these contests, so we are especially thankful to all of you!!

Throughout these contests, we have had a lot of help from a number of people.  I want to first thank my friend JT Shoemaker for helping me keep everything organized for each contest, teaching me how to make tables in HTML, setting up and maintaining the Fantasy Winter Olympics page and for helping to spread the word on Facebook and beyond.  You're seriously awesome and I can't thank you enough.  I also wanted to thank my cousin Robyn Torkewitz for coming up with the idea for the Fug Madness contest and for single handedly bringing in half the entries for that contest.  I also need to thank everyone that helped to spread the word about our contests.  It is on the strength of word of mouth that these contests live and die and we appreciate all the help you guys provided with accomplishing this.  I especially want to recognize Kristin Moreland, Linda Velott and Mara Heppen for all the ReTweets, Facebook posts, emails and more!  I know you guys weren't the only ones, but you guys really went above and beyond.  Finally, I of course need to thank the members of Relentless Optimism for helping to get the word out about each contest - you're the best!  

These contests were designed to be a fun way to increase awareness of our fundraising efforts for the 3 Day and to get the ball rolling on our fundraising.  With something like this, it can be easy to forget about what the real purpose is - to raise money for breast cancer research.  I was reminded today that one person in the United States dies from cancer every 68 seconds.  One life, every 68 seconds.  And as I have been reminded so many times, the current treatments for cancer are intense, rigorous and often cause as much pain as the cancer itself.  Sometimes, it's the treatments themselves that actually take that life.  The need for more research and better treatments is huge.  So seriously - THANK YOU for taking the time to enter our contests and helping us with this important goal!

As always, if you would like to make an additional donation to Relentless Optimism, you can find the links to each of our individual pages in the right-hand side bar.  You can also find our team page on the 3 Day website by clicking here.  We have a long ways to go before we reach our team goal - please help us get to Boston by making an additional donation today!

Image courtesy of Leanne Johnston of Leanne... The Walker.  Thanks Leanne!

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Predict the Oscars Contest - Final Results!

The 82nd Academy Awards have come and gone, meaning it is time to announce the winner of our Predict the Oscars fundraising contest!

It was a Hurt Locker kind of night...

The Predict the Oscars contest was a fundraising contest to benefit Relentless Optimism, our team for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure.  We asked everyone to guess who they thought would win the Oscars in all 24 categories.  Each entry was accompanied by a $10 to our team.  Half of the money collected is awarded to the person that correctly predicts the winner in the most categories with the other half of the money going towards our fundraising efforts.  Altogether, we had 18 completed entries for this contest and successfully raised $90 for Relentless Optimism!

In general, our entrants did much better at predicting the outcome of the Oscars than they did back in January for the Golden Globes, with 11 of you correctly predicting the winner in more than half the categories.  Our winner, Paul Jarnagin, did an outstanding job, correctly predicting the winner in 18 of the 24 categories.  The only categories that Paul missed were Adapted Screenplay (a tricky one all the way around), Sound Editing, Cinematography, Animated and Live Action Short and Foreign Language Film.  All in all, Paul did a great job and will be taking home the $90 cash prize.  Congratulations Paul!

To view the winners in all 24 categories, please visit the official Oscars website.  If you would like to know the full results, please email me at kscincotta@gmail.com.

Melissa C. and I would like to thank all of our participants in the Predict the Oscars contest for their continued support of our fundraising efforts.  In addition, it is only through word of mouth that a contest like this succeeds, so thank you so much to anyone and everyone that forwarded our emails, linked to our blogs, posted on Facebook or Tweeted on Twitter.  It helps more than you can know and we very much appreciate it!

There are only two more fundraising contests left:  March Madness and it's fashionable cousin Fug Madness.  Both contests are kicking off this coming weekend so be sure to check back soon for all the details about how to enter.  In addition, if you would like to make a direct donation to our team members, links to all of our fundraising pages can be found on the right hand sidebar or via our team page on the 3 Day website.

Best Actor winner Jeff Bridges (L) and Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock (R)

All images were found at AceShowBiz.com

The Super Bowl Contest - RESULTS!

With their exciting come from behind victory, the New Orleans Saints have brought Super Bowl glory back to New Orleans!  And with the crowning of a new Super Bowl champion, we too have a new champion of our Super Bowl prediction contest!

In the two weeks leading up to the big game, we collected entries from our friends and family as they tried to predict the outcome of Super Bowl XLIV.  Each entry was accompanied by a small donation to Relentless Optimism to help us raise money for breast cancer research and the winner was awarded  a  cash prize equal to half the money raised for our team.  To read all of the details about the Super Bowl Fundraising Contest, please check out this post.

Our Super Bowl contest generated 14 entries and raised $70 towards our team's fundraising goals.  Our most heartfelt thanks goes out to all of our participants, listed here in no particular order: Linda Velott, Hally and Jon Trementozzi, Diana Moreland, Sara Dodson, Tammy Dowdle, Heidi Foster, Karen and Roger Sager, Barb Ries, Cliff Michaels, JT Shoemaker, my husband Mike Cincotta and me.  We also had a lot of help promoting contest from Linda Velott, JT Shoemaker and Mara Heppen and possibly others, for which we are extremely grateful.

While the Indianapolis Colts were heavily favored both by the sports pundits and in our pool, it was the New Orleans Saints that walked away with the Lombardi trophy this year.  Due to their upset over the Colts, there weren't very many accurate predictions about the outcome of the big game.  In the end, we had three people who tied with three correct predictions.  To determine our final winner, a name was selected from a hat by a colleague of mine (thanks Mei!).  Our ultimate winner, who was one of only four people to correctly predict a Saints win, is...

Please join me in congratulating Cliff on his big win!  Additional congratulations go out to Barb Ries and Heidi Foster who also had three correct predictions in our contest.  This contest ended up being a lot more difficult than I thought to predict and you all did a great job! To see all of the results of the game, you can check out the box score at www.nfl.com.

A big thank you again from Melissa C and I for supporting us in our fundraising efforts for the Breast Cancer 3 Day by participating in this contest.  We are also currently taking entries in our Fantasy Winter Olympics League until 8pm on Thursday, February 11th.  You can find all of the information about that contest here.  In addition, we'll be running both an Oscars Prediction Contest and a March Madness pool in March, so be sure to check back for those as well.

Congratulations again Cliff!  I hear they're throwing quite the party for you down in New Orleans!

 

Image courtesy of New York Daily News

Special Thanks!

We just wanted to take a minute to thank the American Legion Burns-McCauliffe Post 465 in Homer, New York for their generous donation to Relentless Optimism!

The American Legion in Homer, NY

Legion member and "Mag Mom" Diana Moreland made a presentation to the Legion earlier this week on our behalf.  After hearing about our team and our efforts to raise money for breast cancer awareness, the Legion was moved to make a donation to our team which we are very happy to accept.  

To read a very nice little article about the American Legion Burns-McCauliffe Post 465, please visit this link.