Your jump on holiday shopping Sunday can benefit a great local cause

As we did last year, my family is once again downsizing our Christmas gift giving this year. Actually, this could turn into a permanent arrangement, especially with this one great shopping opportunity Sunday.

Creek Kids Care is once again holding its annual crafts and arts boutique Sunday. Creek Kids Care raises money to benefit Walnut Creek's Fresh Start, the respite and service center in downtown for the working poor, homeless, or those at the risk of becoming homeless.

I'm very sorry, I didn't post this notice sooner. Life, work, and so forth got a bit hectic this week, and not just because of the election.

Anyway, it was at Creek Kids Care's boutique that my husband, son, and I did our Christmas shopping last year for our siblings and nieces and nephews. Creek Kids Care is made up of local elementary, middle and high school kids who spend the year making beautiful, original greeting cards, stationery, knitted items, and other crafts and works of art that they sell, both on their website and at this annual boutique.

That boutique takes place tomorrow, Sunday, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 1924 Trinity Avenue.

Not only are the items beautiful, the prices are excellent, and the proceeds benefit two great causes. Creek Kids Care donates what it earns to help care for our homeless community members of the nonprofit Fresh Start. Last year, Creek Kids Care raised enough from its online sales and other events, like the boutique, to pledge $300 a month to Fresh Start in 2009.

Creek Kids care also fully funds a preschool in Zimbabwe that serves kids who have been orphaned by HIV and AIDS.

If you can't make it to the boutique, you can still order their greeting cards online.

And, perhaps (hint, hint), whatever Creek Kids Care doesn't sell tomorrow it can bring to the Walnut Creek Farmers Market and sell there before the holidays--as it did last year.