The No. 1 reason Sweet vacations are so awesome are the people we attract. Case in point, Sweetie of the Year nominee Candy Parker embodies our philosophy of debauchery and do-goodery to the Nth power. Since we met her on her 50th birthday in Isla Mujeres last year, she’s taken booked five more Sweet trips, done two community service projects, organized the creation of a charity cookbook to benefit the Cozumel Humane Society and written a story about her Sweet experience for Curve Magazine.

As a solo traveler, Candy was worried about coming on her own, but she quickly became the leader of a very wild pack of solos. Her friendliness is a magnet that draws in Sweeties, old and new. Read the rest of this entry »

BEFORE

AFTER ALL YOUR LOVE SWEET LOVE

UPDATE: Hooray and thank you to all the Sweeties who donated and made it possible for my sister to care for this abandoned little girl. She’s doing awesome now. Her name is Sunshine. Thank you for making the world a brighter, better place.

Dear friends,
My little sister is the dog manager for Delta Animal Safe Haven, a non-profit dedicated to finding homes for homeless animals. Last week, a couple in Antioch, Calif., found an abandoned one-week-old puppy (see above). She’s so young, her eyes are still shut and her umbilical cord is still attached.

Normally, DASH doesn’t take animals that will require such expensive care because they don’t have a ton of funding and they have loads of other animals for which to care. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody made a greater mistake than she who did nothing because she could only do a little.

— Edmund Burke

Once upon a time, a little girl was walking on the beach where thousands of starfish were stranded in the sand. She hurled one after another into the sea. A man walked up and said, “There’s too many. You’ll never save them all. You can’t make a difference.”

The girl thinks a minute, looks at the piles upon piles of starfish, picks another one up and throws it in the ocean. “I made a difference to that one.”

Often we feel so discouraged by the enormity of a problem that we fail to start. That’s why Sweet breaks giant global issues into fun-filled, bite-sized chunks.
Read the rest of this entry »