The always amazing Illustration Dan one-upped himself with this year’s Mustaches for Kids Houston logo. Seriously, this guy has mad skills. Check out the detail, the wheels alone are amazing – a true work of art!

Stay tuned for details on where and when you can pick up some cool Mustaches for Kids Houston merchandise!

Let’s Grow Together!

Greetings fellows Stachers! The 2009 Grow Season is approaching us so get your razors ready!

This year the Houston chapter of Mustaches for Kids will raise money for Workshop Houston and we couldn’t more happy to help such a worthy cause as theirs.

From Workshop Houston

Workshop Houston’s mission is to provide youth with creative, technical and educational resources. Our vision is to lay the groundwork for a just society by creating a community that provides youth with support, expanded opportunities and alternative definitions of success. Workshop Houston has five shops that provide resources and support for young people: the Third Ward Bike Shop (do-it-yourself bike repair), the Chopper Shop (welding and metal fabrication), the Beat Shop (hip-hop music production), the Style Shop (fashion design) and the Scholar Shop (tutoring and academic enrichment).

I don’t know about you but I am pretty stoked about what they are doing in Houston and I can’t wait to raise some cold hard cash for them

Mustaches for Kids 2009 – Important Dates

This years grow season will run from Thursday November 12 and ending with our Sweetest Stache competition on Friday December 11 at Coffee Groundz! That’s right the great folks at Coffee Groundz have given us the go ahead to host our 3rd Sweetest Stache competition at their fantastic Midtown location.

Start your mustache planning today!

Mustache Check Point Dates

This grow season we will meetup every week, except for Thanksgiving and December 11th, at Cedar Creek in the Heights. Here is a map

1. Shave Off – Our official shave off will happen Thursday November 12 at 7pm
2. Check Point 1 – Thursday November 19th at 7pm
3. Check Point 2 – Thursday December 3rd at 7pm

If you have any questions whatsoever you can call me at 713 574 9829

Take care and my the fuzz be with you!

Hey Houston, how grows it? I hope the grow season has bean treating you well, I know it has for been for me.

Tonight marks our great Sweetest Stache Competition in conjunction with Vinyl Ranch tonight at Leon’s Lounge. Join us tonight as we celebrate all of those that have chosen to grow a mustache for charity and help us raise even more

Last Year’s Winner – Adam “Jesse ‘The Devil’ Hughes”

Map to Leon’s

1006 McGowen

Greatest Mustache party ever?(skip ahead a minute)

Tonight marks our final Mustache Check Point at Leon’s Lounge – 8pm. Be there or be square

How to Trim Your Mustache

Is your mustache becoming quite unsightly? Follow these easy steps to ensure you have the best groomed stache you have ever had.

Remember to ‘wink at the macho man in the mirror’

Houston meet your 2008 mustache growers, well the ones I could get pictures of at least. Some are missing but below are 15 lucky guys and some are even single.

Mustache Check Point #1

Tonight marks the first mustache check point of our grow season and it will take place at Leon’s Lounge once again but this time it will be at 8pm. See below for directions

Your 2008 Mustaches For Kids Houston Growers

Direction to Leon’s Lounge

I can’t believe it’s been a year already, where does the time go. I know one ambitious guy would like to save it in a bottle.

This years Great Shave Off takes places at Houston’s historic Leon’s Lounge at 9 pm followed by Vinyl Ranch at 10 pm.

If you cannot make it to the Great Shave Off don’t fret, it doesn’t mean you can take part – You Can! If you cannot make it please do me a favor and take a picture similar to the one on the right and send it to me to jason [@] schipul.com

Jordan, our man in France, so far is the first one to get under way and sent us this photo from the land that gave us that giant lady with the torch in NYC where from what he says they do not have Joe the Plumber but ‘Marcel the guy with bread under his armpit.’

Have You Set Up Your Personal Grow/Giving Page Yet?

If you haven’t set up your Personal Grow/Giving page please follow these easy instructions on how to do that. Once you have it set up your donors can give directly to the site

Direction to Leon’s Lounge

As American’s go to the polls today in what might be a record breaking and surely a historic day lets look back at some of the past mustachioed presidents.

Facial hair really didn’t get anywhere close to executive authority until Grover Cleveland. Oh sure John Quincy Adams & Van Buren had the mutton chops but the mustache really took some time to get in the door. Zachary Taylor looked like he had facial hair but those were just ‘pronounced’ jowls. Abe Lincoln ushered in the acceptance of facial hair with his ‘before his time’ Amish look. Andrew Johnson was president after Lincoln and he reverted back the babies bum purity of no facial hair. Johnson of course was a democrat and in the next election he lost to a guy whose name made sure he would one day make him president or at least a character in a James Jones book – Ulysses S. Grant. Grant championed the facial hair movement and grew a full beard. Next up was Rutherford B. Hayes, who would later become the inspiration for ZZ Top(I can’t prove this but you can’t disprove it either so don’t even bother trying), let his hair down. Garfield towed the party line and kept on growing. Chester A. Arthur mixed it up a little bit and did the reverse Lincoln. No doubt trying to get voters to think of Lincoln’s legacy when they went to vote, it worked. Well played Arthur, well played. Grover Cleveland finally wrestled the presidency away from the GOP but recognizing the power of facial hair became the nation’s first true mustachioed president. Benjamin Harrison won the presidency back for the beard loving GOP but Cleveland’s mustache proved to be too good and he was reelected. Two more presidents would don the stache while in office, Theodore Roosevelt followed by William Howard Taft whose presidency ended on March 4, 1913 setting in motion a 95 year mustache drought that shows no sign of ending with the two candidates this year.

With that we elect Grover Cleveland as the Greatest Mustache in Presidential History

More on Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States. Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897) and thus is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents. He was the winner of the popular vote for President three times—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was the only Democrat elected to the Presidency in the era of Republican political domination that lasted from 1860 to 1912. Cleveland’s admirers praise him for his honesty, independence, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism.^[1] As a leader of the Bourbon Democrats, he opposed imperialism, taxes, subsidies and inflationary policies, but as a reformer he also worked against corruption, patronage, and bossism.

Will the stache make a comeback? It will with us, this I know but the presidency has proved somewhat tricky to the voters. One thing I do now; if the Cubs win the World Series before we get a mustache back in the White House then there is no god.

Here’s a mustache song to get you in the mood for this Friday’s Shave Off which takes place at Leon’s Lounge – 9pm sharp(See below for a map).

To get you in the mood check out Man Man’s 10lb Mustache!

How do I collect donations?

You collect donations through your Giving Page. When you follow the instructions to set up your Giving Page (below), the DonorsChoose.org website will generate a unique link for you to send around. Collecting donations through your Giving Page will:

• Track all donations/donors for your reference
• Send tax-deduction receipts to all of your donors
• Thank your donors with a personalized email from the teacher

How to Set up YOUR UNIQUE Giving Page

Our goal is to empower Growers to connect more directly with the recipients of their fundraising efforts. DonorsChoose.org is great for that very reason: you, and your donors, get to see exactly where the money goes.
To collect donations, every Grower will set up his own “Giving Page” at DonorsChoose.org, filled with local classroom projects in need of funding. Creating a Giving Page will generate a *a unique web link for each Grower,* which you can then use to email to friends and family in soliciting donations.
This should take you about 5 – 7 minutes to set up.

Step 1: Go to www.DonorsChoose.org and click “Sign In” in the upper right corner.
Step 2: Sign in as a “prospective donor,” so that you can set up a Giving Page.
Step 3: Fill out your contact information (which DonorsChoose.org will only use to mail you student thank-you notes, if you fund a classroom project.)
Step 4: Click on “Create a Giving Page.”
Step 5: Create the title of your Giving Page. You’ll need to include your name in the title, and you can also use your Mustache name, like, Joe ‘The Walrus’ Romanelli. Make sure to join the “Mustaches by City” Giving Group, and then associate yourself with your city. If you cannot find your city listed, please email m4k@donorschoose.org.
Step 6: Fill out your message, encouraging family, friends and co-workers to sponsor your Mustache! Also, click “Add” to add a picture of you, with or without a ‘stache!
Step 7: Click on “Search for Projects,” so that you can add classroom projects to your Giving Page.
Step 8: Search for projects by finding projects by City or County.
Step 9: When you find a project you’d like to add, click on the project, then click on “Add to Giving Page.” On the following screen, you will click “Add to selected Giving Page.” We suggest adding 5 – 10 projects when you’re starting your Giving Page.
Slide 10: Scroll to the top of your Giving Page set up. Click on “View this Giving Page (permalink).”
Slide 11: Bookmark your UNIQUE LINK to your Giving Page. This is the link you should use every time you ask people to donate for your Mustache. So you should not send people to www.DonorsChoose.org to make donations – you should send them to your unique link!