A Heartwarming Story

A few months ago, back in September, I went to a card class in the Church of two of my friends. One of the ladies in that class just so happened to be a teacher at my son’s middle school. She is also the teacher that helps run the Student Council. She went back and told her counterpart about CFS and they decided they wanted to get the kids involved in a fundraising event for CFS. The student council came up with “Pajama’s for Postage” where each kid had to pay $1.00 to wear their pajama’s to school one day. They did this twice and yesterday I went to a presentation at the Litchfield Middle School so they could present me with this…

Yes, those kids raised $500 in postage money! I was amazed and also touched. I also explained to them that their check will help send 38 boxes which is approximately 11,000 cards to the troops, you should have heard them cheer!

Thank you Ms. Irving, Ms. Sidilau, and LMS Students from the bottom of my heart and more! I am honored to say I live in a town with such great people!

Pam

Round 4 Update

Hello everyone!  Sorry it’s taken me so long to update with the Round 4 numbers, I was slacking off visiting my best friend in San Diego for a week so I got a bit behind!  I got the cards out right before I left, all 3629 of them! There were lots of thank you cards for the soldiers for the Armed Forces Day portion which made me smile from ear to ear! Thank you all to helped make this another successful mailing!

Thank you to those of you who sent in postage donations, I am so grateful!

I can’t believe it’s almost time for the next mailing again, just 3 more weeks until the May 10th deadline, where does the time go! And Father’s Day already? Yikes!

Again, thank you all for your support, I appreciate it and couldn’t do it without you!

Pam

Round 3 Shipped!

And what a shipment it was!  4176 cards! That is a huge amount for this round I have to say! Thank you all very much!  I know it was a double whammy for you all and I appreciate the support!

I thank you all for the postage donations as well! This has been very helpful to me as it’s getting pretty costly with the postage rates going up. It’s now $13.30 per box I send.  Sending 10 boxes per month and this month having sent out two shipments is killer, just know I so appreciate your donations!

I was asked to post more on the site regarding what I do with the cards regarding sorting and such so I thought I would give you all some information if you are interested, if not, you can stop reading now…

As the cards come in throughout the month they get brought down to my craft room and put in a pile. I don’t open any of the boxes until the mailing deadline. Then on the weekend before the deadline I start opening and sorting them. First thing I do is sort them into piles 1) birthday, 2) general (thinking of you, miss you, etc.) 3) holiday the round is for.  Next I make sure they fit the card specs, no glitter, are blank inside, dark cards are lined, etc. if not they go into a need fixing pile or a donate pile. Cards that can’t be fixed are donated to a veteran’s hospital. After all the cards are sorted I make sure they all have envelopes and I start counting them into batches of 50 and put elastics and a tag with each one marking what group they are. I then get my total count, I box them up and ship them out.  After that I send out all my thank you notes and post here on the website with updates.

If I can provide you any more information please feel free to ask me in an email or in the comments here on the blog, I’m more than happy to answer any questions you all have!

Thanks for reading!

Pam

 

Round 2 Has Shipped!

Good Morning All!

While I am settled in and waiting for the Nor’easter NEMO to whack us with 2 feet of snow I figured it was a great time to get caught up with my update! There were 2237 cards sent out this month! In the past we have not had much in the way of St. Patty’s Day cards but this time around there quite a bit which was great! The Easter cards are coming in fast behind them which is great since the deadline is next week! I know those deadlines two weeks apart and I apologize for that believe me my wallet doesn’t like it either but I had to space them out a bit so that I didn’t have so many boxes to send at once. Work is so busy right now that sorting 2000 cards is hard I couldn’t handle double that in a weekend.

Thank you to everyone for your  continued contributions both with cards/envelopes and donations. And for getting us off to a great start in 2013! It’s looking to be a great mailing year!

I need to mention a few things again, it’s definitely getting better so some of you are reading the specs!

1. The dark cards are still coming in unlined. 
2. I’m getting a lot of cards without envelopes. Please send envelopes, I am not getting envelopes donated at all anymore. I’ve been turned down by every company I’ve written. I can’t afford to pay for postage and buy envelopes any longer.
3. I do not send store bought cards, if you send those to me I will not send them in my packages, please do not send them. 
4. Please do not send stamps, I cannot use them and neither can the soldiers, they get free postage.

Thank you all for helping to keep my program running smoothly!

I hope everyone in NEMO’s path stays save and warm!

Pam

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and has a very happy 2013!

We had a very successful mailing for our first of the year with 3332 cards being sent! What a great way to start of the season! We even had a group of cards come from The Fifth Avenue Active Retirement Center in Washington where some of the residents who are in their 90’s and one of them being 103 contribute to this mailing. I want to say that I hope I make it that long in life and am still making cards! How great is that!

Thank you to everyone, those of you who have been continued contributors over the years and to those of you that are sending cards for the first time, I so appreciate your support! Thank you too for the postage donations which were a huge help since 11 boxes were sent this month!

I hope you all are staying warm if you are in a cold climate and enjoying the warmth if you are somewhere warm. It’s been very cold here in New Hampshire and I am wishing I was somewhere much warmer these days! I will talk to you all again next month! Thank you again for your support!

Pam

Sharing Some Happy Mail

One of our faithful cardmakers tends to put her address labels on the backs of her cards. By doing this she gets a lot of nice notes from soldiers and always likes to share them with me. I love the see these and thought all of you would too. Here are a few recent ones she has received. One was a group thank you card and another came from a Colonel. I’ll share a photo of the cards they used as well…

December Mailing and 2012 Year Total

Our Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year cards totaled out to 7,102 cards! I shipped 19 boxes out to the troops and I am sure the postal worker was not too crazy about the pick up on my front porch this month but I sure was pleased! Thank you to all who contributed with your card donations as well as with your postage donations.

I did receive a lot of cards this month that were on black or very dark cardstock. I unfortunately did not have time to add white cardstock to the insides of these so those had to go into my ‘to be fixed’ pile for later. Please remember to line your dark cards with white paper because the soldiers don’t have access to white pens like we do!

Our 2012 yearly total of cards came to 23,400 cards. The number was a bit lower than last year but still very impressive don’t you think? If you are curious what the numbers have been through the years you can scroll through the ‘Past Posts’ down in the bottom left hand column. There are all sorts of fun things to read there, especially if you are new to CFS!

So thank you all for another successful year, thank you to those of you who have continually donated cards throughout the years as well as to those of you that are just starting to donate! I hope you all have wonderful holidays!

Pam