Last Mailing of 2011 & Year’s Totals

And it was a great one! 7100 Cards to be exact! And most of them were Christmas cards. There were 21 boxes in all and out of those only 3 were general cards. Thank you all for another very successful mailing! Thanks to all of those who also sent in postage donations with your card donations, once again, with a mailing this large it’s a huge help to me and my pocketbook!

I wanted to mention that once again I received many cards that were on dark cardstock but were not lined inside. I did not have the time to fix these cards this time around because I spent all my free time sorting cards (see number above ). Those cards went into a ‘to be fixed’ box and were not mailed this year. Cards on dark cardstock aren’t sent because you have to think about the fact that the soldiers aren’t going to have a white pen on hand and black or blue ink won’t show up so all of the dark cards need to be lined before I can send them. I have updated the card specs to make this a requirement so hopefully this will help remind you when making the cards.

Now I know that you all have heard the news about troops in Iraq coming home by the end of the year. I hope that doesn’t stop you from sending cards. I’ll tell you why, 1) most of the troops I send cards to are not in Iraq, they are in Afghanistan and 2) There are many soldiers who are reservists that are deployed all the time, even when we are not at war whom I plan on sending cards for as long as the cards keep coming in.

And now are you ready for the yearly total…

32669 cards mailed to the soldiers in 2011! Can you believe that number? Amazing! And all because of you! Thank you all for making CFS such as success!

Now, I need to work on my own Christmas cards before it’s time to start making Valentine’s Day cards!

I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season!

Pam

Happy Veteran’s Day

VETERAN'S DAY IS 11-11-11, REMEMBER WHY WE HAVE THIS DAY! THANK A SOLDIER WHO MADE IT HOME OR THE FAMILY OF ONE WHO DID NOT!!! REMEMBER TO THANK OUR CURRENT SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES FOR WHAT THEY ENDURE ALSO!!!

2012 Schedule Posted!

The new scheduled is posted over on the left! Thank you all for the very successful year of mailing in 2011. I will post the 2011 numbers tomorrow. If you have any questions regarding the 2012 schedule send me an email and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

Veteran’s Day Update

1270 Cards! That is our largest amount of cards mailed for this mailing EVER! I am ecstatic to be mailing this many cards this round. Thank you all so much!

I did receive about 150 cards that did  not have handwritten notes inside them but instead were blank inside which I had to print out some notes for. Please remember for next year, Veteran’s Day and Armed Forces Day cards have personal notes inside the cards thanking the soldiers for their services. 

Also, I do not require envelopes for these cards, I can fit more in a box if there is no envelope and since they are not using the cards to send back home we may as well save the envelopes for when we really need them right?

And now for the winners of the custom stamps from Imagine Stamps…

Darlene Crosby

and

Jan Mockaitis

Congrats ladies! I will contact Imagine Stamps and let them know you won the custom bar code stamp.

And last but not least, our final mailing of the year is going to come upon us quick. This deadline is November 7th and is for the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Years cards. The new 2012 schedule will be posted sometime in November as well.

Thank you all again for everything you do to make CFS a success!

Pam

September Update

Hi Everyone!

I spent many hours sorting cards yesterday, we had 3500 of them!

Thank you all for doing such a great job with them this month!

Thank you to all who sent postage donations as well, as you all know how much this means to me. Please email me if you need a receipt or a tax id number.

Now don’t forget about the contest below, you have about a week left to get your Veteran’s Day cards in!

Thank you all again for your support, those of you that are new to the program and those of you that have been continued supporters for some time. Remember without you, I can’t do this!

Pam

A Contest (or two)!

Rebecca at Imagine Stamps & More sent me some wonderful acrylic stamps. These handmade stamps are just perfect for personalizing your cards!  Now before I tell you about the contest I’ll share an image with you of the stamps that Rebecca sent to me.

The first one is a CFS specific stamp. It is a flag that says “Made from the Heart” and “Cards for Soldiers”. I just love it! So perfect for the project cards don’t you think?

The second one is a personalized stamp with my name and three check boxes, which is so fun now I can use it on all sorts of my projects!

Don’t you love them? I bet you want one right? Well there are two ways to win one!

First chance:

Go to www.imaginestamps.com, in the left hand column select ‘subscribe to our mailing list’, follow the steps and you will be signed up for the contest.

5 winners will be selected on September 30, 2011.

Second Chance:

Send in at least 10 Veteran’s Day cards by the mailing deadline (October 10th). Remember these are Thank you cards for the soldiers so they are not blank inside, please write a personalized note of thanks inside each card. For every 10 cards you send your name will be entered to win one of two stamps that Rebecca is donating.  Please be sure to include a note with your email in your cards so that I can contact you if you win.

I’ll select 2 winners after the Veteran’s Day mailing.

Easy peasy right? So what are you waiting for? Go on and head over to Imagine Stamps and then get to work on those cards!

Good Luck!

Pam

10 Years Ago Today

Where you when the world stopped turning…

I was at work at Lucent Technologies and I can still see the look of horror and the tears streaming down my co-worker’s across from me face. She had just seen the Twin Towers hit on CNN.com.  It was so scary, I wanted to leave right then and there to go get my boys and make sure they stayed safe, as did everyone that day. We were all drawn to the cafeteria where there was a TV streaming CNN to see what was going on and it was very hard to concentrate on work. We had no idea what to think. Ten  years later I still don’t know what to think, so many lives lost, our country at war for almost 10 years.

And to think that this tragedy is what really got Cards for Soldiers started when you get right down to it. Carol’s husband felt he needed to serve his country, as friends we wanted to support Carol and Kevin while he deployed to Iraq and this idea is what we came up with. WOW.

September 11th has touched people in so many ways. I know that it’s touched each and every one of you who support this program and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you to take a moment out of your busy day to say a prayer for those we lost and those they left behind and to thank those that serve our country both in the military and our community to keep us safe!

God Bless the USA!

Pam

Awaiting a Hurricane

As hurricane Irene looms near I am watching the news often to see where it is and how bad we will get hit, hoping that no water comes in the basement. Don't worry, I'm putting all the cards I've received up high! :)

It doesn't seem like it will be too bad here and we've got a generator so I'm planning on making some Veteran's Day cards today!

I hope anyone in Irene's path is staying safe and dry.

Veteran’s Day Fast Approaching

The Veteran’s Day mailing is coming up soon! The deadline for cards is October 3rd. Are you making your cards yet? I hope so because we are mailing to 5 different troops so we need a lot of cards!

Remember my goal is to get 1 card into every soldier’s hand. I don’t know how many are at each place I send but I do know that one place I send to there are 300 in one group!

Please let’s show the best support we can by thanking those soldiers personally and sending them a nice note.

Pam

August Mailing Update

It’s hard to believe it’s three quarters through August already and that summer is almost over! Living in New England the summers are definitely too short! I hope all of you have had some great summer vacations. I unfortunately did not get a vacation this year but I sure did enjoy the nice weather and know it will be gone too quickly and I’ll be complaining about cold and snow.

I sent out close to 2500 cards again this mailing! Thank you all!  Each month there are so many boxes to open and so many of them have familiar names on the return addresses! You dedicated contributors are wonderful! I wish I could reward you for your support! And to each new person who has joined on board, you too, thank you for taking that first step to contribute! Without all of you I can’t keep doing this and I want to keep doing this for as long as I can so please keep up the great work!

Thank you to all of you who have donated to the postage fund again this month! Remember I’m a real non-profit organization now so you are making tax deductible donations!

Envelopes are needed badly, if you know someone who wants to help but really isn’t a card maker, ask them to send envelopes please! It still shows their support!

In Memory

I got a very generous donation to the program that is going to help pay for postage for quite some time. That donation was made in memory of a very important person in my life over the last 29 years, my Father-in-law Joseph F. Bumbaca, Jr. aka Pop. He will be missed by many.

December 17, 1941 - July 7 , 2011

Sharing Some Letters

A very dear and dedicated member of CFS got some mail from two soldiers she shared with me. They are very touching and I wanted to share them with you. She gets these often because she puts her address labels on the backs of her cards. They were written on cards she made.

 

So awesome! Thanks for sharing Jan!

June Update

Another great mailing for June. 2500 cards were sent out this month!  Thank you! Thank you to those that sent in postage donations.

A great big thank you to Envelopes.com as well for a donation of envelopes as they saved me big! I was out and they got them to me in time for the shipment! Thank you so much!

A continued supporter (thanks Linda!) to CFS has shared some links to where she gets some military themed supplies so I am sharing with all of you…

www.servicememories.com    

www.creatingmilitarymemories.com

They will be a great resource for our Armed Forces and Veteran’s Day mailings!

A few reminders for the next mailing;

• Blank handmade cards please – no store bought cards. A small greeting on the inside is OK but please make sure there is plenty of space for the soldier to write notes home inside.
  
• Black and dark cards must be lined with light paper please
  
• NO GLITTER unless you rub it really hard and not one flake comes off on your hand.
  
• Due date is August 1!

Thanks again for your support! Remember I couldn’t do this without YOU!!!

Pam

May Update

My visit to the post office brings 2600 cards over to the troops this month! You all have been very busy! I saw some very creative Father’s Day cards and some very patriotic 4th of July cards. There was a huge amount of general/thinking of you cards and not so many birthday cards this time around.

I also got an amazing amount of postage donations this month and was humbled beyond belief. Thank you all so much. For all of you that have been donating I have good news, I am officially a 501C3 Non-Profit Corporation in the State of New Hampshire! I have filed for my Tax ID number and have the paperwork to register with the Attorney General.

I will be out of town all next week for work so if any of you send emails and I don’t answer right away that is why. I’ll get back to you as soon as I return.

Remember, next round is all general cards.

Thank you all again for your continued support!

Pam

April Update

Hi Everyone!

We’ve had two successful mailing’s since my last update. The first mailing was for Easter/Passover cards. In that mailing 2500 cards were sent out. Thank you all very much! Because of that support I am able to send at least one box with approximately 300 cards and envelopes to 6 different troops that are deployed and most times two boxes get sent each month!

The second mailing was for Mother’s Day and Armed Forces Day cards.  The Armed Forces Day cards were not as many as I had hoped unfortunately, there were only about 300 of those so not every soldier got one. Add those total’s to the Mother’s Day mailing and that mailing total was about 1800 cards.

I have received a few thank you notes from the troops and need to scan them in and share them with you, unfortunately my main computer in the house has crashed and that is the computer that the scanner is hooked up to so I am on my laptop. I will share them as soon as I can.

I also need to remind you all that if you are making cards on black and dark papers please add white paper inside the card. I have had to hold back several cards for fixing due to this. I can’t send them like this. Try to remember when you make the cards that you can only use a light colored pen on the inside of those cards as they are now and if those soldiers don’t have access to cards at all do they have access to a white pen? 

Again, thank you all for your support, I can’t do this without you.  Also, I hope if you sent your email in your box of cards you have received a note back from me, I have tried to reply to everyone. If not I apologize!  For those of you that have just sent a snail mail address, I am a terrible letter writer but I promise, I will get to it one day!

Our next mailing deadline is right around the corner if you can believe it! Father’s Day and Independence Day cards are due on May 8th. I seriously cannot believe it’s April 9th already, where does the time go?

Pam

Clarifying–Armed Forces Day Cards

A good question came in – if you want to write a note inside the cards for the troops, not on a sticky note this is OK. We are changing things up a bit and sending a second set of ‘Thank You’ cards to them troops this year per a great idea from a few supporters this year.

Hope this clarifies things for everyone.

February Update

Hello everyone!

Our February mailing turned out to be pretty successful. When I mentioned that I didn’t have many St. Patrick’s Day cards, you all came to the rescue and started making them and we were able to send out a bunch of them after all! I sent out 3500 cards this month. I’d say each box had a good 100 St Patty’s Day cards in each box.

I also got a 1000 envelopes donated from a very faithful card maker! Thank you so much Candy!

And to all of you who sent in postage donations, thank you again for your support! I hope to hear from the state on my non-profit paperwork soon and maybe you can officially start getting a real tax deduction!

I also got a note from Action Envelop that they have changed their name to Envelopes.com so please make a note if you have them saved to your favorites.

One of our next mailings will be for Mother’s Day and Armed Forces day cards. I have decided to switch this up a bit and make the Armed Forces day cards personalized. So please include a note to the soldiers in those cards like you do with the Veteran’s Day cards. I know it’s short notice but a few supporters have mentioned it and I think it’s a great idea so I wanted to start doing this. If you have already sent cards it’s not a problem because I am sure the soldiers have people they also want to send cards out to as well.

If you have any questions at all please feel free to shoot me an email!

Pam

Checking In

Just a little update before the February 12th deadline. I have only received about 75 St. Patrick’s Day cards (50 of those I have made) out of 2000 cards. So if you haven’t made any cards and plan on sending some in I could really use some of those please! Thanks!

And thank you to those of you that have sent in cards so far. I’ve got a lot of Thinking of You, Birthday, Miss You, Just Because, and Friendship so far which means by the deadline we should be in great shape.

I also received some wonderful notes and I have to say thank you for those as well and if you have an email address please include it when you send a note so I can write you back! I am a terrible snail mail writer so if you want a note back an email is the best way to get one!

OK that’s it for now, I’ll be back in two weeks with another update!

Pam

Welcome 2011!

Happy New Year All!

I must say our first shipment for the year has been a successful one! Here is what my scrapbook room looked like when a couple of friends came over to help me with this overwhelming pile:

And the results were 7200 cards to send to the troops! That’s 20 Large Flat Rate boxes full! Amazing huh? I know I say it over and over again but I just can’t thank you all enough! I will try to send out a personal note to each of you that enclosed your emails as well within the next few days, as you can see I’ve been a bit busy! I have to say thank you again to the Card Maker Magazine readers who are sending due to the Reader’s Reach Out article! Please keep them coming!

Also, thank you so much for the postage donations! They are greatly appreciated and with my shipping costs now having quadrupled much needed!

We need envelopes!!! I finally had to break down and order envelopes for the first time as we actually ran out! I found a great place to get them though so if anyone knows of someone who doesn’t make cards but wants to help they can always send an envelope donation! Action Envelope their web address is: www.Envelopes.com

and here are then envelopes we need:

http://www.envelopes.com/invitation/square-flap/a2-envelopes

Just a few reminders again:

Cards should be blank inside, a small stamped greeting is OK but there must be room for the soldiers to write handwritten notes.

Dark cards must have a white or light paper added inside. The soldiers don’t have access to light colored pens to write on that dark cardstock. Same for envelopes, please add a white label to them if you send a dark envelope.

NO GLITTER unless it’s Ranger Stickles or it’s covered with something that makes it not fall off if you rub it!

Handmade cards only please!

Thank you all again and enjoy the new year and what it brings!

Pam