Sending HANDMADE BLANK cards to deployed troops for them to send back home to their loved ones. Please be sure to read the card specs to the right.
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…
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
I apologize for this late posting. I wrote this post last month but it must have gotten lost because when I came back post the 2013 mailing schedule it was not here! We were able to send over 2000 Veteran’s Day cards this mailing. That is our biggest mailing yet for the personalized cards to the soldiers! Thank you all so much for taking the time to thank our soldiers! I want to share a photo of one of the groups we have been sending cards to. I personally know one of the men in this photo, I worked with him on the base where I work before he was deployed. He and his group are in Afghanistan doing great things and your cards are a wonderful show of support to them.
Thank you all for the donations for postage and for including envelopes with your cards. Your continued support to my organization is very much appreciated. Without you I can’t continue to do this!
Pam
Happy First Day of Fall!
We had a big mailing this month, 3781 cards! Thank you to all those who sent in cards. A lot of Halloween and Thanksgiving cards but also a bunch of those much needed Birthday cards came in so thanks so much for hearing my request! Keep them coming as we always need those! Thank you to all for your postage donations again, you all are so generous! I know I say it over and over but without you all I can’t do this so thank you all for your continued support of cards and donations!
Now don’t forget, Veteran’s Day is the next mailing, please take time to make some cards to thank the soldiers. These are NOT blank inside. You write a thank you note to the soldier in it. They do not need an envelope. I need a LOT of them, one to hand personally to each soldier and I send to 10 different troops right now. Most of them with over 100 men/women in them, one of them has 1000 in the group. Please help with this, they deserve a note of thanks! Those cards are due to me on October 8th please.
On September 15th I joined the ladies of the First Congregational Church in Manchester, NH for a Card Making Day. They made 10 cards for $10. The cards were all designed by friends of mine, Denise and Pam who are members of the church. They asked me to come and tell the ladies about CFS and then they requested at the end of the card making session that they donate at least two of their cards to CFS. Well with 15 ladies there I expected to go home with 30 cards to add to my boxes. Imagine my surprise when I got a box of cards from a lady that wasn’t even there full of wonderful cards that she sent to Denise to give to me, and an even bigger surprise when a few more of the ladies then handed over all 10 of their cards to me when they were done! It was very heartwarming. Here are some photos of these wonderful ladies making their cards (I am in the last photo in the white shirt, which is my CFS shirt by the way!)…
Thanks so much to Denise and Pam for inviting me to talk about CFS and to all the new friends I met at First Congregational Church for your generosity!
I know most of you have been sending cards for a long time and know that there has always been a no envelope requirement unless your card size is larger than A2 size. Unfortunately I need to change this requirement due to the fact that envelope donations are not coming in anymore and I just can’t afford to be spending more money on envelope costs as well as postage to ship the cards. Boxes of cards cost me at least $125 a month, sometimes double that. I just had to purchase 1000 envelopes as well which was also a large chunk of change because I ran out during a mailing and had to run to staples vs. ordering on line, another $120. Not pretty. I now have to ask that envelopes be included with your cards. I understand that it will increase your costs and that you may have to send less cards but I am hoping that I can start getting some corporate donations and that this will only be a temporary thing. So please bear with me! A lot of you already send envelopes, and I thank you so much for this!
See you all in the next post! Thank you again for your support!
Pam
There are 1248 cards to mail out tomorrow. Just finished sorting them all and I want to thank everyone who made a contribution to this month’s mailing. Thank you as well to all those who made postage donations too! You all are fantastic!
I am now sending cards to three co-workers in three different places, one of whom had to leave his family for 15 months, that’s a long time when you have three young kids and wife at home! To think that after the Chaplain we started CFS for back in 2006 came home I didn’t know anyone in the Middle East and now be sending to three people who actually work on the same base I work on is very strange, it’s a very small world!
There are so many nice notes in the packages and I just want to mention that if you would like a return note from me please include an email address if you have one. I would love to drop you a note in response!
I have a couple of things I wanted to mention…
First, the soldiers get free postage for letters and cards, they don’t have to use stamps so if you send me stamps I cannot use them. I appreciate the thought but I also use electronic postage since my packages that I send are $10.85 or $12.95 per package when I ship them that would be too many stamps to stick! I don’t save the boxes that the cards come out of, just the notes so if your note doesn’t have your contact info in it I can’t send them back to you, I’m sorry.
Second, there is still a shortage on birthday cards, I have an over abundance of thinking of you cards, miss you, hello but never that many birthday cards! If anyone likes to make birthday cards I’d really appreciate it!
Thanks again to all of you for everything you do!
Pam
It’s July 1st and I’m just getting around to the June mailing update. It’s been a busy month! We had 1713 cards and one of the biggest postage donation months in some time! June is usually one of the smaller mailings so I really appreciate everyone hanging in there with me as I know it’s hard as the summer months come.
The next mailing is for Patriots Day and Grandparents Day cards and is due on July 30th. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy 4th of July!
Thank you all for your continued support!
Pam
If you look over to your right -------> there is now a “Donate” button right here on the blog! For those of you with a paypal account you can donate directly through that button. As you may or may not know Cards for Soldiers is run totally out of my pocket except for the donations I receive. I am not funded by anyone. I don’t have endless amounts of money, I am a regular person. These donations are a huge help to me and will go towards postage and purchases of envelopes when the supply I have runs out or donations of envelopes stop coming in. If you don’t have a Palpal account let me assure you it’s very safe, I’ve had one for years, I use my personal account to shop online all the time which is why I’ve decided to set up a CFS account as well. So please pass the word along, even to those that don’t make cards, ask them if they are willing to donate, look how easy it is, just the click of a button!
Thank you!
Pam
I got an email from a new supporter who told me about an article she read in this month’s Creating Keepsake Magazine. Well I hadn’t read my subscription yet as I hadn’t had time so I was wondering if maybe she confused CFS with another organization or something and ran down to my scraproom to get my issue. Much to my surprise right there on page 44 was a nice paragraph regarding CFS! For those of you that don’t get the magazine I’ve scanned it for you to see. (you can click on it to make it larger)
Thanks for the plug Creating Keepsakes! You made my day!
On this Holiday weekend please take a moment out of your festivities to remember our Heroes. Happy Memorial Day!
Happy Spring everyone! I guess you could call it Spring here in New Hampshire, it was crazy warm with a bunch of 80 degree days in March, then on April Fool’s Day we got a snow storm and it was cold for most of the month. Now in the beginning of May it rained for a week straight! I for one am ready for warmth!
We had another great Round this time with 2419 cards that came in! As well as some wonderful postage donations! I have to say thank you so much to all of you for all the support again!
Round 6 is Due June 15th and is for General/All Occasion cards. These are for your normal Birthday, Thinking of You, Miss You, Thank You, Anniversary, Wedding, New Baby, New Home, Sympathy, and any other types of cards you can think of that don’t fit into the specific holiday categories. Birthday and Thank You are the ones we do not get a lot of but are needed. Think of how many birthday’s the soldiers miss and also how many care packages they get where they could use a beautiful handmade card to send!
I also wanted to share a note one of our dedicated card makers received from a Colonel in Afghanistan just recently…
Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!
Until next time, sending you my kindest regards and thanks for everything you all do!
Pam
Wow, I can’t believe I missed the March update! I apologize! I didn’t even realize it until someone sent an email and told me they hadn’t seen an update since February! I guess when you don’t get Google Reader updates on your own website that can happen!
Life got in the way for me, March was a hectic month, I took a little birthday trip out to San Diego to spend some time with one of my best girlfriends for 6 days, had a blast and I guess I have been playing catch up since! I left on March 1st and actually left my 16 year old son in charge of putting the boxes out to be picked up by the mail man. He has been helping me with the cards as his community service project for school so I figured that could be part of his duty. I made it very easy for him and 1861 cards were mailed for the March mailing!
I owe a bunch of you notes that put a note in your box, I apologize, the deadline was right at the same time as my trip so I put them off until I got back and then the notes got put under a pile on my table and forgotten about. I am going to get to them this week!
As for the April mailing which consisted mostly of Armed Forces Day and Mother’s Day cards we sent 2002 cards! I have to say there were over 300 Armed Forces Day cards, which was pretty great! Still not enough to give one to each soldier that uses our cards but baby steps right?
Thank you to everyone who sent postage donations!
Our next mailing deadline is May 4th and is for Father’s Day and 4th of July cards.
Oh and thank you for the increase in the number of birthday cards, there were so many more this time around!
Until next time!
Pam
1007 Cards this mailing. Sorry I am so late with the post. I am a little behind with things this month! If any of you sent me a note with your package I’ll be getting back to you very soon I promise! Thank you all for your support!
I had a helper this month, my son Jake is helping me out as his community service for his Sophomore project for school. He has to do 30 hours so he did a lot of sorting yesterday! He thinks its boring! How he thinks looking at such great cards can be boring is beyond me!
Our next mailing is right around the corner, Passover and Easter card are due March 1st. We could really use some birthday cards as well if anyone enjoys making those. We tend to get a lot of Thinking of You but not a lot of Birthday.
Thank you all! I appreciate everything you do!
Pam
Happy New Year! It’s our first mailing of 2012 and we will have 2128 cards to send! Not too shabby! Thank you to all of you who sent Valentine’s Day cards! The soldiers will have lots of “Love” themed cards to send home this year. There were so many pretty ones I had a great time looking at them! There were some general themed cards as well and I thank you for those because we definitely need those each mailing too! I didn’t have as much card making time as I would have liked this time so I need to get started really soon on my St. Patrick’s Day cards because that deadline is just around the corner!
Once again I want to thank you all for the postage donations. And on that note I would like to ask you all to please pass the word on about the fact that I am an official 501c3 Non-Profit organization. Which means donations are tax deductible! If you know anyone that has a company that does matching donations, please ask them to consider donating to Cards for Soldiers in their company match program. Thank you!
Until next time,
Pam
