Valentine’s Day!

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

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