Sweet Colors

Today all of the crayons were purchased, as well as some more candy!

This brings our list down to:
45 lbs Hard Candy
31 bouncy balls (if anyone feels so inclined)

We are also up to $389.40 for shipping costs! Which is what we will be ending at.

Coloring Toothbrushes

We got all the rest of the toothbrushes, some 6 lbs of candy, and 45 boxes of crayons today! :) Woo hoo!

This brings our list down to:
53 lbs Hard Candy
78 Crayons/Colored Pencils/Markers
12 Activity Books
31 bouncy balls (if anyone feels so inclined)

Come Clean

We got all the bar soap we need!!!!! I think some more people are shopping today, and I will find out what they bought after church tonight, so I will wait to post an updated list then. :)

Want to Volunteer? Here's How!

Provision

We received all of the washcloths and ziplock bags needed and some bar soap today! Woot!

This brings our list to:
60 lbs Hard Candy
123 Crayons/Colored Pencils/Markers
111 Bar Soaps
12 Activity Books
57 toothbrushes
31 bouncy balls (if anyone feels so inclined)

I will start updating every time we get something so this will always have the most up to date list. :)

! (UPDATED 10/23)

Whew! It's been a long night, stuffing bags full of pencils, pens, erasers and sharpeners. Fun!

Tonight we received more crayons, stuffed animals and notebooks. Below is a list of what we still need.

60 lbs Hard Candy
123 Crayons/Colored Pencils/Markers
200 Quart Ziplock Bags
131 Bar Soaps
146 Washcloths
12 Activity Books
57 toothbrushes
1 stuffed animal or doll
31 bouncy balls

I am planning on doing another full inventory count throughout this week to make sure I haven't missed anything. :) If there are any count changes I will note it on the inventory page.

UPDATE 10/23: I have updated totals and added some items above that we still need. This is a complete shopping list for November. Please email me as soon as you buy anything off this list with amounts! Thank you.

Inventory Update

We have received a donation of the rest of the pens and notebooks we need! Also in the donation was 200 mini band-aid packs!

Check out the Inventory Page for updates. It was also re-arranged to what we still need is at the top of the page.

New Page!!

There is a new page for you to check out tonight!! It has all the details for the different ways you can volunteer thru church with Operation Christmas Child this year.

Check it out!

October Shopping

Updates!

Last week we got a whole ton of stuff! Check out the inventory page!

We got soap, washcloths, notebooks, crayons, pens, ziplock bags!

August Is Here...What Are You Buying???

Time for July Shopping

Are You Ready?

It's time to start thinking about the fact that there's a really cool way to help Samaritan's Purse with the shoeboxes each year. I'm talking about working at the Distribution Center! Yay!

Last year, Bryan, Judy, Ryan, Janet and I headed over and helped sort boxes for 4 hours. The time went by very quickly (until the last 30 minutes! lol). It was so much fun getting the boxes ready to ship over seas.

We got some training and then got to work. We had money to take out of the boxes (shipping cost donations), make sure there were no liquids, glass/breakables, or 'unacceptable' items, tape the boxes shut, scan bar codes for tracking, and pack in larger boxes for shipping. It may have been tiring work, but it also felt so rewarding!

So...are you interested in joining us this year? Huh? Huh? You should! It will be a blast. Don't worry about trying to plan that far in advance if this is something you can do. Right now, I just need to know if you are interested for reserving a large enough group space. Although the signup time is in August, we won't be actually helping until sometime in November or December. I won't need a final 'yes' until a week before we actually go...that should be enough time for you to see if it will work, right?

Last year we sent 5 people, do you think this year we can send 10?

New Month, Old Goals

Perhaps this blog was not the best idea for this year! I can count on one hand who reads it. It was a great idea. Just bad timing, I guess.

Since there is a slide made for this month of June, I should upload it. But I keep getting errors. Instead, here's a list of what we have started in past months and still need:

76 quart sized ziplock bags
185 bars of soap (wrapped, but not in individual boxes, please!)
180 washcloths
161 toothbrushes
23 stuffed animals/dolls
40 activity books (Kristin finds great ones at JoAnn Fabrics!)

Also, for the few that DO read this blog, I have a question:
Since we decided to fill boxes for 2-4 year olds, do we want to not do (as many) school supplies? We could perhaps not put in notebooks if we don't have them; and put in less pencils, maybe 3 instead of 5 and 1 pen instead of 3? What do you think? Please email me or post here!

We're Getting There!

If 3 more decks of cards are brought to church on Saturday we will have all the games we need for 200 boxes!! woot!

Yay!

Great news! As of today, we have all the toothpaste and erasers we need. :)

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing!

May Goals!

Someone's Been BUSY Shopping!

This has been a busy week! We just got (drum roll, please!)

192 toothpastes (only need 8 more!)
73 stuffed animals (27 short of 200!)
160 erasers (only need 359 more!)
3 activity books (it should be easy to get 50 more!)

Totals have been updated on the Inventory page. :)

April Showers....

It is a new month! With a new shopping goal.

March Madness:Toothpaste & More

Anyone visiting the dentist soon? Ask if they would be willing to donate tooth paste or tooth brushes!!

Update!

I got a whole passel of stuffed animals and other goodies for the boxes this weekend. The Inventory page has been updated! I also added a new line, Activity Books. Kristin has found some awesome, awesome activity books and we have almost enough for each box to have one!!

Love in the Air?

Valentine's stuff should be on sale today! Walmart has some very adorable stuffed animals, and I'm sure Target has cute things as well. :) Time to shop!!!!!

Updates

The Inventory and Buying List pages have been updated. :)

Oops!

We don't need any more toys! Games, crafts, and all the good stuff left to get!

Enough Girly Toys!

No more girl toys, please!!! At the rate they have been coming in, we will have 200 boxes for girls!!!!

Gender neutral toys or toys for boys would be great. :)

Does Anyone Read This?

If so...should I change the numbers on the Buying List page as items are received, so it looks like we need less and less, or leave it with the total that we need (what we have is here)?

February Shopping!

V-Day

Valentine's Day is sneaking up on us, and that means: cute toys and crafts for shoeboxes!! The Dollar Tree and Target Dollar Spot have excellent toys and stuffed animals and crafts (as well as pretty cool Mardi Gras masks and eye glasses!)

Paper Dolls!

Something fun to send in the shoeboxes would be paper dolls. You can Google 'paper doll' and find tons of different dolls to print (some that can be colored by you or the shoebox recipiant) or buy books :) Either way, paper dolls are fun!

Pencil Sale

While looking for decent pencil images for a slide show, I found this sale (ends 1/16/11). If 67 packages of this were ordered, it would cost about $57.00, delivery would be free, and we'd have all 1000 pencils for our 200 boxes! (200 pencils have already been purchased.)

Office Depot Pencil Sale

OOOOh, La La!!

Just received an email from Samaritan's Purse...some of our boxes went to India and some went to Haiti!!! The ones for Haiti were just delivered.

UNO!

I heard thru the OCC Grapevine that Target has UNO cards for $1 this week. Anyone care to check it out and stock up? Let me know!

January Buys

January is upon us and it is time to buy those wonderfully cute stocking stuffers in the clearance section of your favorite store, rubber bands and quart ziplock bags!

Do not feel like you must only buy in these categories - if you find something you'd like to put in a box, get it!!

Please bring anything you buy for the OCC shoe boxes to me at church.

Thank you!

A New Year, A New Goal!

If you missed it, last year when people got together at Russie's to assemble OCC boxes, we started making plans for OCC 2011! We made 3 lists to help us get organized and have a smashing time!

We decided to fill 200 boxes this year. It seems like a good number. The shopping list seems quite daunting when it was broken down with what we put in each box. But, with everyone helping and buying everything all year long, it can be done!

Instead of a couple people buying things through the year, we wanted to create a place where everyone can go to see goals, what we need and what we have. This is the place! I will be updating it monthly with different things to buy that month. As I receive what you are buying, I will update the list of what we have so everyone can see our progress.