From Our Hearts

Got Card Fronts? See What Topeka is Doing

St. Patrick's Day cards were mailed out Feb 2 and our volunteers in Topeka were busy not only turning our donated card fronts into cards, but they found time to create some GREEN to add to the most recent box of lovely cards shipped our way.  Regina's note says it all.  184 of the 230 cards they shipped were created by their volunteers and they would have made more, but ran out of green card stock!

Take a look at a sample of the cards they created, in addition to those they converted into cards from all those card fronts received by many individuals, nationwide:

 

And this is how she carefully packs the cards for shipment to the home office:

Beautifully handcrafted - this is the QUALITY work that our volunteers in Kansas turn out and send to us on a regular basis.

We are told that they are running low on all occasion card fronts - they have worked diligently to make cards out of donated fronts and swap cards that what they have left to work on is mostly Christmas cards.

Not that they mind - but we are told a little variety (perhaps summer, birthday, thinking of you, miss you . . .) would be like a breath of spring right now!

Card front donations are shipped to a different location - contact us at cards@fromourhearts.info and we'll e-mail you the address to ship those card fronts, swaps, or even "bent" or "dogeared" and worn out handcrafted cards that you think aren't usable.  These talented ladies in Topeka are the "experts" at turning them into gorgeous cards!  From Our Hearts recycles, reuses . . . !

American Legion Post 5 Auxiliary - Jefferson City MO STAMPS for From Our Hearts

The day finally arrived.  Saturday, January 16.  1 - 4 p.m.  From Our Hearts had coordinated this day of stamping with the Auxiliary at the request of Connie Pack.  The planning started in September of last year.

The plan:  make 225 cards.  The Auxiliary and the men of Post 5 graciously donated the funds to support this many cards, envelopes and clear envelopes.  (Hmmm . . . . . the planner that we are, we ALWAYS have a BACKUP! - more on that, later . . . )

We arrived early, set up for about 20 ladies.  And they arrived . . . even one with her infant in tow (and we never heard a peep the entire time!)

Instructions were given and the stamping began.

It was a full room of ladies of all ages.  Some ladies had never stamped before.  Others had years of experience and that was a bonus, as they helped those at their table.  Janice, pictured below on the right, is a Stampin' Up!® Independent Demonstrator and was a tremendous help.  (And Janice took it in stride when Martie called her Donna and Janet so many times that day!)

The theme of the cards made that day were patriotic - fitting, we thought, as these were American Legion Auxiliary ladies.  Miss you, thinking of you and congratulations cards began to appear.

And they had fun making them!  Holding stamping events to make cards for From Our Hearts is more than just making handcrafted cards.  It is a great way to give back to those who serve our country AND do a little bit of socializing, too!

 

Below, Connie is standing in the back, "supervising".  She was in charge of cutting up the customized slips we prepared especially for this event.

 

From Our Hearts had help from some local volunteers.  Do you recognize Donna P, in the white sweater?  She helped us with our Valentine Boxing Party and offered her assistance at this event.

 
And of course there is Diana, another Stampin' Up! demonstrator who drove 30 miles just to help teach these ladies how to stamp and who has helped us in the past:

And one more volunteer.  This is a special young lady whose name is Taylor.  She is 15 and an AVID troop supporter and advocate for From Our Hearts - do you see her leaning against the post?  Taylor took pictures, did the "running", helped set up and break down the event and was our "hands on" gal.  Without the help of our many dedicated volunteers, events such as these would not run as smoothly and of course, these ladies wouldn't be having as much fun!

Back to the 225 cards.  Did we say they MADE 225 cards?  No . . .  with the generous support of contributors nationwide, we were able to ADD to this and more cards were made.  We just knew that these ladies could make MORE than 225 cards.  We were prepared.

Credit must be given to our design volunteer, Kavi,  located in Hillsville, VA.  She designed, prepared, cut, and SENT everything to us - ready to stamp, including some of the stamps we used.  From Our Hearts provided the cardstock and paper - Kavi donated her time and effort - from HER heart!

And here are the cards (well, most of them . . . the ladies were still working on the green happy birthday cards when this shot was taken!)

 

And we weren't done, yet!  One more step - instructions were give by Martie on how to put the card, envelope and slip into the clear envelope.

 

And they began.  This many cards would normally take us one entire evening to do but with the work of so many hands, it was done in a flash!

The final count?

317 cards!

All in about 2 1/2 hours.

Amazing.

Amazing work.

Amazing ladies.

And they want to do this again.

We are honored to have their help and support of our effort.

Ladies,  we thank you, From the bottom of Our Hearts!  And we look forward to stamping with you again.

 

Valentine Boxing Party . . .

The end of December . . . the day arrived and so did some dedicated volunteers to help us ready the Valentines for shipping overseas.  We figured it would take not one, but two evenings to get this accomplished.  We were right.  The first evening, we had the help of Terry (on the left) and Susan (on the right), pictured below.

They went right to work, sorting out cards, pulling out all the "like" Valentines so that we could place some of them in each box.  We figured the first night we would work on 13 boxes.  They had the help of Pat, pictured at the right, below.

Some individuals held cardmaking events and made dozens of cards that were alike.  We made sure that these were dispersed among the boxes so there was a good mix of cards in each box.

These "packets" of "like" cards were handed off to our other volunteers, Sue (pictured below in front) and Dan (you can't miss him!).  And of course, our VP of Operations is in the back, Susan.

Around and around the table they went, Sue, Susan, Susan (yes, we know many Susans!!!), Pat, Terry, Dan, Martie and of course, Tom (Martie's husband!), carefully placing the cards in the boxes.

 

Tom is below, in the center.  We don't catch too many pictures of him as he is usually behind the camera!  We had quite the time.  Once the boxes were full . . . oh . . . did I forget to tell them we had to COUNT the number of cards in each box?  Well, Dan took over that job early and got a head start.

By 9:30 we were all just about wiped out.  Just look at the (organized) mess!

All 13 boxes were full, counted, sealed and ready:

And this is what we faced the next night.  Tom and I went to bed!  Did we say we work a full time job, too?

And the next evening, more help arrived.  Meet Donna:

No pictures of our "boxing" because, well, you saw the first night!  After the remaining boxes were finished, the dreaded custom declaration forms needed to be completed.

We are fortunate to have Terry's help in this department as she had "premade" many of them.  All that was required was to fill in the number of boxes, declare the value, add the date, sign and of course, address the boxes.  Pat and Susan helped with this task.

 

No party would be complete without a final picture, showing the results of our effort.  Even our dog had to get in the picture as we can't tell you how many times we had to step OVER her when going around the tables!

Day 3 . . . this was January 2 - mailing day . . . Tom and Martie arrived at the post office with 30 boxes.  Nearly 9,000 cards . . . and Mary Beth was on duty, again!

Yes, it is all in a day's work, but when we told her 30 boxes, she let out a GREAT BIG SIGH!  It seems her coworker called in sick that day.  She took it in stride and dug in.

We were happy to take this final shot of the boxes.  This means they are finally on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan.  15 different locations.  2 boxes each.  Nearly 600 cards to each location.

 
Our many, many thanks to all who hurried to get the Valentines to us and to our Jefferson City volunteers who made our work easier.  It takes alot of work to get these cards into the mail.  Many months of collecting and storing but it is worth it . . . nearly 9,000 individuals will be able to send home a card to a loved one.  Nearly 9,000 individuals will receive that "perfect" card that would not have been possible, otherwise.

Kavi and the Papershakers

Hillsville VA and the Papershakers is where this box came from, decorated for Valentine's Day and how fitting, because Valentines is what we received!

Recognize this stamp?  We think this is such clever use of this stamp with the mailbox on it.  And "sending sweet thoughts from our hearts!" - they embrace the true spirit of what we do!

Kavi put together a nice letter to us, with pictures of all the Papershakers (making the cards, of course) and we feel like we really do know each and every one of them.  This group of ladies get together after their exercise class to stamp for the troops and eat (what a great combination!)

In among the cards was this card for Susan T, our VP of Operations.  Susan devotes many, many volunteer hours here at the home office, ordering supplies, counting cards and preparing cards that arrive "not ready" for the boxes - putting them into the clear envelopes, adding the slips, helping prepare boxes to ship . . .

Kavi thoughtfully handcrafted a small notebook to help Susan to stay organized!

Here are the cards we found, again, all bundled by type and PRE-COUNTED (yes, less work for Susan) and with their own personalized slip included with each card - each one with an envelope and sealed in a clear envelope.  Thank you, ladies!

In addition, Kavi is one of our card designers for our free From Our Hearts card making events in Jefferson City.  She designs, cuts cardstock and donates them to us - even including retired sets for us to use.  Below are some birthday cards she prepared, sending all what it took to make them, including the ribbon and even sponges.  Above, the green set is also another batch of birthday cards.

The Valentines below are Kavi's creations, designed, prepped and sent to us for our library event.

Kavi is now considered our official Virginia From Our Hearts volunteer, as she not only makes cards to send to the troops, but goes above and beyond to help us in this special way just because "you are way too busy to do it all".

She is so right - we are very busy and her help, every month, is invaluable.

Stamping From Our Hearts in Illinois

From Our Hearts has dedicated stampers in the Sugar Grove/Oswego Illinois area.  If you are on Facebook, you'll want to visit Julie Wilson's Stamping From Our Hearts in Illinois page and sign up!

Her membership list is growing - and Julie has many volunteers who come to her local events to help support our troops and From Our Hearts' effort in sending over the thousands of handcrafted cards - she could use more help if you are from her area of the state!

Julie held 2 events recently and as a result, boxes of cards came our way.

 

Julie sent 3 BIG boxes of cards - with over 700 cards and lots of cardstock and extra envelopes and clear envelopes, too.  Volunteers donated cash to help with her expenses and with it, she also purchased supplies for From Our Hearts.  These "extras" help us out tremendously for when we receive boxes of "just" cards that need those envelopes and clear envelopes AND for when we get our boxes of cards from our volunteers in Topeka . . . (all of their hard work and talent turning sometimes very old card fronts into usable cards)!

Many stampers do this and in addition, raise funds to help From Our Hearts send the boxes of cards to Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Here are just 2 of Julie's boxes.

 

Even 4 rolls of packing tape!  And we used it all just recently, boxing up all those valentines~!

Julie's boxes were very well organized, with all of her cards neatly packed and identified inside envelope boxes.  They arrived in great shape.  She sent a variety of cards, including the one below:

In her shipment were 100+ cards contributed by Ann L, from Oswego, IL, pictured below with her husband.

Ann coordinated a stamping for the troops table at their town's annual Christmas Stroll (Walk).  People of all ages, ranging from 18 months to 80 years old helped to make cards.  Now, while an 18 month old really cannot make a card, we like to think they are helping to make a difference!

Pictured above is a mom with her small child, making a card. 

Here are some of Ann's cards.

We think this is the first "marry me" card FOH has received and shipped over!

Ann and Julie, your efforts are commendable.  Keep up the great work in Illinois!

A Heartfelt THANK YOU

And this one goes to Dan Y from Taos, MO -

No, not a box of cards, but his time - and many hours of his precious time right before Christmas, away from his family.

Dan helped From Our Hearts just recently to prevent our computer from crashing - and it was very, very close to doing so!  One more day and we would have lost everything.

This is why no pictures on the blog these past 10 days or so - as we were unable to even resize one and save it.

A desperate SOS call to Dan was made and he spent countless hours helping to resolve the issue.

A heartfelt THANK YOU to Dan for spending a long, long evening with us and to his wife, Karen, for sharing him with us and her understanding!

We are now up and running again and soon we will have the countless pictures and stories that need to be told on our blog.

From Our Hearts Meets Up with Kavi C

And what a pleasant visit we had - albeit too short - as we were traveling through Virginia to North Carolina and made a quick stop in Hillsville . . . and finally met Kavi who has been donating cards to our effort since the day we began, almost 2 years ago.

Kavi is on the left, Jane (her upline who came out to meet us) is on the right, and Martie in the middle.  Kavi handed Martie a "From Our Hearts" bag, handmade by her daughter (thank you!), full of 122 cards donated to our effort, a beautiful Thanksgiving card to Martie and Tom (thank you Kavi!), 2 bottles of glitter glue to test out at our December event, a nice handcrafted pen and notepad, perfect for keeping track of the many, many messages and things to do for From Our Hearts AND (DRUM ROLL ...........) 100 cards, prepped for our FOH event in December!

Yes, Kavi is our newest official volunteer at From Our Hearts - our designer - she is donating her designing talent and time to create and prep cards for our events in Jefferson City.  We pulled out our calendar of events and shared the dates of our upcoming events - and we have many on our calendar.  We will be keeping her very busy.  And what a tremendous help this will be for us.

Tom didn't make it into any of the pictures as he was behind the lens.  It was hard to say goodbye but we had to be on our way to reach our final destination in North Carolina.  We thought it was appropriate to take a picture in front of the American flag:

After all, it is because of our servicemen and women who are protecting this flag and our freedom that we met and have become friends.

Kavi, you are the best!  And Jane, we appreciate your help in creating all those cards 122 cards that were donated.

On our next trip to North Carolina - we will plan a little more time to visit!

Matt . . . A Volunteer in a Different Way

Meet Matt . . . he met From Our Hearts about 30 miles north of our home base on his way through Missouri to Kansas.

Why?  To exchange boxes.

He took 4 large boxes of card fronts we have been collecting from contributors (those who included them with their cards) and gave us 4 boxes of 1200 cards that our volunteers in Topeka, KS have been hard at work making from all those card fronts that have been donated to From Our Hearts.

Yes, Matt is yet one more volunteer in our effort - and has saved us at least $100 in postage for those 8 boxes that we exchanged last week!

Matt graciously offered to be the pivot point for the exchange - and is helping us to stretch our precious donated dollars so that they may be used to mail the boxes to Iraq and Afghanistan instead.

Thank you, Matt!  We now have 1,200 cards that were once card fronts and many thousands of card fronts are now in the hands of our volunteers in Kansas who are happy to have a new supply to work with.

Do you have card fronts that you have stashed away, not being used anymore?  If so, you may recycle them by sending them to From Our Hearts.

Contact us at m.shea@fromourhearts.info for the address to mail them as it is a different location than where the cards are mailed.  Some of your donated dollars go toward the purchase of cardstock to turn the cardfronts into cards.  And your donations are tax exempt as we are a not for profit organization.  Everything we do is donated; all of our time, supplies, postage, everything . . . is supported by contributors nationwide.

We thank you in advance for your contributions.  Without your support, monthly shipments to our 10 chaplains would not be possible.

Our Support Comes in Many Ways

And it isn't only contributions by way of cards on our doorstep or checks in the mail.

Several have stepped up and gone the extra mile to help spread the word of what we do.

Take Julie W from Sugar Grove, IL.  She has created a facebook page dedicated to Stampin' From Our Hearts in Illinois.  Click here to visit her on facebook - and to see all of what she is doing for From Our Hearts in Illinois.  Julie's facebook is rather new but it is going full steam ahead!  Thank you Julie!

And then there are those who have put our button on the sidebar on their blogs.  Too many for us to mention, but we receive many inquiries as a result of their customers and friends clicking on it!

A few stampers have gone one step further.

I invite you to visit their blogs, you will see some very creative, artistic work!  And this is representative of the type and quality of the cards that we receive.

They each have written a very nice post in support of From Our Hearts and provided a link to our blog.  A simple, kind gesture on their part has inspired others to join our effort!

Those that we know of, for sure, are Gretchen B, Jen R , Wendy H and Patty B .  There may be others that we just don't know about.

We thank everyone for your support - in every way that you can, to help us to spread the word of what From Our Hearts is all about and in supporting our troops!

 

Kavi

First, a card arrives from a soldier stationed in Afghanistan.  A very nice note from Amy.  She says:

"Greetings from Afghanistan!  I just wanted to thank all of your at From Our Hearts, let you know that your efforts are appreciated.   I still write letters and am grateful for the beautiful free stationary."

She goes on to say that she works 12 hour days and gets one day off, has been deployed since December and is grateful for the mostly quiet deployment, with the exception of the occasional rocket attack and only once did they hit the compound where she lives and works.  And she closes her letter with "life is good".

Wow.  Imagine, 12 hour days, 6 days a week, with rocket attacks and life is good?

Back to why we are relating this to you.  The "stationary" that she chose - a beautiful card made with Baroque Motifs stamp set and using the eyelet edge punch (very feminine) was created by . . . Kavi!

Yes, she had signed the back of her card!

Next one:

We received another card just a day later.  This one comes from a male soldier, rank unknown but stationed in Iraq.  His was a rather lengthy letter.  He says:

"A co-worker mentioned he was going by the Chapel to get some cards to send.  I followed along to see what he was talking about.  I was very thankful to see the array of free cards.  I have used several to write to my wife.  One of the cards was signed with a name and Hillsville, VA.  I know the cards come from all over (I checked out your web page).  I enjoyed knowing that one of the cards sent to my wife, we live in VA, came from VA.  Thank you."

This is Kavi!  She had an event for From Our Hearts and the ladies creating the cards signed them on the back and wrote "Hillsville, VA" below their name.

Then comes Kavi's box of Holiday cards.   

 

Inside, a note and an envelope addressed to our mail carrier, "Stephen".

 

Hand delivered the next day, Stephen opened it up and she so thoughtfully wrote a thank you to him for taking such good care of our boxes of cards!  He was very touched!  It was a Kodak moment, for sure, only no camera was on hand to capture it!

Kavi sent cards, bases & clear envelopes.  Having her phone number, we talked about the "Kavi" week that we had here at From Our Hearts.

There is more . . .

Kavi is now designing cards, cutting and prepping everything to make cards for our free From Our Hearts events we hold monthly here in Jefferson City!  She explained it to me this way:

"All of you are so busy in Jefferson City with all you do getting the cards over to the troops.  I can either continue to make the cards and send them to you, or I can HELP YOU, donate my time, creativity, card stock, and send bundles of pre-prepared cards that you can take to your events.  This way, YOU won't have to worry about doing any of the prep work!  And I can design these cards with my retired stamp sets and send them along.  I'll design 4 or 5 cards using the same set."

Stunned?  Yes!  A prayer answered!  You see, all the board members at From Our Hearts hold down full time jobs.  So there goes 40 hours out of our week that we cannot devote to what is in our hearts.

So yes, Kavi, we accept your offer of help.  And so thankful are we!  And we just found out she will CONTINUE TO SEND US CARDS, TOO!

We would ask if there are any others who are willing to do the same?