Operation Christmas Child - giving when things are tight!

Okay adding a family member this year has made things a little bit tighter, but we have been planning and saving items and purchasing things when they are on sale for Operation Christmas Child.  If you don't know about Operation Christmas Child here is a longer post on what it is and our family's involvement,
http://schickfunideas.blogspot.com/2014/12/operation-christmas-child-2014.html

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/




pens and pencils from 2 baskets in my kitchen

This year, now that we have been to the distribution Center, we are looking at things a little differently. How can we use what we have that we don't use to help others? What things do we use everyday and take for granted? How can we inexpensively put together items that would be needed/ used into our boxes?


Extra writing paper

Well who doesn't have writing paper, notebooks, tablet paper, etc that they haven't used or have tucked away somewhere. What about those over flowing cups, baskets, draws of pens and pencils? Are some of those still new? Never been used pencils? Well today I took a whole pile of writing paper that I haven't used in a while (email is faster) and then I sorted through our pen/pencil baskets. I checked all of the pens to make sure that they wrote, I checked the pencils to see if they were new, (never sharpened) or nearly new  (just sharpened once) and I checked the erasers to make sure they weren't crunchy( you know that type that have sat too long and are hard). I also found a box of erasers that they boys had collected over the years, and I started putting together writing kits for in our Shoeboxes. I didn't really have any financial input into it- I just put to use what is already in my house, that someone else can use.

And here are my writing kits!

Writing kits!!!