Christmas Stockings for Troops

[Cynbad]

What a wonderful project you are all doing! I'm US Navy and stationed in Dubai right now. I can tell you from experience that in addition to snacks you might try adding a few other non perishable items like:

trial size anything...baby wipes, toothpaste, hand cleaner, shampoo, conditioner...etc.

Definately no chocolate...even M&M's melt over here:)

Books, even used ones...

A christmas card with a few signatures...some of us don't get much mail over here

The front section of a newspaper from home is always good, too.

I'll try to come up with some more ideas. I'm lucky, can go to the store and get most of the comforts of home...not like being on the ground in Iraq or even on a ship in the gulf (that's where I was last christmas).

Thanks for all you are doing for the Troops!

Cynthia

[quiltwithmom]

Cynthia,
Thanks for stopping in. How nice to hear from someone that knows what is needed. I do send the travel size items when I send things. I figure they fit nicely into backpacks.

I'm sure that GP will be glad to hear from you. Pam is the one heading this up. She is doing a wonderful job getting all of this organized.

THANK YOU for serving our country! We sure stand behind all of the troops and want you all to come home soon.

Have you been here before? Are you a quilter too? Just wondering how you happened to be here.

[gmaann]

Oh, Cynthia, Thank you so much for checking in here and especially THANK YOU for serving our country. We are so grateful!! Thanks also for the suggestions of things to include in the stockings. We are anxious to do what we can do to help the troops.
Ann

[Georgiapeach]

Cynbad, welcome to the forum and thanks so much for your input and suggestions on this! It is a privilege for all of us to do this gesture of thanks to those who are doing so much for all of us! It is so very nice to hear from you and I do hope to see you on here a lot more in the future! Again, welcome, and thanks!

I heard from the sargeant again today. They are really getting excited about these stockings!!! He said he's putting together a list of their names so I can personalize the Christmas cards that will go along with the stockings. He told me Dec.1st was plenty of time to send them out, but he's going to double check the date to make sure. And then whatever he tells me, I'll send them at least a week before that just to make doubly sure they arrive in time for Christmas! LOL! It was so nice hearing from him again, what a personable fellow. I cry with every e-mail I receive....it's so touching. Keep stitchin, ladies! LOL!

[ninepines]

last Christmas our little town of 300 sent over 5 boxes of stockings filled with goodies and letters from the kids............the hardest thing was getting enough money to pay for the postage! do you have a way to get by the cost of postage or to reduce it a bit? we would love to do it again....ninepines

[Georgiapeach]

ninepines, we've researched several avenues for this and nope, no luck.

[Itchn2Bstitchn]

I've got 20 that are just about finished. Just putting the finishing touches on them. Is anyone "personalizing" the cuffs? I was just wondering if I should use my embroidery machine and do a "Merry Christmas" or something like that. DH suggested the date so that they will always remember where they were and that we remembered them and sent these to them. If you're a sentamental person that would be fine, but how many soldiers are sentamental?

.....(Hours later,)UGHGH! I cut, sewed and pressed all my cuffs only to find out they aren't big enough! Then, after recutting (one), I sewed it on wrong. Frustrated....been working on this all day! Time to give it a break....will try again tomorrow.

[Georgiapeach]

Oh Itchn, bless your heart....been there and done that myself! Yes, take a break and come back to it later!

Just wanted to update: this a.m. my assistant and I have been laying stockings out on the floor in my office and taking pics of them and we are flat worn out!!!! Yahoo! Of course, we have to "oooooh -n- aaaaah" over every single stocking, then tear-up and cry a little bit, and repeat the whole process again! LOL! You are not going to believe this....we just took pics of 97 stockings that have arrived since the last batch of pics I posted!!! Yes, 97, you read right!!!!! Ok, if my math is correct, that puts us up to 217 Christmas stockings now!! OMG!!! Please don't ask me to go back and count all the stockings right now...I am whooped! LOL! This is just incredible. And something I'm very excited about, too, is that Nadine2007 is coming to Columbus, Ga. in early Oct. and my DH and I are going to drive down to meet her! We're going to have lunch and then we thought we'd go shopping for snacks for the stockings together! And we're going to do a photo-shoot of the event to post for ya'll! I'm trying to post pics and keep ya'll abreast of each step of this project as it progresses so you will see your contributions. I feel so honored to be the one receiving these beautiful stockings to fill them and send them on their way to our troops. Soon I'll post pics of my family and our employees in our warehouse playing like elves, stuffing stockings! And pics as the boxes are loaded up into the co. van and taken to the post office. What'd ya wanna bet ole GP will be crying in every pic?!

[CoyoteQuilts]

I am posting this in this topic because they go hand in hand. One of my newsletter sites--

[url]http://www.hearttohandonline.com'>http://www.hearttohandonline.com[/url]
posted the following in their newsletter:

THANK A SOLDIER
Something cool that Xerox is doing: If you go to this web site, www.letssaythanks.com , you can pick out a
thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq . You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to some member of the armed services. How AMAZING it would be if we could get everyone we know to send one!!! Please send a card. It is FREE and it only takes a second.

How neat is that? This forum has lots of pull-How about it folks?
S

[sunsup]

Very neat and very easy. It seems too easy, insignificent, but I've heard that alot of our folks don't get much mail, so maybe this will bring a smile to someone.

OK, your turn.