This week I made a Boutique Granny Stripe Bag (Tangled Happy) for our Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift.
I've been doing a shoebox gift almost every year since high school; it's a great way to keep perspective going in to the Christmas season. These kids won't get any Christmas presents besides through the Operation Christmas Child program. And Samaritan's Purse gives more than just the gifts, they follow up with the kids and teach them the true meaning of Christmas.
If you want to give a shoebox gift, it's super easy, and it's always a lot of fun!
I usually go to the dollar store, to keep the bill down. I got a reusable "shoe" box, and, as it suggests on the site, some school supplies (a notebook, mechanical pencils, solar calculator), some hygiene items (toothbrush, toothpaste, soap), and lots of fun stuff (flip-flops, hair ties, hair bands, glow sticks, a flashlight with extra batteries, a solar moving flower toy, a klick-klack wooden toy, a jump rope, stickers, hard candies, and, of course, the awesome crochet bag!). All of that cost about $18, so with the $7 donation for shipping, my total came to only about $25!
I love to imagine what a fun gift this will be for a girl, and this year my #1 can understand it, too. We really enjoyed picking things, thinking about the girl who gets our shoebox.
And because we made the shipping donation online, we can track our gift. We printed out our tag with a barcode on it which will be scanned and the destination country will be emailed to us. It will be so interesting to find out where our gift is headed! With the tag and a rubber band around the box, we are ready to take it to the drop-off location this week, Nov. 14-21.
What a great gift God gave to us when he sent his son as a baby to earth. Giving a gift to someone in need is a little expression of our thanks to him.
love this!!! love your generous heart and the super cute bag.
ReplyDeletewe dropped off ours last week. we've actually met recipients of shoeboxes on an africa trip once who also get schooling (and the town got a well) through samaritan's purse... really cool.
Interesting idea using a re-usable plastic container.. We wrap up shoe boxes in pretty ways and encourage each child to part take in a box (4 in total) and the older 2 do extra chores in a way to 'earn' the items they are putting in their box. I make a fuss taking them into our toddler group as well to make more people aware of how easy it is to do one and hopefully encourage them to do the same.
ReplyDeleteSuch a cute little bag...I of course see the link to the pattern but loved what you had done to it but wasn't sure if its the popcorn stitch you have used. Can you please share that with us & if it is can you just give the quick directions on doing that stitch. Thank you so much for sharing such cute patterns. I love them ALL!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks. I actually just followed the pattern... It must look different because of the yarn I used.
Delete