Towels

The big ticket item came today - 300 hand towels on my doorstep!  My friend A. has offered to wash and dry them ALL!  Thank you - what an angel!  The towels will not be fully absorbent until after they are washed and dried, and many of the people these are going to help won't have the ability to do that.  This is an important part of preparing the towels.  We purchased the towels from towelemporium.com and got the 12 packs of 14" x 16" premium white, 2.3 lbs/dz.

In the future, I want to order towels that are 2.5 lbs/dz or higher quality.  CLICK HERE to see my post for the reason why.

Toothbrushes

I got my package of 1,000 toothbrushes today!  (that's a LOT of dental hygiene!)  It is more than we'll need this year, but I'll save the leftovers for next year.  We purchased them from venturesix.com and we ordered the "Colorburst Toothbrush".  These are my favorite because they come individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper instead of a bulky box so they fit easily into the kit.  I also LOVE that there are 6 different colors!  We make sure the toothbrushes that go into the kits are all different colors so that the family who receives it will be able to know who's toothbrush is who's.  :)

Combs

The combs came today!  We ordered them from overstock.com - the Medline Large Handle Black Comb.  I have a lot of pocket combs left from last year, so we'll use one handle comb and one pocket comb per kit and when we run out of pocket combs we'll put in 2 handle ones.  I love the handle combs because they could actually brush through a woman's hair - unlike a small pocket comb.

SOAP

The soap came today!  Wow - that was FAST!  (remember, we only ordered it yesterday.)  We ordered from soap.com and were able to get 4.5 oz bars of Ivory.  Ivory works well because they are individually wrapped - not in individual boxes.  This allows them to fit more easily into the hygiene kits.

Supplies Are Ordered

It's my birthday today!  As a gift, my husband took a few hours, sat down with me and shopped around online - figuring out how to maximize our funds for the needed supplies. (Thank you D!)  We have now ordered all the towels, soap, combs, toothbrushes, and toothpaste!  We will be able to make around 150 kits - far surpassing my goal of 35!  (We ended up spending more than we collected in order to round things out on the supplies - donations are still welcome at any time.)

I can't wait to get everything and schedule assembly!!  I'm so happy!  :)




Funds for 2012!

The grand total is in...  The amount donated for the 2012 Humanitarian Project is $550.24!

THANK YOU to everyone to contributed this year!

Unexpected Changes

As I stated previously, our family is preparing to move.  We've known about this change for a while, and were planning on moving in the summer of 2012 after school was out.  Around Thanksgiving we found out that my husband will be needed in our new area sooner than that, so our lives are a little crazier as the preparations for getting our house on the market need to happen now.

Because of these new developments, my project may not be brought to completion by January as I'd originally hoped.  But fear not!  I will see it through to completion before we move, even though it may end up happening on a similar timeline to last year.  (which was completed in March and delivered in April)