Now that the quilt show is over and my basement is cleared out again, I am turning my attention back to Safelight. We have plenty of funds, case sets and cards to do a nice delivery next week. For new readers, this project is one that readers and I have done annually for 7 years. Most of those years have seen at least 2 deliveries. See the kickoff post Safelight Project 2024 to learn what the spa bags are all about, and the domestic violence shelter they support.

After our last delivery in February, I received this wonderful letter from Lauren Wilke, Executive Director. I hope you can read it

Shipments continued to arrive all through March and April for the next delivery. These boxes of wonderful handmade soaps arrived from Darlene’s niece, along with more case sets all in one day. Some of these soaps went into the Valentine gifts. These, along with the heavenly lavendar soaps received previously from Julee will ensure that every bag gets one.

Case sets arrived from Becky H, Sandra M, Mary Ellen, and Kathy R, along with cards from Sandra as well.

Susan B sent more of her fabulous cards. They are so unique, with lovely messages inside and beautifully decorated envelopes.

Case sets arrived from Linda B, Ada M and Helene C. Such fabulous fabric choices!

Elana G sent beautiful zippered case sets. She also sent cards made by the residents of the assisted living center where she works. All the cards have handwritten messages of hope and encouragement from the women who made them. They are just spectacular, and each one is unique.

Another set of packages had case sets from Diann, case sets and cards from Donna F, and extra goodies of floss and hand sanitizer from Debbie M.

I have been storing the case sets, cards and other items on shelves as they come in.

So, time to order supplies, and I did so with Dollar Tree to get items in cases as much as possible. I picked up the order at the end of last week, but I was not able to get all the items needed with the bulk order. So, I will make a few trips to the store for what I need to complete the delivery. Total spent $487.31

I ordered more canvas tote bags as well, this time getting three handle colors. Total spent $211.39.

These arrived in just a couple of days. After I placed these orders, I realized that I still have a dozen canvas bags left from the first delivery in February, as I was only able to put together 36 bags quickly at that time. So this shipment will have 60 bags.

I anticipate that I’ll spend at least $175 more in individual purchases at local Dollar Tree stores to bring the totals up to at least 60 items of each one. We have plenty of money in the project envelope, and will still have enough left over for a fall shipment, plus another special holiday gift for current residents later in the fall. I pulled out the case sets and counted out 60 of them.

I pulled out all the items I was storing for the next delivery, and took an inventory.

I counted the cards, and found that I still needed to make some. I pulled the cards that didn’t sell from the quilt show that could be used. Many were blank inside, so all I had to do was stamp a sentiment. I also had some blank note cards, so I set up my stamping platform with two sentiments for those.

I liked both of these, and they made a purchased card more special.

I added some stickers too. This made a few very quickly.

The Dollar Tree order arrived, and My Sweet Babboo went with me to pick it up. Knowing that we needed more than the shipment would have, we took some bags inside and got as much as we could.

I began to unbox everything to get it organized and start stuffing case sets. So this is where we stand for now. I emailed Safelight about delivering this week, but they asked me to hold off until next week. That’s fine, as I will have a bit more time to acquire the remaining items so every bag has the same contents.

After this delivery is made, we have enough money to do one more delivery in the fall. I have 30 case sets left, so I need 30 more. We are out of the inspirational cards after this delivery, so I hope my card makers can work on that over the next few months. We’ll need 120 cards for the fall shipment. I hope that the class I’ll do next month might get a local stamping group interested in helping. I’ll update the project again after I make this delivery. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the project!!