Letter from Janice, plus her Army of Hawaiian Shirts

WOW! I just received these photos from Janice over at Arbor Acres United Methodist Retirement Community in North Carolina. Boy have they been busy little bees! They've created a whole army of Hawaiian Shirts for their Fund Raiser! Janice also sent me this lovely thank you letter to share with all of you...

Dear Fellow Paper Crafters,

Thank you so very much for rising to the occasion to assist with the Hawaiian Shirt project for the Meals on Wheels Senior Services Fundraiser: The CARibbean Cruise which will be held on Thursday September 27th at Arbor Acres United Methodist Retirement Community in Winston-Salem, NC. I received 22 shirts from you and am thankful for your support.

I’ve cut out and made 60 shirt kits for my residents and we are getting together next week to make the shirts and place our labels in them. I ordered a 3 in block photo stand from Oriental Trading and we spray painted it Ancient Ruins Stone paint which looks just like Sand and these will be our stands to place the shirts in for display on the tables.

And I would like to thank you, Janice, for giving me and my readers the opportunity craft for such a worthy cause! All I can say is that you and the staff and the residents of Arbor Acres did an AMAZING job with the shirts. They all look WONDERFUL! I'm sure your CARibbean Cruise fund raiser will be even more successful!

p.s. Enjoy one of those cute little umbrella drinks in my name!

Hawaiian Shirt Blog Candy

Or is it a PIF? (Pay It Forward) Or a RAK? (Random Act of Kindness) I'm kinda new at this, so I'm not sure what it is. I'm gonna to call it a great, big THANK YOU for all of you who shared your time and creative energy in order to send a Hawaiian Shirt(s) for Janice's Senior Services Meals on Wheels Fund Raiser.

As a token of my appreciation, I will be giving away three prize packages consisting of one of my own Hawaiian Shirts plus some additional cool scrapbooking product(s). Janice will randomly pick the three winners from among those who sent her a shirt.

If you would like a chance to win, please make sure that Janice receives your shirt(s) by August 27th. The drawing will be on August 28th and I will post the winners here on my blog. (Remember to include a return address with your shirt!)

For more information about the fund raiser, see this post. For more information on making your own Hawaiian Shirt, see my original tutorial here or my revised tutorial for double-sided cardstock here.

Hawaiian Shirts for a Great Cause!

When Janice asked for my Hawaiian Shirt template, she mentioned that she wanted it for a fund raiser for her retirement community's Senior Services Meals on Wheels program. I thought that this was such a wonderful use for the little shirts, and I decided to make some to send to her. Please join me in sending your own version of my Hawaiian Shirt to Janice for her retirement community's fund raiser. Here is some event info that she sent me at my request:

The Fundraiser is for our Senior Services Meals on Wheels program. Arbor Acres for the past 4 years has been hosting an event on campus in conjunction with Senior Services Community wide "Edible Evenings" Campaign. Our event's all have CAR in them since the symbol for Meals on Wheels is a paper car it looks like a volkswagon bug! So we've had such events as a CAR-be-Que, a CARnival and this year is the CARibbean Cruise.

All our events are FUNdraisers!!!! Stressing the word FUN! Last years Carnival was a huge success in the FUN department and thus as a FUNd raiser we were able to present our local Senior Services office with $17,000!!

This year we hope to raise even more. This is a resident run event with staff support. The committees and sub committees have been very busy planning and getting things ready. ... I'm coming up with decorations and signage and articles in our newsletter monthly to get everyone excited about the event as well as the craft classes.

Janice is going to use the shirts to remind residents of special events, and plans on putting them on all the tables in the dining room (that's 65 shirts!). I'm going to send her a few shirts to help her get started (see photo above). If any of you are interested in joining me, here is the necessary info...

You can find the Hawaiian Shirt template on my blog here. Janice would need the shirts by August 27th. This would give her enough time to print the info on stickers and affix to the inside of the shirts. Please keep all shirts blank inside and Hawaiian/Caribbean themed. Also, please put your first name as well as your city and state on the back of the shirt, so that Arbor Acres' residents will know where they came from!

Here's her contact info:

Janice Lutz-Vanhoy, LRT/CTRS
Director Recreation Services
Arbor Acres United Methodist Retirement Community
1240 Arbor Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27104
www.arboracres.org

Thanks in advance to all who participate! If even a fraction of the recipients of my template sends just ONE shirt, she'll have every table covered in no time!