From Our Hearts: Pen Donation

Like many of us, I'd imagine, most of us save and recycle where we can. I know I've gotten even more zealous with my recycling as of late with actually redeeming my bottles/cans/glass now for money. It makes a nice chunk of change for either a free lunch or some good laundry money. :)

One of the best recycling for money deals out there is at Staples for turning in your used printer ink cartridges. They used to be worth $3 each but now they're only $2 each; that's ok, it's better than nothing, right? So I save em up til I have about 10 at a time to redeem since 10 qty per month is the maximum. That way I get $20 to spend towards batteries, more ink cartridges, scrapping adhesives, etc.

Lately, I seem to be ok on my supplies, so I haven't needed to buy anything with my earned rewards. Instead of letting it expire, I redeemed my rewards for writing pens to donate to our troops stationed overseas. I also picked up a few packets of pens at my local 99 cent store, whenever I have any spare change.

I haven't contributed to From Our Hearts since this same time last year, and I haven't really been crafting so I thought to contribute 150 writing pens and a few note pads to their effort. From Our Hearts will send donated handmade greeting cards to our troops, but our men and women don't have anything to write with.

Here's my tally of my personal donations to From Our Hearts over the past couple of years:

• 2012  Donations = 150 Pens
• 2011 Donations = 598 Card & Card Fronts
• 2010 Donations = 751 Card & Card Fronts + 4500 Envelopes

I urge you to take a look at From Our Hearts and see if you can donate too....cards, envelopes, clear envelopes or even paypal money to help them send those boxes of greeting cards to our troops. It's a small but heartfelt way to thank our troops for their service to our country.

I need to find my scrapping mojo soon and whip up some new cards to donate.