Card Making Temporarily on Hold due to the Coronavirus...The Holiday Project - 2020 Holiday Cards Needed for nursing home visits

ATTN: Holiday Card-making for The Holiday Project Visits - temporarily on hold since volunteers are being restricted from visiting nursing home residents due to the Coronavirus.

Holidays are the times for connecting … with family…friends…the community at large. Many people are cut off from this connection due to health problems, advanced age, or other circumstances. The Holiday Project provides volunteers with opportunities to let people in need know that they haven’t been forgotten and to brighten their lives by brightening their day!

If you'd like to donate Holiday Cards, *you may drop them off, or mail them to:

Reunion Court of Kingwood (before mailing cards, if possible, please email me pictures of your cards so I can post some on The Holiday Project’s Facebook page...to inspire others to create cards for nursing home residents!) ♥️

*Reunion Court of Kingwood

Attn: Donna Martin

929 Rockmead Dr.

Kingwood, Texas 77339

*You can also sign up for a scheduled visit if you want to personally pass out the cards you made to nursing home residents...see our volunteer posts for locations.

Cards can also be dropped off at:

Grace Care Center of Cypress

9602 Huffmeister,

HOUSTON, 77095

Cards Needed for the Following Holidays in 2020:

(any amount of cards donated by an individual volunteer or group is appreciated!)

Upcoming 2020 Visit Dates and preferred deadline for cards:

Valentine’s Sat. February 8th (Cards by Feb. 1st)

Easter Sat. April 11th
(Cards by April 4th)

Mother’s Day Sat. May 9th 
(Cards by May 2nd)

Father’s Day Sat. June 20th
(Cards by June 13th)

Grandparents Day Sat. Sept. 12th
(Cards by Sept. 5th)

Thanksgiving Thursday Nov. 26th
(Cards by Nov 19th)

Christmas Day Friday, Dec. 25
(Cards by Dec 18th)

2020 Valentine’s - need approx 500 cards

2020 Easter - need approx. 500 cards

2020 Mother's Day - need approx. 500 cards

2020 Father's Day - need approx. 500 cards

2020 Grandparent's Day - need approx. 500 cards

2020 Thanksgiving Day - need approx. 2,000 cards

2020 Christmas Day - need approx. 2,000 cards

Card Guidelines:

In order to encourage creativity, very few guidelines are imposed on the making of Holiday Project handmade greeting cards. The cards may be almost any size, and the media used can be as simple as colored markers available at almost any grocery or drug store. Some people use combinations of media such as markers, rubber stamps, images cut from used or surplus store-bought greeting cards, cut-out computer-generated images, pasted bits of ribbon or felt, etc.

Here are a few general suggestions on other matters:
•Ideally the cards should be able to stand up if placed on a table, nightstand, etc.

•Please don't use glitter-on-glue. The glitter tends to get all over everything. However, pre-mixed "Glitter Glue" (such as is made by Crayola) is fine.

•Sentiments that imply that the recipients' circumstances are less than ideal (e.g., "Cheer Up!", "You are not forgotten", etc.) should be avoided.

•Greetings should be generic so that they can be appropriate to almost anyone. (For example, a Christmas card that says "Merry Christmas" on the front and "Wishing you all the joy of the season" or other similar sayings that are creative and/or festive inside would be fine.  Similarly, a Mother's Day card that says "Happy Mother's Day" and "The Best to You on this Special Day" would be fine, but sentiments such as "To a Great Mom" should be avoided, since not everyone visited in connection with Mother's Day has been a mother.)

•Please don't enclose or attach candy to the cards. (Logistically speaking, it's usually not practical for the visit-volunteers to separate out such cards and determine which recipients are permitted to have candy.)

•It's preferable that the cards not be in envelopes. (Some of the recipients suffer from advanced arthritis or other conditions that make the simple act of removing a card from an envelope quite difficult.)

•Please don't put a date on the cards. (We occasionally have a surplus of cards for a given occasion, in which case we simply pack up the excess cards and use them for the same holiday the next year.)

•Cards should be signed by the persons making them. Any signature should probably include just the signer's first name or first names of group...

Please Please Please do not put anything about the state of a residents health ...such as I hope you get well soon or hope your health improves...the residents aren’t all sick that live in long term care and for the short term rehab patients in skilled nursing facilities it is just too hard for volunteers to know who is in a facility for long term residence or short term rehab stay, so we just avoid anything health related!! 

Questions - email Donna Martin at: theholidayprojecthouston@yahoo.com

Thank you very much for your acts of kindness!