Good Finds « An Ounce of Compassion

They won’t be here in time to include in our Christmas packages, but at least they will be arriving in a few days to be mailed out later.

We have recently found a treasure chest of items at CBD better know as Christian Book Distributors. I am especially excited about the products that we have found for our Spanish-speaking children, since Spanish things are pretty hard to find. Josabeth will be receiving a book about the Christmas story in her native language. Although she probably cannot yet read, I am confident that an adult will help her; and soon, when she enters the first grade, she will be reading on her own.

La Historia de Navidad de Mar&#237a (Mary's Christmas Story)

http://www.christianbook.com/la-historia-de-navidad-mar-a/concordia-publishing-house/9780570051732/pd/051738?item_code=WW&netp_id=230564&event=ESRCG&view=details#curr

We also found tons of other Bible stories in Spanish that will be sent at other times of the year. The Easter Story is one of our favorites and is a perfect way to explain what Jesus did for us when He sacrificed His life on the cross.

One of the most thrilling finds, for me, however, were some Happy Birthday Jesus Book marks. They come in English as well as Spanish!

“Do Not Fear” Stationary will make a perfect gift for Edthel, who has asked us to pray for her family’s safety.

To top it all off, we bought tons of Christian stickers for kids that say “Jesus loves me,” “I am special,” etc.

I am really happy with our finds and I hope some of these will work for you too!

Yep…we have caught the Compassion Christmas epidemic in our house. The family room (center of our life) has been transformed into a Compassion packaging center…

…which means…

…There is very little sitting room left on our once pleasant futons…

…The TV is never on…which is a good thing…since we gave up cable to sponsor our Emmanuel from Ghana…

…We think about, read about, sing about, and even breathe Compassion…

…All we shop for is Compassion related “gifts”…

…Night and day we work like machines…or better put….Santa’s little elves…preparing packages of love for our five sponsored children. All of the different bundles are similar but have slightly differing touches for each child’s personality. Soccer for one…dolls for the other. It is a busy agenda we are pushing, and it seems as if results are coming VERY slowly. I guess you could say that we started a little late…ok, I admit…very late :0

But the gifts are coming along nicely and should be in the mail tomorrow. Whewwwww!!! By then, we should be ready to start on January’s package! Yay! 😐 Well it looks as if our futon will be covered for a while. But let’s not go there…

The real reason for this post is to share the ideas we have swept neatly together to form Christmas packages for all five kids…without busting the bank.

We found all sorts of goodies in various places, most of which were under a dollar. The red and green paper folders were found at Target for a quarter (25 cents) and provided a good starting point for our project. They were cut down to the 8 1/2 by 11 rules that Compassion gives. We used a paper-cutter and glue to fold over and re-glue the sides.

Each person in our family decorated the folders in unique ways using Sharpies and stickers. Feliz Navidad!

The small 2012 calendars were discovered at Michael’s for just a dollar. They are pretty good quality too. Our personal favorites are the butterflies, kittens and Psalms. The Safari pictures didn’t turn out so grand, but our two animal lovers with be thrilled with them just the same. 😀 I hand translated the months and days of the week to Spanish for our spanish-speaking children.

We made paper snowflakes out of small white squares of paper. They are extremely easy to make, each one taking a little over a minute to craft. They all had different designs just like the real crystals of beauty that God makes. Plus, as a bonus they match the beautiful cards we found at the Dollar Tree for 50 cents.

On ourcompassion, we found this awesome paper nativity idea…although we didn’t quite estimate just how LONG it would take to complete. Sadly, only three of our children will be receiving it this year, but hopefully by next year, we will have two more made. If you visit the link below, you can print out, color, and cut out each piece of the paper nativity. It is a perfect gift to send at Christmas (fitting under the mailing regulations). I believe the children will love to set it up and the younger ones have hours of play ahead of them.

http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/free-printable-christmas-nativity.html

In a small envelope, we included sparkly scratch ornaments that the children can make themselves. These were also found at Michael’s for just a dollar. We had so much fun making some of our own.

We couldn’t include the “scratching stick” of course, but we made it clear in some instructions we printed off, that the children could use any kind of stick they could find. I am sure they will be simply delighted!

Last but certainly not least…is my favorite find. A gift that can be sent a little at a time…all throughout the year. While browsing the dollar section at Target (which is a really smart thing to do if you are looking for good deals on small gifts) I came across a package of 8×8 scrapbook paper for only 50 cents. It includes 18 sheets of seasonal themed paper. In the Christmas package, we are sending the winter related paper and the Valentines paper, next month we will send some more…and so on…

I couldn’t help but get really excited!!