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HuntsvilleGrapevine.com is proud to partner with Southern Plate
and offer a Madison location for dropping off items for
Santa for Seniors. Visit their site for more information.
Bring your items to our office, located in the TN Valley Barter
Exchange offices at 126 Castle Drive between 9am & 5pm.
Leave it in either our office or next door at Shepards Signs for
delivery to some wonderful people who will really appreciate your
taking the time to make their Christmas brighter!
Christy's blog from Southern Plate is pasted below:
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There are many wonderful causes the whole year through, but so many
come closer to home around Christmas time. With an abundance of
charities that do amazing work and provide much needed services to those
who need them, there is never a shortage of ways and areas in which we
can make a difference.
Each of us has certain things laid upon our hearts and I feel strongly that they are laid upon our hearts for a reason. If we follow our hearts and give where we are led to give, we can make a huge difference. Due to my upbringing, my abundance of wonderful grandparents, and my
experience in Nursing Homes, I feel led to think of our elderly around
Christmas time and have noticed a deficit in this area.
Senior Citizens are one of our greatest treasures! This is why I
started adopting a nursing home a few years back and I’m hoping to
branch out this year and adopt more than one nursing home, with a lofty
goal of eventually being able to adopt every one in my area, making sure
each resident has a wrapped gift on Christmas. Here is how I do it followed by how you can help me:
How I adopt Nursing Homes
1. I contact a nursing home, ask to speak to the activities director, and let them know what I’d like to do.
2. Find out how many residents are in the home to make sure I have a gift for each and every one.
3. Buy Suave Body Wash – Start buying early because the stores need time to restock. Sometimes I have to go to several Wal Marts to get enough. Note: It generally costs me around $3.00 per person but that includes the body wash, wrapping, and cards if I include them.
4. Wrap each body wash individually in Christmas paper.
5. Deliver the body wash to the nursing home in time
for Christmas(My favorite time is Christmas Eve) and leave it with the
activities director (see notes as to why I leave it rather than pass it
out)
Notes and further explanation:
Contacting the Nursing Home
It is very important to choose a nursing home ahead of time and
contact the Activities Director. Let them know what you plan on doing
and make sure it is welcome there (I’ve always had wonderful reception
to the idea). Then, find out what the maximum capacity of their home is
and how many patients they currently have. You want to make sure you
have enough body wash to provide one to every single resident and if
they are ten or so under capacity, go ahead and buy for the full
capacity as they may have more residents by the time you deliver the
gifts. If the nursing home has a great many residents and you are
afraid you may not be able to afford to buy for each one, see if you
have friends who would like to help.
Why I buy Suave Body Wash
There are so many different things nursing home residents can’t have
for various reasons. So I called up a few nursing homes a couple of
years back and spoke with the directors and found that body wash was a
universal need and every resident needed it. Not only that, at the time
the directors told me it was also something they always needed. I chose Suave because it is generally affordable, easy to find, and having all of the bottles be a uniform size really helps when you’re wrapping two or three hundred of them. I usually wait until my Mother in Law comes to visit for Christmas and
then she and I wrap them together. One person can cut rectangles of
wrapping paper while the other puts them around the bottle and tapes it
closed. Doing this with a group of people is a great idea!
Note: Bottles of body wash are bad about opening up on ya,
especially when you buy a hundred or so at a time. As you put them in
your buggy, I recommend pushing down hard on each and every cap and if
you are going to be transporting them more than once, you might want to
place a single piece of tape over it to help the cap stay closed.
If anyone from Suave reads this, please
feel free to send me a few cases (or a truck load) of body wash and I’ll
be happy to wrap it up and adopt more nursing homes! Is wrapping every one of them necessary?
For me, this is one of the absolute most important steps. Remember
the wonder of receiving a gift wrapped in pretty Christmas paper and
wondering what it is? I want every resident of the nursing homes I adopt to have at least one wrapped Christmas gift.
Dropping off Gifts versus Handing Them Out
This is another important step. When I was a teenager I used to
volunteer in a nursing home. I’d go visit, talk with the residents, and
just spend time with them. When Christmas rolled around I would have
loved to have been able to give a gift to each one of them but at the
time there just wasn’t any way I could afford to.
As I went to delver my gifts the first Christmas I adopted a nursing
home, I had planned on handing them out myself. Upon walking in and
seeing the sweet nurses and staff with their patients it just didn’t
feel right for me, a stranger, to have the joy of giving a gift to these
people that the staff cares for and loves every other day of the year.
That is when I decided to double the gift, and let someone else have the
joy of giving it. In doing this we are also taking away the “glory” of
being thanked because we don’t do it for that purpose. We do it out of love for the people who need to be loved. Period. As far as I know, the nursing home I’ve adopted the past few
Christmases still has no idea who is responsible for the gifts. They see
me each year as I come in and hand off the gifts but I’ve never given
my name.
Why this cause?
I believe we all have certain things laid on our hearts and this is
something that has been laid on mine. You may feel led to support
another cause or section of our little world and that is wonderful. If
we each follow the cause that has been laid upon us, imagine the
difference we could make!
*** I’d LOVE Your Help! ***
What Groups Can Participate?
ANYONE can participate. Even one bottle helps!
This project is also great for:
- School Groups
- College Clubs
- Sewing Groups
- Quilting and Sewing Guilds of all kinds
- Scrapbooking Groups
- Mom’s Groups
- Prayer or Church Groups
- Any other group, no matter how big or small
To participate if you are in the North Alabama area, simply gather
your bottles of body wash together and drop them off at one of the drop
off points below. Be sure you contact the locations ahead of time to
make sure you’re coming during their business hours.
Where can I drop off my bottles to help?
- Christy Jordan’s Holiday Cooking Show in Muscle Shoals, Alabama – If you are attending my Holiday Cooking Show in Muscle Shoals on November 10th, please visit the Southern Plate table to drop off your bottles of body wash - and make sure you come up on stage after the show so I can personally thank you and hug your neck!
- Terra Bacio SalonSpa in Huntsville, Alabama is also serving as a drop off point. They are owned but the great folks who own Dan Tera and we so appreciate their support! Click here to visit their Facebook Page.
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