Hey Everyone!

I hope everyone is having a good holiday season and that you will all have a restful New Years celebration. When you come back, I have some ideas and goals that I'd like to run by you.

First, I'd like to get out of the gate fast for 2008. I'd like to try to hit 100 items for January. There are a lot of reasons for this, but perhaps the most pressing is that I want to try to avoid a big post-holiday drop-off. It's always a big problem for charities -- people give a ton from Thanksgiving to NYE, attributable to the holiday spirit or late-year tax write-offs. But then, once the holidays are over, the less privileged are kind of left in the lurch. I also want to get off to a good start in January to show that our group is still going strong as the new year begins.

Second, I thought of another project, and I am wondering if anyone would want to spearhead it or if there are any thoughts/recommendations/objections, etc. The idea is basically an expansion of the Bag O'Sunshine concept, except that we would post our group contact information to military communities and would make little bags by request. The bags could be of varying size, and military families could use them to send their soldiers things overseas. I just thought it would be a nice little homemade addition to phone cards, PlayStation games, gatorade, and other things that soldiers need. I was thinking of calling it the Bag O' Home project or something like that.

I am going to begin posting once again to other livejournal communities to see if anyone wants to join us for 2008. If you know of any communities that might let you post an informational post about this group, by all means, go for it!

Immense gratitude again to all of you for making 2007 such a great year. May 2008 allow us to spread even more sunshine!