Receiving Home Stockings

I work in a very special place, by virtue my job is all about giving.  I work in a plasma donation center.  People come in, donate plasma and we compensate them for their time. It’s a proverbial we benefit you benefit.  I work in a place where we save lives every day…not directly but we are the first step in making it happen.  The problem with being the first step is that you don’t get to see the results of what you do.  We know that the plasma we collect helps people with immunodeficiency problems and burn victims plus a lot more.  It’s a good feeling, but it’s not quite enough.  Our small center here in Great Falls has made it their personal mission to to be a charitable organization beyond collecting plasma.  Every Friday we allow employees to wear jeans for a small donation of $1.oo and then we donate it to a charity.  We have participated in NeighborhoodWorks laying sod and have donated thousands of pounds of food to the food bank, we’ve even volunteered at the local rescue mission and served food to the homeless, just to name a few of the things that we do.

When we started planning our Christmas activities for the staff, we wanted the staff to have fun but we also wanted to give to our local community.  Our very giving center decided to have a stocking decorating competition, then donate filled stockings to our local receiving home.

The stuffed stockings were completely funded by the staff.  We ended up decorating 25 dollar store stockings.

We filled the stockings with nuts, fruit and toys.  Some of our staff went all out and stuffed their competition stockings with more than what we had planned.

There were cute snowman stockings.

I loved this one…”Jingle bells ,Batman smells, Robin laid an Egg, Bat mobile lost it wheels (flip stocking over) and the Joker got away.

Our winner was from Super J.  She made the stocking with the cars.  No surprise, Super J and her partner have a young boy who is enamored with cars.  Our boss made the Christmas tree stocking and the beautiful blue stocking was made by KA who also did the Batman stocking…she obviously has a sense of humor and a sense of style.

Lulu and I did our best.  Lulu made a tree stocking and I went for the Victorian stocking, one I’m sure Mariah Carey would love (hello butterflies).

Our staff pulled out all the stops, they were so clever in decorating the stockings.  What a great use of felt!

What about a stocking completely covered in pom poms? So fuzzy and fun.  I loved the reversible stocking, it’s pink, it’s blue, it’s for a girl, it’s for a boy or how about twins?

Summer dog was enjoying the array of stockings, she loved sniffing every single one.

Our staff wasn’t the only ones involved.  Our generous tsaff enlisted family members (children and grandchildren), and Billiam got his wife to get some seniors from our local retirement center to make stockings.

The stockings were picked up by the Great Falls Receiving Home.  If you don’t know what a receiving home is, it is a home for children who have to leave their current home because it is no longer a good place for them to be.  It is a safe home.  In order to be safe, their location has to be kept secret so they came to my house and picked up the stockings.  It was a great feeling to know the stockings were going to children who were in a bad family situation.  I hope that it brings them a little happiness during this time of difficulty in their lives.

Isn’t this what Christmas is really about?