We have officially finished creating the next batch of 55 Refresh Bags — 24 Teen Girl and 31 Teen Boy bags.  About half of the Refresh Bags are full and ready to go.  We have ordered the items to fill the other half of the bags.

Boy bags ready for the last step — tying the strings.

My boys taking a break from figuring out the inventory of toiletry items still needed.

Refresh Bags filled.

Last set of bags officially completed — next step: filling them up!

DJ supervising.

This set of Refresh Bags are completely stuffed, they contain:

• Body wash
• Shampoo/conditioner
• Deodorant
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrushes
• Tissues
• Razors
• Chapstick
• Comb
• A deck of playing cards
• Shaving cream (boys)
• Tampons & panty liners (girls)
• Nail polish (girls).
• Most of the boy bags will also contain a decorative box with a matching tie that was donated from the Teflon® Fabric Protector brand!

We’re almost ready to deliver this set of 55 filled Refresh Bags to Delaware’s Division of Family Services.

We have raised enough funds and received enough donations to fill this set of bags!  We’re always accepting monetary or toiletry items for future Refresh Bags.

We’re already thinking about the next set of Refresh Bags, which will likely be a different type of bag, we’re experimenting with drawstring backpack bags.  We’ll keep you updated on how it’s going!

Refresh Bags are still cranking out s-l-o-w-l-y. We weren’t as active this year, because my work has taken up a bit of my free time. We are still determined to get this next round of 52 Refresh Bags completed, filled and delivered.

We have enough items and funds to fill 33 Refresh Bags — leaving us with 19 to fill (you can donate here:  PayPal.me/RefreshBags.)

Here’s a look at a group of 20 Refresh Bags that are filled from the generous donation of 20 body washes, deodorant, razors, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Items from Ray Touhill!

Enough to fill 20 Refresh Bags!

20 Refresh Bags waiting to be filled

Inside of the Refresh Bags

20 Refresh Bags filled

Another view of the 20 filled Refresh Bags

We added some playing cards — fun to play by yourself or a group of people.

We also received cash donations from that will be used to fill 13 more bags.

We still need to finish stringing the remaining bags:

This total batch of 52 Refresh Bags will go to the Division of Family Services in Delaware. The bags will be distributed to local social workers to deliver the Refresh Bags to teens in foster care.

We hope the Refresh Bags will help the children to feel good about themselves and let them know there are people in the world that care about them!

Thanks!
Lori

Here it is – the cut fabric for the next 50 Refresh Bags.  Now to sew the fabric into Refresh Bags.

I’m on the lookout for fellow seamstresses — if you have a sewing machine, an iron and can sew a straight line, you’re qualified!

You can try out just 5 bags.  All in all, you sew 5 lines to make one bag.  Sometimes you pivot (turn the fabric with the needle in the down position) or skip sewing a few inches as you’re sewing along.  And ironing a few times.  That’s really all the skills needed to make the bags, it’s not too hard and it goes quickly.

Let your kids help.  They’ll need to be supervised, a sewing machine and iron are serious tools.  Learning how to sew and iron is great skills.

Let me know if you’re interested in helping and are in the Delaware area.  If you’re outside of the Delaware area, let me know if you’re interested in making Refresh Bags for your local children in foster care.

We’re still working on the long term plan for supplying Refresh Bags.  How?

1.) Working on getting our 503(c)(3) status — we’re in the midst of the process to get an official 503(c)(3) status.  It’s a slow process, mostly waiting for responses from the IRS.

2.) Working on cutting the fabric we have on hand so we can make more bags!  So far we’ve cut the lengths of the bolts of fabric for both the boy and girl, inside and outside of the bags.  Here’s the girl inside of the bag fabric being cut.

We’ll keep cutting until this round of fabric is all cut to size!

The campaign to raise funds for 50 Refresh Bags was a success!  We raised more than enough money to pay for all of the items inside the bags — in fact, we ended up raising $143 over our goal of $415!  Just enough to fill another 16 Refresh Bags.  This set of 16 will go to the Division of Family Services for the State of Delaware by December 20, they’ll distribute to eight teenage boys and eight teenage girls in Foster Care.

Here’s some shots of what the contents of 16 bags looks like (missing some Chapsticks and feminine products — coming soon.)

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This set of bags is using different fabric than the original 50, thankfully I still have a lot of fabric left — this fabric is sturdy enough to survive going through the laundry.  The fabric I used for the girl’s bags in this batch isn’t as sturdy. In fact, two bags seams opened on gentle cycle.  I’ll fix them, but the red striped fabric isn’t a good choice — it looks great, but doesn’t hold up.

Special shout to to the Kaden family for donating eight wonderfully scented bottles of Bath & Body Works lotions!

I’m super late in posting this update, I apologize.  My Mom had health issues that took over my attention.   She’s doing well now.

Around noon on Monday, November 14 I successfully delivered 50 Refresh Bags to Kind to Kids in Wilmington, DE.  I managed to not take any pictures of the delivery, but here’s some shots from when we were putting the bags together:

Here’s the Thank You note we received from the organization:

The kids really enjoyed the bags!

**Edit on Dec 18, 2016 — I wasn’t able to dedicate the time to try to reach this goal.  We did end up making 16 Refresh Bags that will be delivered on Dec 20.

We raised more than enough money for the first 50 Refresh Bags, now we’re setting our sights on the next 80 Refresh Bags!

Help Us Raise the $760 For the Next 80 Bags to be delivered by Christmas Eve!

We’d love to raise enough for the 135 teens currently in Delaware’s Foster Care.  First we need to reach 80.

We’re looking forward to creating the next 80 Refresh Bags!

Examples of the Girl’s Refresh Bag and Boy’s Refresh Bag.

The fabric for the the remaining 39 bags is officially cut!  I made 11 bags prior to launching for photography for the site, social media and emails.

Onto sewing!

The items to fill the first 50 Refresh Bags are officially ordered!  One of my husband’s co-workers gave us a great tip for finding Colgate toothpaste, 6 oz, regularly $3.47, on sale for $1 at Walgreens!  There was a limit to the number you could buy, so we made trips to multiple Walgreens, multiple times.  Everything else we were able to buy online to be shipped for free either to our house or to our local store.

Some items, like the toothbrushes, we had to order more than 50, which is okay, we’re now ahead for the next round of Refresh Bags!  Lori will donate the feminine products and the bags.

The total cost was $436.87, but I added Chapstick’s to the bags.  I had them in the bags originally, then took them out due to cost.  With exceeding our goal I decided it was worth adding Chapstick’s back into the bags, chapped lips can be painful and uncomfortable, especially in the Fall and Winter.