Flood Relief Help=THANKFUL

THANK YOU!!! Today was an amazing day~We literally folded and bagged over 2000 shirts in 6 hours... and that is even with a small break for lunch.
  I was a little nervous this morning because I was unsure of how many people we would have to show up and help. This was Spring Break for a lot of people and who wants to fold a ton of shirts on their day off??? Brent had already told me before I left that there was no way in hell that we would finish today on all the tees....hahahaha Nothing like a little challenge between you and your spouse!!!
  I informed the gang as to what he said and everyone worked hard to prove him wrong!! haahah
Sorry Hubs-but we killed it!! We were picking up trash to get ready to leave at 2:45.. I couldn't wait to text him and RUB IT IN!!! hahahahahah
   So how do you process that many tees? Well, for starters, we spent quite a few days just printing out the orders and getting ready.

 Jordan did a lot of these and had started trying to pre print the shipping labels too.

Alexis came over and started pre folding the shirts to get us started. I put Pick up orders in alphabetical order one day.

And... let me back up and add in that we had to transport all of the tees in Ruston and deliver them to West Monroe. As the shirts were rolling off the press, we were figuring out our game plan.

Brent and my sister Holly took care of delivery. We were stressing about the weather bc it might rain and the truck we had to use was completely open in the back.  Thankfully, it all worked out. Thank you God!!  Mark Fenn helped to find us a spot to work in at First West and got the crew lined up with how we wanted the tables set up.

  We separated them all by size and got to folding.
"organization is the key to success..."

 

There were mountains of shirts!!! I think we literally had over 550 mediums!!!

(I promise that Paula really did have a good time!! )

Then, we had to pull each order and then package it. Some people pulled orders and others wrapped. Then another team just worked on pulling the Pick Up orders for the Thrift store. (My friend Erin Hutson had very sweetly put all the Pick Up orders on a spread sheet for me and made a sign out sheet for the Thrift Store. Thankful bc spread sheets are def not my strength.)

Then we had people taking the finished orders to the Post Office to get mailed out. Ive got to give a special shout out to my Talented Art teaching boss Denny Walters.  He came out and took boxes to the post office and literally folded shirts with all of us girls for a few hours. WOW!!

Sweet Paula Gates and Margaret came and worked hard!

And here we have Kellye Hoogland and AJ working hard. Kellye stayed all day and helped with emails tonight too. AJ is the son of Lori Allen. He got some service hours in and got to help his mom. Thank you Lori for bringing AJ and for your help too!

Maggie Generoso worked her tail off (and she is preg!!!). Another teacher giving up a free day to volunteer. THANK YOU!

Some of my running buddies showed up to help like Jan Nelson who came after yoga, and Rachel Rose aka Queen Jack and Mandy Magee put in some time!! 

And my former art teacher and friend Paula Furlow came to help as well as her sister Leeia.

I can't remember these two cute girls names (the brain is FRIED!!) but they folded tees and delivered to the Post office. 

Brent showed up to see how we were doing and dropped off bottled water and chick filet for everyone!! My hero!! (even though I did want to prove him wrong!!) haha

I thought I had snagged a pic of Carmen and her daughter Paige Parks, but I guess I didn't. They were a big help in the morning. Carmen was so funny telling me this was therapy for her!! hahaah 

Two of my favs~Meredith and Regan~ showed up to help. Regan even sang to us a little bit on the microphone.

Another sweet lady who just got out of a meeting and decided to come help! Wow!

Monica Turner came to work a bit and brought her precious children, Madison and Jacob.. We had Madison working on sorting the Pick Ups by last name.  And here they were below showing Amber what to do.

Thankful for another good friend Lisa Bannister who came and wrapped for a few hours!!. You Rock Lisa!!! I owe you some Latin Food :)

You only see the back of her in this pic, but our long time family friend Carole Lawrence came and stayed for quite some time. She had spent the morning already helping my mom and then she helped me!! We love you Mrs Carole!

Abby Wood dropped in to help too

And her hubs and our super cool pastor Michael Wood even helped load up the cars.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE!!!!!

So.....you may be wondering how much the tees raised....... It was a bunch!!! We were lucky in that we got a HUGE price break on the blank tees that we normally wouldn't get since there were so many. Plus, American Apparel hooked us up with freight pricing on shipping these tees. We normally are stuck paying 10% of the cost of the tees for shipping via UPS or Fed Ex. The freight pricing helped a ton!!  Then, Our printing company, Tommy's Tees in Ruston, LA helped on the printing cost. They wanted to give back too!! Thank you Tommy!!! And, on top of all that, we didn't have to pay all the man hours we would normally have to pay in packaging and folding on the tees since we had so many wonderful volunteers. So.... the total amount we donated was.....

$35,782.52!!!!

Can you guys believe it??? Our little bitty family company helped raise that kind of money in literally 6 days!!!! We are beyond excited. THANK YOU to everyone who made this happen and purchased a tee. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we could help be a part of something so big to help our area in such a fast amount of time. 

You should be receiving your tees within the next 4 days or so. We still have quite a few boxes of orders to put shipping labels on. The Pick Up orders at the Thrift Store can be picked up STARTING this coming Monday April 4th. M-F 9-6.

Please no pick up on the weekend. We hope you guys love your tees. We didn't scrimp on quality on them-they are the real deal "good stuff" that we are known for :) Extras in the Flood Tees will be posted next week on our website.

Thank you again!!

Love

Lissy

www.mrpstees.com