Oops we did it again! A little bit of Christmas magic...

This year I asked for a little help to the Spanish speaking community to make Christmas stockings. And they answered!! I have no words to express my gratitude to all those who contributed! We made a total of 50 Christmas stockings. 48 were donated to the Oxford Children's hospital.

Two were sent to Madrid, for a little boy, Guzmán, and his sister.



Guzmán was diagnosed with leukemia at 3 years old. He is a little fighter in love with trains, so I made these stockings specially for him and his sister. His father José has a blog, Uno entre cien mil, written from the heart in a very positive way. We should all learn from this amazing family and their way of facing difficulties. I wish them all the best for this New Year!
Kids like Guzmán keep us going on. Each stocking, each pillowcase, sends a message of love to these kids and their families, trying to accompany them in this hard path they have to live. These are our little superheroes.

We received a total of 19 stockings from Finland and Spain, including the Canary Islands. Thank you is not enough! Amazing people who took their time to make Christmas a little bit brighter for sick children.

This is what was coming through the post...

From Spain...

Mariví, Gemma, Irene, María...

including the Canary Islands...

Davinia, Lorena y MariMar

Some of these stockings were made by children, for children, like the one with the sweets above, made by Maria and her daughter Sofia, or these ones made by Daphne and her son. They are amazing, don't you think?



Here in Oxford, we have been quite busy these past months. These are the stockings made by Alexandra.



And these were made by Natalie, Stuart, and Natalie's family. So cute!



And these were made by Val.



Aren't they all beautiful?

These are the ones I made.


You can see them all in detail at the flickr group Oxford Christmas Stockings for Little Stars.

All stockings were delivered to the hospital on the 23rd of December. Each of them had a little card to wish the kids merry Christmas and to let them know they could keep the stocking.

We also delivered pillowcases, this time with Christmas motives and some small bags to the oncology ward. 

Christine, the play specialist, showed us the room full of presents. They were putting some inside each stocking and they were going to distribute them on Christmas eve to all the children at the hospital.  Father Christmas was also going to give them bigger presents on the 25th of December.

I also would like to tell you how sometimes an initiative can inspire other people. This time it went beyond Oxford... to the Dominican Republic. My friend Sory sent me these magical pictures to share. isn't she amazing?

Sory with some of the kids. Photos by Xavi Angulo.

Sory lives in Barcelona but she went back home for Christmas. She wanted to replicate our initiative and act at local level. She did a wonderful job and made lots of stockings for the sick children. Some companies also donated presents and sweets for the kids, so she could fill in the stockings. Sory told me that some of these families do not have anything at all, so this is a huge deal. Remembering these kids, whose families are very poor and do not always have money to eat. Some of these children are also very sick. However, kids are kids, no matter what.

So much love put on each stocking, on each pillowcase, some time from our busy lives, to be able to see the smiles in these kids faces. This is so amazing, so human. This is why I thank you all for your time and effort, for the love you put on each stocking, returned one thousand times in the form of a smile. ♥ 

Merry Christmas to you all!

Our first thank you note!

Christine Turner, the play specialist of the Kamran's ward (oncology), at the children's hospital, sent us this wonderful thank you note! Thank you Christine!!

More than 100 smiles!

It has been a while since I have told you a little bit about what has been going on in ConKerr Cancer Oxford. When we started this chapter few months ago, we had no idea where this was going to take us, and here we are... more than 100 pillowcases later! It has been an incredible journey!

So far, we have delivered a total of 103 pillowcases, 128 small bags, and 48 Christmas stockings for the children. This was all possible thanks to our volunteers and sponsors. We would not be here without them, so I would like to say a big thank you to all the people that made this possible.

We had our third delivery before Christmas. The nurses asked us to make Christmas stockings, but this time it was not only for the cancer ward, but for all the children at the hospital that had to stay there during Christmas eve. Being at the hospital during Christmas eve can be sad, especially for children, and the nurses wanted to cheer everybody up by giving them a handmade stocking and some little presents that night. We started sewing stockings non-stop for a little bit, and this is some of what we did.



With the stockings, we also delivered 37 pillowcases and 10 small bags for the Hickman lines. We made enough stockings for all the children at the hospital that Christmas Eve.





Most of the pillowcases were made with the fabric donated by Petra. David, the manager from Hobbycraft Bicester also donated some beautiful Christmas fabric and felt for us to use. Lizzet, from The Fabric Loft made a donation of a big bolt of red felt that was used for the stockings (and we still have some left for next year). Thank you, thank you, thank you! Yes, it was a fantastic month full of emotions, snow, and Christmas magic! 

During December, as I posted in the previous entry, Waitrose (our local supermarket) raised some funds for us. A total of £600 were donated few months later. We are so grateful to them for this.

Our fourth delivery was in January after the holidays. This time we focused a bit more on the small bags, as these are very needed at the hospital and they still had some pillowcases left. Therefore, we delivered 9 pillowcases and 25 small bags for the children. The small bags are very popular and they go fast...

With some of the money we got from Waitrose we wanted to buy lots of fabric to organise sewing events, but here the fabric is extremely expensive and some patterns cannot be found, especially the ones for children. I asked Cindy Kerr (founder of ConKerr Cancer) to help us find good deals of fabric in the USA, since one of our volunteers (Sana) was going there in February. Cindy not only helped, but she selected an incredible collection of beautiful fabric that could melt anybody's heart (you will see some of it really soon). Thank you so much Cindy for taking the time of picking up the gorgeous fabric. Sana collected it from Cindy and brought it to the UK. The result... a suitcase full of 24kg of fabric. British Airways allowed us to carry the suitcase for free since it was all going to the charity. Thank you very much to British Airways and to Sana for making this possible!

Meanwhile we were making pillowcases, and we delivered 18 pillowcases and 38 small bags in March, reaching more than 100 pillowcases.



I feel blessed! This has been an incredible journey surrounded by amazing people. THANK YOU!

Amazing Waitrose!

Have you heard of the Community Matters program at Waitrose?

The branch in Headington donates 1000 pounds distributed between three local charities. At the checkout, the clients receive a green token, which is placed in the box of the charities they would like to support. The more tokens a charity gets, the bigger the donation they receive.

Guess what?? ConKerr cancer Oxford was selected as one of the charities for the month of December 2010.

We are extremely happy and grateful for this!! And, towards the 20th December it was going quite well, don't you think??

It seems 600 pounds will go to conKerr cancer Oxford. Amazing Waitrose!!! Thank you so much! This was a wonderful Christmas present and will definitely bring many smiles to the children with cancer at the Kamran's ward.

Fundraising with sweetness

We had a cake sale at work, to raise funds for conKerr cancer, to keep on bringing smiles to the children. It was a success! Everything was sold out by the end of the day and we raised a total of £264,63 to buy fabric and material for pillowcases, Christmas stockings, and small bags.





We had several tables allocated for us, so we put some pillowcases around to decorate them, some pictures of the children, and some stockings, to attract people to the stands and give awareness of the charity.









We had a whole range of cakes, cookies, fairy cakes, cupcakes, and muffins, including gluten free cakes.







Thank you very much to all those who baked cakes (Natalie, Stuart, Simon, Sana, Val, Erin, Aymeric, Busi, Sergio, and Sylvia) and helped selling them during the day (Alexandra, Aymeric, Amalia, Sana, Val, Yasmina, Guy, Erin, and Sylvia)!!

Thank you very much as well to those that bought cakes during the day and contributed to fundraise some money. You definitely helped bringing smiles to the children!

More pictures of the cake sale can be found HERE.

Petra, we love you!

Sometimes in life we find amazing people, those that spread love around and melt your heart. Today I want to introduce to you an incredible woman called Petra. Petra is from Germany and she was nine months pregnant when she made 19 pillowcases for our newly created chapter. Before sending them, she decided to fill in a big box with all sorts of beautiful and cheerful fabric. 

We are so very grateful to her that we don't have enough words to express our gratitude. Thank you Petra! Thank you so much! I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened the box. This is really amazing!

The handmade pillowcases on the front and the fabric donated behind them.

We made many pillowcases with the fabric, and there is still plenty for other things for the children such as small bags for the Hickman lines and Christmas stockings for the holiday season to come. More about this coming soon... meanwhile I wanted to share this with you, because Petra really touched my heart. ♥

Second delivery!

We have been busy this past month and finally delivered 24 pillowcases and 28 wiggly bags to the hospital.





Still many more to come...