Below are some photos of the shoe boxes we took to the children at the Dimcho Debelianov Orphanage in Bulgaria 2009

How lovely!!! The children at the Dimcho Orphanage opening some of the 106 shoe boxes we took over in Sept ready for Christmas.  Look at their little faces - The children had no idea what shoe boxes were all about, We spend weeks filling their very first shoe box with all the goodies mostly donated from people on Freecycle, friends and the mountain of stuff we bought ourselves.

I took my inspiration from our little friend from Freecycle,  Jordan an 8 year old boy from Bretton Peterborough who donated the very first shoe box to us. I was totally amazed!! as he had thought of everything. He even decorated the box with cars and stars stickers and even marked it for a boy age 8. He secured it with a elastic band.

Then The 1st Orton Goldhay Rainbows, Brownies and 2nd Orton Goldhay Guides also fill 18 boxes for us. They covered the boxes with lovely wrapping paper and used stickers and again marked if was for a boy or girl and the age group it covers. There were fantastic!!

We had great fun selecting the items to go into the boxes.  Also cutting out the shapes and decorating each box myself.  It was a last minute project and worth every minute of the late nights or early mornings, just to see the children smile.  

Our special thanks goes to our dear friend and neighbour Norma - who provided us all sorts of goodies to decorate the boxes - Also to Mary, Cheryl, Joanne, Tracey, the wonderful Ruth and all the others who rallied round or filled a box or two themselves.  Again they are all from Freecycle - You are a super bunch of people thanks a million times over.  Just look at the happiness you have helped to spread to our little children  - Thank you so much.

Now we have the Dimcho, 2 Baby Orphanages and the Woman's Refuge Centre to do shoe boxes for in 2010 so we had better get started early.

Berni & Dougie