Operation Christmas Elf

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Kamloops, BC
Operation Christmas Elf

Turning gently used items into Christmas magic Hello, and welcome to our page. We ended up helping 71 families, with a total of 188 children!!

How did we get here?….well, in 2025, our family hosted a free Christmas shopping day, for families who needed a little help with Christmas. It started out as a small family Christmas project, where we were hoping to help about 10 families, but when word got around about what we were doing, we got a ton of donations from people all across Kamloops. Castanet and CBC Radio both did stories on this, w

hich spread the word even more, which resulted in even more donations of new and gently used items. It was such a huge success, and we had so much fun doing it, that our family decided to make it a yearly event, and Operation Christmas Elf was born.

06/01/2026

My favourite elf (my husband) has been busy in the workshop again. This time he built us an assortment of bookshelves with small toy storage space in the bottom. Beautiful job Bruce, thank you😁.

05/30/2026

This one’s a real long shot, so cross your fingers everyone. We’ve been given a bass guitar for our free Christmas shopping day, and I’m hoping to find a small amplifier to go with it. Wouldn’t that be an awesome present?!? So, if any of you know someone who’s ready to part with one…free or cheap, would you please let me know, or pass along our information? Thanks 😁🤞🤞🤞🤞

05/16/2026

So…our first garage sale was a huge success, but now it’s time to start collecting for our fall one. We’ll be doing that partly through our regular donation process of course, but I’d like to reach out to anyone who is having their own garage sale this summer. If you have anything left over after your sale, please keep us in mind?…thanks😁

05/03/2026

Well that was quite the weekend. We had SO many people come through here for our garage sale…on both days. We got a few more people who want to join our volunteer team, we got so much encouragement for what we’re doing, we got to spread the word about Operation Christmas Elf…AND…we brought in over $1100.00 for our free Christmas shopping day!!! Thank you so much to everyone who came by, everyone who donated, and the Sahali mall for lending us their tables, and to our volunteers. We couldn’t have done this without you🩷

05/02/2026

All set up and ready to go. Please join us at 2688 Willowbrae Drive in Aberdeen and help us fund our free Christmas shopping day.

04/28/2026

I’ve been bursting to tell everyone this, but I had to wait until after the presentation. We got a grant from the Colombo Lodge to help us with our free Christmas shopping day!!! How awesome is that?!? I am so excited, SO grateful, and so happy to be able to share the news with everyone. Thank you Colombo Lodge…a million times, thank you!!!

04/22/2026

Mark your calendars, and come on down! Our fundraiser garage sale is set for Saturday May 2nd, and Sunday May 3rd from 9am to 2pm, at 2688 Willowbrae Drive in Aberdeen. We have furniture, sports gear, camping gear, toys, household items, Christmas decor, bikes and so much more…and everything is priced to go!…so come on by and get a bargain. Fingers crossed we get nice weather😁

04/11/2026

How cool is this…a few months ago, someone donated a nice big telescope for our free Christmas shopping day. We know absolutely nothing about telescopes, but we knew it needed to be tested before we could add it to our inventory, so I reached out to a guy on a Kamloops astronomy page to see if he would check it over for us, and he agreed to help us out. Unfortunately, the telescope was damaged and didn’t work, but here’s the cool part…he fixed it…and at his own expense too!!! Awesome right?!?

Some budding astronomer, or maybe even a future astronaut is going to get an amazing Christmas gift this year, thanks to Mike Hicks. I can’t thank you enough Mike. You definitely went above and beyond, and we are extremely grateful to you. Absolutely awesome! 😁

04/06/2026

Have you ever had a problem that ended up being the solution to a different problem? That’s happening to us. Our focus is mainly collecting new and gently used toys and gifts for children, but we also get a lot of household items too, and lately, we’ve been getting a LOT of household items. That’s not a bad thing, but it does eat up a good amount of our storage space. So…we reached out to our household item donors, (the ones I still had contact information for), and asked if they’d be ok with us selling their donated items in a garage sale, and using the proceeds to buy gifts, treats for the Christmas stockings, and groceries for our participating families. I’m happy to say that their response was a resounding and unanimous YES. So…this will help ease our storage problem, and our 'limited cash' problem as well. We’ll still keep any giftable household items for our free Christmas shopping day, but now, any un-giftable household items will go into a garage sale to help raise money for our free Christmas shopping day, and this will be our policy going forward. More information will be posted once we have our date set for our spring garage sale, so please stay tuned. We hope to have one in the fall as well. In the meantime, if anyone would like to add to our garage sale, please let me know, and we’ll be happy to pick it up. 😁

03/27/2026

We had a visit a few days ago from a very nice gentleman named Len, who brought us an assortment of wooden toys and Christmas baubles that he made for our free Christmas shopping day. Here are a few of them. Thank you so much for your support Len. 🩷

Address

Kamloops, BC

Website

https://sites.google.com/view/operationchristmaself/

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