Everyone deserves to be shown some love on Valentine’s Day and that is exactly what Jessica Chard, owner of To the Moon Party Designs, wanted to pass along when she surprised residents at Vicar’s Landing at Sawgrass with balloons on the holiday.
In total, she made balloon displays for 92 residents, with each one being sponsored by a member or organization in the community as part of Chard’s “adopt a grandparent” initiative.
According to Chard, she grew up always doing things to help elders in her community and she heard of a balloon artist in Utah doing something similar last year.
“I just wanted to show them the love that they deserve,” Chard said.
The response she received from the community was incredible, as she reached her 92 sponsorships within a couple of days after she announced the initiative at a Galentine’s event followed by it getting out on social media.
The balloon structures were made up of two to three stacked rows of balloons and were topped with a pink or red heart-shaped balloon on top.
“It was almost four days of blowing up balloons, and I was up around 2:30 in the morning on the 13thto make sure everything was ready to go,” Chard said.
She also accompanied each balloon cluster with handwritten cards representing each of the sponsors to the recipients.
“It was some tedious work, bet it was well worth it,” Chard said. “It was so heartwarming to see the community come together and get so excited for our older community like that.”
Unfortunately, the bags of balloons had to be left in the Vicars Landing lobby, as one of the residents had gotten sick and they were not allowing visitors at that time as a precaution.
However, even though Chard was unable to give them each their balloons and see their reactions, she believes that the gesture is one that help make their day and hopefully reminded them that there is an entire community that loves them out there.
