“I started watching a cooking show and just baked every night and experimented with it. At first we would throw most of it away and then we started giving half of it to the neighbors,” Jacquelyn said.

Her dad, Matthew Frantz purchased all the baking supplies and began taking the finished baked goods to work.

“Everybody loved them,” Jacquelyn’s mother, Jessica Frantz, said.

This led to Matthew’s coworkers placing orders for baby showers and parties.

Courtesy Photo Jacquelyn Frantz, a fifth-grader at Hinks Elementary School, displaying dozens of toys she donated to the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree Toy Shop. Frantz, 10, baked and sold fish-shaped cookies during the Brown Trout Festival this summer and by early September she had raised $2,000. She searched online and in stores for deals on toys to buy and donate and the toys were donated in October.

Jacquelyn, a fifth-grader at Hinks Elementary School, eventually got the idea to use her baking skills to help bring Christmas joy to kids in her community.

She got the idea to start raising money for the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree Toy Shop in May.

Originally Jacquelyn aimed high, wanting to reach a goal of $1,000.

“I told her to try for $500, I didn’t want her to be disappointed,” Jessica said.

Jacquelyn began baking fish-shaped cookies for the Michigan Brown Trout Festival.

“They were brown and green, bass and trout. We sold them to fishermen at Clems Bait and Tackle, during the festival,” Jacquelyn said.

The fish cookies were such a big catch that kindergarten teacher Stepanie Gosselin asked Jaquelyn to bake some pink and purple ones for a party.

“She never put a price on anything. It was strictly donations,” Jessica said.

By early September, Jacquelyn had raised $2,000.

“I was way off. People were very generous,” Jessica Frantz said.

Once the money was raised, Jacquelyn began browsing online, finding toys to order that she could donate to the Salvation Army.

“I started giving her my phone at night and she would go through the bargain sites online and pick out toys to order,” Jessica said. “We tried to make a dollar go as far as we could.”

At a Target store in Birch Run, Jessica said that they happened to catch the store’s Christmas in July sale.

While we were there, Jessica said, a Target employee was marking items down 70% to 90% off.

“When we explained to him what we were doing, he started helping us to find the best deals,” Jacquelyn said.

The Alpena Salvation Army sent a truck to the Frantz household to pick up all of the toys at the end of October.

Jacquelyn doesn’t have any new fundraiser plans for the future, yet, though she mentioned she might want to be a baker in the future.

Jacquelyn and her family have been invited to attend the Angel Tree Toy Shop give away and be witness to the sweet rewards of her hard work.

“I didn’t wanna make a big deal about it at first, but then I saw that people were really interested in a good story,” Jessica said.