Poor blog and poor six of you who read it. It has languished in its outdated state as I have worked like crazy helping finish up a HUGE church service project. I just haven't had time to do anything except that service project. Don't even ask how my house looks. So, despite the fact I plan to backdate a bunch of posts, including our first camping trip, I'm going to bore you with service project details.Actually, I was going to bore you with details, but I think I'll make it short: Basically, my enrichment committee (Rachel Howells) and I spent four months planning a service project to benefit Livingston County Social Services Foster Care and Adult Employment divisions. It started out as us looking for a way to get rid of some fabric lying around in a church closet and ended up as a quilting, box decorating, hygiene kit party with two other churches and a stay-at-home mom's group. Needless to say, as I was the one in charge (what WAS I thinking) it was pretty exhausting, mostly because I did a lot of outreach to other groups under the theory that together we could do more than any of us alone. (see http://www.grsserviceday.blogspot.com/ for all event details.)
Um, it worked. Sat., Sept. 26 we had 50 people show up (that's good for a service project) and we completed 170 hygiene kits (120 for LCSS and 50 extra for the local food pantry), decorated 46 "life boxes" -- boxes of scrap booking supplies, toys and books given to foster children when they enter foster care to help them document their stay -- and tied and bound 13 of 31 donated quilts. It was just an amazing day with such a wonderful, enthusiastic spirit and I was so grateful to see several months of hard work pay off so sweetly. I'm still a little stunned that it worked, to be honest with you. At the end of the day, we could control how much product we produced --and that we met our goals was due to the mircale of generosity and months of hounding people for donations -- but had no idea how many people would show up. To have 50-- fifty!!! --come was just a thrill. People are already bugging me about when we're having another day to tie quilts. Rachel and I just need a couple days...maybe a week or two...to breathe and then we can think about quilting again.
Huge thanks to Rachel for all her work pulling the quilt project together. She did this with a brand new baby and three little boys to deal with, and this project would not have happened without her hard, hard work. I think her kids and mine deserve some sort of treat for quasi-absentee mothers...seriously, those kids were saints, especially the night we had all seven of them at the church until 10 p.m. setting up. Also, thanks to my friend Tammy Hainey, who runs the Livingston County Mommies group. She took complete control of the hygiene kit project, which was a HUGE weight off mine and Rachel's shoulders. Her creative budgeting and hard worked saved us money and did a great deal of good. Plus, her organizational skills are unmatched.
Tammy and Tricia ham it up and help make quick work of the hygiene kits.
My good friends Mareva Baldwin and Jo Pfaff can be seen picking out decorations for life boxes.
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Ladies tying quilts, hard at work!
