I took my kids to Ann Arbor today. We enjoyed the Hands-on Museum, then we went over to the Scrap Box to let our creativity run wild! The Scrap Box is this little warehouse-like store that sells cast-offs. All of their items are donated left-overs, but it's not a thrift store. The items they have range from the cardboard tubes that carpet comes on to used CD's to the foamie punch-out parts that would otherwise be thrown away as a part of automotive manufacturing. I use lots of these items at work with my special needs kids. They have pallets of foamie pieces in a huge variety of shapes. Some have adhesive backing, some don't. You can get huge rolls of white paper (miles of white paper, actually) for $4 or $5 per roll, and movie posters for $1 each. They have stickies and labels and beads and fabric scraps, and everything you can fit in a grocery sack is $6. We came home with $24 of creative GENIUS!!!!
All around the store, there are project ideas starring some of these craft-orphans. Dragons made of cardboard paper snarl with their repurposed plastic teeth, sparking the creativity of my brood of inventors! Next thing I know, Isaac is collecting the right shaped pieces to make Simon a suit of armor, so they can sword-fight safely. Harriett was collecting shiny silver bags (trash bag size) to make robot suits for her and her brother. Sylvia found a whole set of "Bendaroos" in a box, and quickly snatched them up. She also found some cute flower beads to make necklaces. (I am certain her sale flyer will be out soon.) Lydia and Harriett teamed up and found some cool cardboard sticks that make wonderful wand handles, and put yellow foamies on the ends so they wouldn't hurt if you got hit with them. Hmmm. Why would you hit someone with a....nevermind.
These cast-offs still had a lot of good uses, we just had to look at them a little more creatively. They weren't trash, really. They may not have been used the same as the other parts cut of the same cloth, but they had hundreds of possibilities! Maybe that's the point. Even when we feel like we've missed out on our lofty purpose, we're still not useless. When we fail at something we thought we were supposed to do, we just have to look at ourselves a little more creatively. What ELSE could you do? What is a DIFFERENT way you could use those skills? Sometimes that means taking ourselves less seriously, and having a little more fun. Sometimes you need that adhesive foam dot to teach a kid how to count, and sometimes it just needs to ride on Harriett's nose. Could go either way.
It is possible that when you are born, it's like God giving you a bag from the Scrap Box as your life. He wants to see what you will make of it. There are seemingly endless possibilities. Once in a while, you can start over, or take it apart and rebuild it. It's up to you. Some days, I peer into my own bag overwhelmed, and unsure where to start. Today I just enjoyed watching my children make wonderful creations from the bags they were given.
Blessings!
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