Note: Another great guest blog from the creative genius of Aurora Street, Adriane DeVries:
Recently I picked up a small child’s bench at a thrift store for 30 cents. It was in sad shape, with a broken support beam in the back, a half-missing arm rest, and multiple peeling layers of paint. Repairing the support beam was easy (using wood glue and a long twist tie to hold it in place), as was the repainting, using free-from-the curb paint in a color I call Old Christmas Red. But the real challenge was how to fix—cheaply, of course—the missing half of that arm.
I was puttering in my basement studio and literally looked up from where I was bending over the bench, and the first thing my eyes fell on was a decrepit wooden folding chair squeezed into the small space beside our trash can. For months it has attempted to serve as a visual reminder to the man of the house to take it to the curb one of these Mondays for trash day, yet to the chagrin of the woman of the house, there it has remained, a clackety wooden skeleton that falls on me when I put groceries on the storage shelves behind it.
My eye fell on that chair in a new way. The wooden slats of the seat were literally falling out, and they just happened to be the exact length and width of the child bench’s arms. I reached over and plucked two slats from the chair, grabbed my trusty gorilla glue, and adhered one over the broken arm, and one on the other arm to match. After several coats of paint, the whole thing is now for sale for $35 in my antique booth, and 100% of the proceeds (that’s $35 minus 30 cents!) will go to my favorite ministry, Haiti Foundation Against Poverty, http://haitipoverty.org/. Everyone wins: I get to do crafty things with cheap used goods; shoppers find a new treasure for their home; and women and children in an impoverished land receive food, medical care, education and vocational training that will give them a hope and a future.
Every time I take a bit of trash to repurpose, I am reminded that God can use every circumstance of our lives, the good the bad and the ugly, to use for His glorious purposes. Scripture says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purposes” (Rom. 8:28). We have a constant hope that He can make something beautiful from the bits and pieces of our lives, weaving a rich tapestry from the dark colors as well as the light.
He can make something out of nothing.
May you see and cherish the many ways He is making your life beautiful in 2012.
–Adriane DeVries
What projects have you salvaged from the trash? Me and Adi really want to know!
I will never grow tired of hearing about and sometimes even seeing the ways that Adriane can repurpose nothing into something beautiful and special. I NEEDED to read this today and it will serve as a reminder to me that God will redeem everything for His purpose and for good. Wishing nothing but wonderfully new memories and lots and lots of fun for the New Year!!!
I LOVE this idea. We let our kids choose one acvttiiy outside of school. Even with that some years have been crazy. My kids are 13, 11 and 7. This year I hit the jackpot. All 3 of my kids choose activities that hit on the same night of the week. The girls are doing dance and the boy was doing soccer now scouts. With soccer I coached so I chose the time and place of practice to coincide with dance class. Now that soccer is over and he has started up with Scouts again and they meet at school. He can simply stay after go to scouts and I pick him up after Dance. I am beside myself with glee. Only one night a week out. No Saturday commitments. We actually got to take an impromptu road trip this past weekend. It was great to go off on an adventure as a family.