small miracle?

Yes, I believe a small miracle happened today and it was fun for me to see. It probably won't be as exhilirating for you as it was for me but I'll share nonetheless.

Right before school starts Wal-Mart has these awesome deals on school supplies right? And you know how the Mormon church does those humanitarian service projects and they give you directions to make and fill school bags for kids? Well school supply sales and humanitarian school bags go hand in hand.

About 7 years ago when Isaac was small I put together a bundle of them. But now that my children are older, and now that some of them exist who didn't before, I thought it would be fun to have them join me in this book bag service project again.

This past summer I talked about it with the kids and told them what we needed to do for the project. We had to decide on how many school bags we were going to make this time around. Last time I made 20 and so we wanted to do more than that. The boys suggested we do 30 this time. No problem. We bought oodles of notebooks and pens and erasers and rulers and scissors and the cashiers at Wal-Mart gave me funny looks. But we did it, we got all the supplies that we needed. Now all that was left to find was fabric and time.

Somewhere in between here and there I decided I'd stop in at my nearby thrift store to see if they had any good fabric laying around... you know, enough so that I might be able to sew 30 book bags. Can I just say I love thrift stores dearly? Always have. Magic awaits me there. Walking through those doors unleashes my creative juices. Anyhow... you'll never believe it, I came upon a stash of beautifully perfect cordoruy and there was a bunch of it to boot! Someone had donated 3 bunches of it- brown, navy, and dark purple. I grabbed it right up and paid the $3 total for it and thanked the heavens! I just hoped it would be enough and if it wasn't I figured I could scrounge up some more fabric somewhere else...

Time passed and school started and I had a baby and things like that. Wouldn't ya know that the school supplies and fabric are still sitting in my craft room in piles and stacks and overflowing bags?

Today I finally decided that now was as good a time as ever to get started on this project. I spent all day cutting that wonderful corduroy into book bag shapes, thinking about how sturdy the bags will be and how the children will be able to use them through college even, I'm sure.

I didn't really measure the fabric to see how many bags I would get out of it, I just started cutting. I figured when I was out, I'd be out. Now here's the miracle, the moment you've been waiting for: When I finished cutting, and couldn't possibly cut another single 14x18 rectangle or 12x3 strap from the fabric I counted them all up. And get this, there were enough cut bags and straps to make EXACTLY 30 school bags!!! WOW. Can you say WOW? What angel was doing that coordinating? I mean seriously!

So once again I'm thanking the heavens! And I'm also hoping that the next miracle I'll find in the morning, when I go into my craft room, is that my coordinating angel will have worked through the night sewing all 30 of those blasted bags for me...