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Crafting for a Cause: Creation Celebration with Fiskars

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This post could alternatively be called, The Great Flood of 2014. If you aren’t familiar with Arizona weather, in late summer we have our monsoon season. A rise in humidity causes winds, really severe dust storms, and heavy rains. The heavy rains can cause flooding because the ground is so dry and the water just runs off the top instead of soaking in. Flooding in the desert sounds crazy, but it does happen. This year we have seen unusually bad storms and lots of flooding. On September 8, 2014, Phoenix saw the wettest day in recorded history. They had to shut down schools, highways were flooded, and the mayor declared a state of Emergency. 

Our elementary school made the news because of the flood damage they received. Lower left is a major interstate that had cars under water. 

Our elementary school sustained some pretty significant water damage to one of the buildings. This just happened to be the building that houses both of my children’s classrooms. The school district came in and boxed up the classrooms and suddenly those teachers had no supplies or even a classroom. Some classes had to combine, other non traditional classroom spaces were created, and two grades even had to move over to the Junior high. Once the classrooms are repaired, the teacher’s will get back their things that weren’t thrown out due to damage. Here’s a before and after of my daughter’s first grade classroom.

This is the same corner of the classroom. You can tell from the bulletin board. 

Imagine my delight when the Motherhood asked me to participate in an initiative with Champions for Kids and Fiskars. The deal is that I would host a Creation Celebration, where we would make a fun craft project and I would ask my guests to bring art supplies to donate to a cause of my choosing. Talk about the perfect timing! The need was immediate so I pulled together my family and we had a craft night/birthday party on September 27. 

You can see in the photo below that we made a Candy ‘Stache Jar and decorated some fun treat coffins. The coffins are a little hard to see but we filled some mummy candy molds with candy melts and put some chocolate mummies inside each coffin. The Candy jars were decorated with vinyl that I cut on my Silhouette Cameo. We had a really fun family night. Our Creation Celebration was just about 30 hours before my Dad suffered his fatal heart attack. I am grateful to have such fun memories of the last time our whole family was together. 
We were able to gather a lot of supplies in just a few days. My daughter’s teacher, Ms. T requested construction paper, markers, and glue so we really tried to our best with those. We couldn’t stop with just those though and we were able to get all kinds of supplies. 

We had plans to meet Ms. T first thing on Monday morning to give her all these supplies and get the perfect photo opp. I was in the ICU with my Dad however, so hubs stepped in to deliver the supplies and get a snap shot. Ms. T has been moved into a kindergarten classroom in the interim, so that’s where everything got delivered to. 

She was so appreciative of the donation and we all felt really good knowing that the kids would have the supplies they needed to get creative with their learning. 
Do you want to give back too? From now until October 15, people who share their story with Champions for Kids will be entered to win a gift basket full of Fiskars school and crafting supplies. Full rules and regulations are available at: http://cfkhelpkidsthrive.org Fiskars will give these gift baskets to the school/district paired with the top ten winning entries submitted before October 15. Time is short so hurry and get your entry submitted!
Update 10/13: The kids got to return to their classrooms but they don’t have any cabinets yet so everything is still just in boxes until the have a place to put everything! 
Special Thanks to Ms. T for providing the classroom and flood photos! 
Disclosure: I participated in this program on behalf of Champions for Kids, Fiskars and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.

Ashley

Recommended Reading:

Crafting Arizona Don’t just pin it, make it your own!

Comments

  2. What a fabulous cause for a craft night! You have fun but also able to gather so many needed supplies for your school! I just love it. Your poor school! I know your efforts are appreciated immensely!

    Reply

  5. I’ve had to recover from flood damage so I feel the pain of all involved. I think it is wonderful that it worked out so you could help in this manner. Sometimes knowing someone cares really helps gets people over the hurdle of the clean up and restocking of what was lost.

    Reply

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