A week away

It's hard to believe that Evan's Fundraiser is just a week away. Lynn and Bill have done a tremendous amount of work planning and organizing and Nicky has been printing, cutting and stapling to keep up with the demand for raffle tickets. It's truly amazing how all of this has come together in such a short amount of time. Now all we need is good weather next weekend. Not too good ... we don't want people thinking their time would be better spent elsewhere on that rare perfect winter day ... but good enough to travel without an overriding fear of magnetic-like ditches.

For me, today is apron day and garden center day. On January 2? Yup. When Alyssa was home for Christmas, she brought a basket and the items to create a "martini basket" for the basket raffle. Rachelle, her co-contributor, sent a long a really great basket. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view) the basket wasn't large enough to accommodate the items they wanted to include, so Alyssa replaced it with a tray and left the basket here. Its shape and green handles make it look like the perfect vegetable picking basket to me. So, I called a local garden center begging seed donations (they agreed; I have to pick up the items this afternoon) and a cook book publisher asking for a donation (they agreed and mailed the book). Then I remembered that I had some great veggie print fabric in my apron fabric stash. Yes, wearing an apron for picking fresh veggies is entirely appropriate. Especially if you're just going for enough green beans for supper. Pick them right into your apron, dump them in the sink and start snapping.

Naturally, pulling out fabric for one apron meant going through several possibilities and the veggie apron became five aprons. As long as I'm at it, blah, blah, blah. Alyssa will finally get the new apron I promised her a year ago (at least I think it's only a year), I might add one to another basket and maybe I'll even end up one or two ahead. My intent is always to make them throughout the year so that I'm prepared for the fall craft shows. That never works. This year my friend Karen finished up the few I had in progress and I took a bye on the whole deal. Karen even made the apron I included in my Julia basket for the fundraiser. Alyssa and I picked out the fabric, but Karen, sensing my manic panic before Christmas, was good enough to take over the actual construction for me. It is so cute...a perfect fit for the Julie & Julia feel of the basket. One side is contemporary; the other more of a country French feel. Wish I could show it here, but aside from the fact that I don't have a picture of it, I also don't have a day to add to the blog using the dial up technology to which we remain tethered.

At any rate, the Julia basket is great. In addition to the reversible apron, a Julia Child cookbook, some DVDs and kitchen items, it includes a full Kitchen of Provence gift crate from Penzey's Spices. After writing a letter to Penzey's asking for a donation for a French cooking basket I was making for my son's fundraiser, I received this beautiful gift box in the mail. It sent me out shopping for a much bigger basket; what a wonderful problem!

And that's how most of this fundraising has gone. One surprise after another. Donations and offers of assistance have come from so many corners, it is truly amazing. Whether prizes for the main raffle or the baskets, people continue to astound us with their creativity and generosity. No matter what the outcome of this whole event, we have learned that people are unexpectedly generous and kind. After the last few years, that lesson alone is one for which we are very grateful. It's easy to think that our problems are singular incidents in the universe, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. And people do care. They really do.