The Extreme Art of Re-Purposing

The blog... Still under construction. But, we'll just consider it one of those minor construction jobs like when a road crew repaves or a building gets a new coat of paint. Much less severe than, say, taking a wrecking ball to a building and then starting over from scratch.

But, the blogging can still go on even if the windows are being washed (yeah... I really need to stop trying to make construction analogies).

A few days ago, I announced that we have officially started our adoption fund. At the time, we had $41.39, but I think the amount is now closer to $46.48(give or take some change). In case you were wondering, the fund looks something like this:

Crafting at its finest

I'm oddly proud of my empty, washed-out iced tea jug. We actually had the idea to take some of the leftover chalkboard paint from one of our DIY projects (blog to follow... if we ever finish the last 10%!) and paint a little square on there so we can manually keep count. If nothing else, it might cut back on the number of times I dump all those coins on the living room floor and count them by hand (tons of fun at midnight, by the way).

However, I'm also feeling a little... overwhelmed. The task of raising somewhere upwards of $25,000 is a daunting task, especially when you're sitting at $45.39. In case you were wondering, that's somewhere in the realm of 0.2%. As in: no where near 1%. This was put into huge perspective when I read Lora's post this afternoon. (For her full site, click the My Camo Kids button on the right!)

And here's one of the reasons why (warning, this made me cry for about 10 minutes straight... so, viewers beware):

I'm really not sure where to go from here. I mean, obviously, I am going to continue to drop dimes (and pennies, nickles, quarters, dollar bills...) into my pathetic plastic jug, and maybe in about five years, I will have raised enough to get a home study done. I'm seriously considering having a yard sale and sticking whatever money we make doing that into the adoption bottle, but it seems like a lot of work for the very limited amount of stuff I want to get rid of (it would be nice to get that stuff out of my garage, though! And it needs to happen before the next PCS, because I am not hauling it back across the country).

If you have any fundraising ideas that don't scream "pathetic!" and "You're-getting-way-ahead-of-yourself!" please let me know...