I'm going to blog about my first Mother's Day later (once I download my picture with Caroline), but I just have to share what we did for Kevin's mom.
The background:
At some point, between all the Welch kids coming and going from college and life, Debra lost her craft room : ( She has tried to regain it, but it's been quite a mess for as long as I've known Kevin. They even moved to a bigger house and while they were able to do a really cool paint job in the room, it's still been unorganized.
The plan:
So, Kevin's sister, Katy, and I conspired to clean-up the room while Debra was on vacation with Kevin's Dad. Knowing that she would freak out if we threw anything away, we both agreed to save every tid-bit that was in the room.
The big day:
So the weekend before Mother's Day, we went into action. Let's just say that Debra lives by the moto "one man's trash is another man's treasure" and she has a lot of "treasure." From toilet paper tubes, baby food jars, and wrinkled tissue paper to quilting fabric, craft paints, and beads, we organized it all.
We videoed the entire process using our webcam and I uploaded it to Windows Movie Maker. I used the Double Speed feature six times on the clips so that 14 hours of work is condensed into 10 minutes of hillarity.
I also made a Top 10 list of the items we found. Here it is (in case the video scrolled them too fast)....
Top 10 most surprising things that I found when cleaning the "wreck room:"
10) Empty hair dye bottles. I guess you could fill them with something to squeeze out, but wouldn't that something already be in a squeeze container?
9) Dryer lint... now, this is not really surprising to me. She's been collecting lint at least since December of 2001 when she gave Kevin marroon towels and asked him to save the lint for her when he did their first washing. But I thought my readers would find this amusing. Did I mention there were two zipper pouches (the kind blankets come in) full? And another stash in the laundry room. Apparently, lint is useful in paper making.
8) A stack of credit cards... expired and the fake kind you get inside of credit card offers.
7) At least a dozen AOL CDs.
6) A TV box full of microwave dinner containers and other recylables. I believe "sweet Jesus" was Kevins response upon the discovery.
5) More scraps of fabric than you could use in a lifetime. Normally I would define the size of a scrap of fabric in inches... but here we are talking millimeters. These are the tiniest fragments that are the scrappiest of all scraps.
4) A handful of the hangers that belts are sold on. Now what on earth could you possibly do with those?
3) A collection of those black plastic anchors that the wires holding childrens toys into packages are secured with.
2) Packing straps. You know, the yellow plastic straps that are bound around boxes. No, they weren't trash, they were actually intentionally wound around an empty ribbon spool.
1) A wind up sperm. He was happy to find a wooden egg in the craft drawer and is living happily ever after in a silk jungle.
The reveal:
So when Debra got back from vacation after more than 24 hours in-transit on Mother's Day at 11 pm, we showed her the results. It was just like you see on those shows like Clean Sweep and Trading Spaces. She was so surprised! We all hope that this will be a huge relief to finally be off her to-do list and that she'll finally be able to enjoy crafting.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Great "Wreck" Room Cleanup
Posted by Margaret at 10:25 AM
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4 comments:
That's so sweet! I bet she was so excited. (but I bet she had to learn where everything was again! lol).
I just watched the video. Too cute! Lol at the "Sweet Jesus". I think the funniest was when Caroline was playing the the middle of the room. lol. I was waiting to see his mom's reaction at the end, though. :-( Guess you didn't record that. Good job on you guys for doing that for her!
What a perfect Mom's day gift! It was hilarious to watch!
This was one of, if not THE biggest surprise of my life! As Katy and Margaret led me toward the "wreck" room and I saw the big bow on the door, I thought, "no way, I was only gone two weeks - this can't be what I think it is!" Then somebody opened the door and I SCREAMED in delight! I felt exactly like one of those people in the surprise redo shows - it was awesome! I probably would have reacted more and completely freaked out, but Katy shushed me because Caroline was asleep down the hall. Then they took me to see the video which is just hilarious. I can only imagine the comments that must have been made about my "treasures" while out of my hearing!
I went back in the room to take it all in after everyone left, and simply could not process how I could have been SO blessed with such special children to do such a wonderful thing for me (and I do consider Margaret one of my children). First thing next morning, I went back in to make sure it wasn't a dream!
To clear up any misconceptions about the #1 strange find, the wind-up sperm was a give-away at a vendor show for scientists and techs doing DNA work, like I used to do! Putting it with the wooden egg was a stroke of genious though - lots of snuggling going on in that love nest, lol!
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