Never Too Late for a Gift

This past Saturday was not only The Man's birthday dinner out, but that same morning it was World Friendship Day for Girl Scouting. This year our theme was Cities of the World. Our troop is involved in a couple of other projects and used World Friendship Day to multi-purpose them all together by creating a Cleveland booth.

But this isn't about our booth, it's about our craft.

For the fourth year in a row, we've done Shrinky Dinks as our WFD craft. We create designs based on our booth, have the girls color them at the table and shrink them down to key chains right in front of their very eyes. It's always a wild time at our booth and we are crushed the entire time we're open. (Four years ago we bought a bulk package of 100 sheets of Shrinky Dink paper. It's almost gone now.)

To shrink the dinks, you need a toaster oven. The problem was that Co-Leader Supreme also needed a toaster oven for her younger troop. They were making tiny pizzas on crackers for New York City. "We could share the oven," she suggested. The more I thought about it the more I knew it wouldn't work. First of all, Shrinky Dinks don't smell that great while they are baking. No one would want to eat a Shrinky Dink flavored pizza. I also had a fear of things getting really crazy and someone eating a key chain or wearing a pizza. Nightmare! Finally, when we do this craft we are just slammed with customers. There would be too much of a traffic jam at the oven if both things were being made at once.

I was going through people who I though might want to loan us their oven when it occurred to me that I have a toaster oven of my own! (Stay with me here. I'll explain.)

My pots and pans cupboard is oddly shaped and too deep. It invites chaos and gets it. I take everything out and re-stack it up beautifully about once a month. Within a week it is completely wrecked again. And it's all me. The other three in this house don't dare even try to do anything with that cupboard.

To fight the chaos a bit, I keep a large box in the back of it, just to keep things from getting pushed WAY back. It's been there since we bought the house, that big place holder of a box.

And what is that box?

What do you know? A brand new toaster oven! My last unopened wedding gift!

Here it is all sealed up and...dusty.

It's been waiting for seventeen years to be wanted and needed. Now is its time!

Ooooooh, shiny.

This lucky little machine made its debut at World Friendship Day on Saturday and shrunk about 120 key chains to delight and amazement of little Girl Scouts.
I don't remember who gave us the toaster oven but I'd like to say thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved the day.

The oven is sealed up in the box again and in the awful cupboard doing the important job of holding back the tide. See you next year little guy!