It starts young

Seeing as how today the temperature dropped a merciful 2 degrees I find myself daydreaming about one of my earliest craft memories.

Picture if you will an early October day.  My family is heading to school, on a Saturday.  The parents are busy on a committee.  They're planning the school Carnival and everyone is there to help, kids too.

On the way my sister and I score a happy meal.  The usual colorful box has been festively replaced with an orange pumpkin grinning at the chance to show off it's insides...which happened to be a blissfully greasy kids' meal.

In my third grade sized world the school Carnival was only third to Christmas and Summer vacation.  I was excited to be a part of the commotion.  The fun has always been being a part of the buzz of getting ready.  I still feel that way, I'm better at setting the party up than being a guest.  The fun is in figuring it all out and making things work with whatever you have on hand followed by the pride of making that last minute Hail-Mary pass the actual thing everyone liked the most.

Each class had to help with a booth and each booth was a certain game: the ping-pong ball toss, speed throw and face-painting.  The booths were simple wooden frames, the walls were made of heavy-duty paper and each was decorated colorfully.

That year my class had the horse shoe toss booth. I helped my Mom as she painted two horses looking back as if whomever was tossing the horse-shoes was in the stable.  The stable 'doors' created the toss line.  The whole Carnival was a massive creative effort.  

It was magical watching strings of bare-bulb lights and bunches of balloons transform our school parking lot.  The idea that you could make almost anything work with a screw gun, duct tape, acrylic paint and imagination became a part of my very being in those afternoons.

So as fall flirts with its real arrival I'm reminded I should keep that glue gun handy.