A Martha Stewart Interlude

Today I gift-wrapped an empty box. First I glued on sheets of fuscia tissue paper. Next, I glued sheets of pink polka dot tissue paper over the fuscia paper, leaving a bit of the fuscia showing. It is a lovely box. With any luck, when I place it at the coffee hour refreshment table at church on Sunday, it will become a lovely box filled with lovely clothes for the kids who live at the homeless shelter downtown.

Wrapping the box was my big, Martha Stewart idea. I wanted it to look friendly and festive. Frankly, my church needs all the friendly and festive boxes it can get. It's an Episcopal church that is struggling to hang in there. Two years ago, a new rector came to town, and he's good people. He's trying to make things happen. He and the curate (the second in command) are starting to get people excited about the place. They've got Children's Chapel and Youth Group up and running again, and a lot of new folks coming through the front doors. They've got me wrapping empty boxes.

I tried to take a picture of my box to post here. I thought, "This will be my chance to learn how to upload photographs to the computer." But after taking several shots, I realized I will have to learn something about using a camera first. Have you ever seen those pictures on E-Bay that look like they've been taken in somebody's mildewy rec room, a rec room with no recessed lighting, one you just know reeks of stale cigarette smoke and cat urine? That's how my box pictures came out. And I don't have a rec room or a cat. Or cigarettes, for that matter.

You will have to take my word for it: it's a nice box. One day maybe I'll figure out how to show it to you in a way that makes you realize just how nice an empty box can be.