Coming Soon: Garage/Bake Sale

Hellooooooo dear friends!  

Hope this post finds you well and enjoying these first days of SPRING (which are starting to feel more like early summer)!!  This post is mostly directed to our KANSAS CITY AREA FRIENDS.  Everyone else, you're welcome to read too! :)

If you've followed our blog at all, you know that God has already MIRACULOUSLY provided about HALF of what we foresee needing to complete our adoption!!  Check out our fundraising thermometers to the right to get a feel for our progress.  Sometimes I almost can't wrap my mind around it...  He is so faithful and we have just been in awe of His provision.  We currently have just over 10 grand of the 20 GRAND (ish - possibly more) that we need to raise.

One of the things that we are planning to do to help us raise the rest of our funds is a Spring garage sale/bake sale!  Other adopting families have used garage sales to raise funds and have made up to $5,000 in a weekend in sales!  I love garage sales and haven't done one in YEARS, so I'm super excited about this.  Our good friends Paul and Arden Czaszewicz have graciously offered to lend their garage to us for 2 days: FRIDAY MAY 4TH AND SATURDAY MAY 5TH for our garage sale.  They are located in South KC (near the International House of Prayer).

Sooooo.... If you're interested in partnering with us a bit in raising funds for our adoption process....

Here's how you can help:

1. Spring cleaning!  Go through your basements, closets, the backs of your kitchen cupboards, etc, and find items that you no longer need, that are reusable, and that you think might be worth a few bucks to someone.  Start a "Butler Garage Sale" pile. :)

2. If you have space in your basement or garage, volunteer to be a collection point for our garage sale stuff.  Since we don't have a garage here at our place, we could use 2 or 3 locations where people are willing to just let the items being donated take up space in the next 6 weeks or so before the garage sale.

3. Volunteer to contribute homemade BAKED GOODS!  A batch or two of cookies, muffins, banana bread, etc.... The possibilities are endless.  We will sell baked goods during the garage sale.

4. Volunteer to help on Thursday, March 3rd as we round up everything from our collection points and transport to Paul and Arden's house.  We will probably need a couple of pickup trucks to run a few loads.

5. Volunteer to help on one or both days of the sale: Friday May 4 and/or Saturday May 5th.  We will need approximately 10 people to help us set up (bright and early!) and coordinate various things on those days.

6. Volunteer to help us transport any items that aren't purchased during the sale to Goodwill/Salvation Army.

OKAY!  If you're still reading this post, THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!  I know this is a lot, but I'm super excited to see a team come together to pull it off.  Stan and I are so thankful for you guys - for your friendship and support as we are on this journey toward adoption. 

We love y'all!

Here are some more ideas of items that could be donated for the sale:

-Baby/kid items!  Clothes and toys that are in decent shape, high chairs, bouncers, etc, etc.

-Kitchen items - extra pots, pans, appliances you don't use, etc.

-Home decor items

-Furniture (call or email us if you have furniture you'd like to donate so we can figure out whether we can take it, how to transport it, etc.)

-Clothes:  Kid clothes especially, but adult clothes are great also if they're in pretty good shape.

-"MAN" stuff:  tools, etc.

-Books, if you feel that they might sell.

-CD's or DVD's

-Yard furniture

-Sports/fitness equipment

Any other ideas, anyone??  

How He Brings the Pieces Together

Several people have commented on the symbolism behind this, our first "official fundraiser."  This is a puzzle fundraiser... Here's how it works:

I painted this piece for our (future) adopted baby.  It expresses a lot of our heart/purpose/passion for adoption.  It is kind of a prophetic art piece in that it is speaking the Father's heart over our adopted baby before he/she is (likely) born, and before we know who he/she is.

I then had the painting turned into a 513 piece puzzle(!!), and, with help from Stan and several friends, put it together over about a week's time:

Had a hard time getting a a good quality pic of the puzzle. :-/

I've seen several other blogs of adopting families who've done fundraisers like this, and I want to do this one similarly to the way that they have, but with one small tweak.  Here goes:

• Individuals, couples, or families can sponsor puzzle pieces for a donation $10 per piece toward our adoption fund.  When you sponsor a piece, we will write your name on the back of the puzzle piece, take a picture of that piece, and email that picture to you.
• You can either mail us a check for however many pieces you want to sponsor (email me at danalynnb@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with our snail mail address), give the money to me in person if you're here in KC, OR use our PayPal "Donate" button at the top of the right side bar on this blog.
• Once all of the pieces are sponsored, we will have the puzzle framed in double-sided glass, and it will be hung on the wall in our adopted child's room.  As they get older, we will be able to take the puzzle down, look at the back (since there will be glass on both sides), and show our child the names of all of the people who God used to make a way for him/her to be adopted into our family.

Here's the one thing that I want to do differently than I've seen done before:  I want this puzzle to be an accurate representation of ALL of the people (or as many as possible, till all the pieces are full) who have partnered with us financially, in ANY amount, toward our adoption. SO:

• If you can only contribute $5, that is SO appreciated, and you can sponsor 1/2 a puzzle piece. :)  (We will write your name on one half of the piece, and someone else's name who also wants to donate $5 on the other half.)
• If you have already donated toward our adoption fund (prior to the launch of this fundraiser), OR... If, during the puzzle fundraiser, you want to donate a larger amount than $100 (or 10 puzzle pieces), we will write your name on the back of 10 puzzle pieces (for the first $100) AND color the back of those pieces silver, as pictured.

I LOVE the idea of a puzzle fundraiser for adoption because it is so very symbolic.  It has already been so FUN and AMAZING to see how God is bringing the "pieces" together, how He is already bringing in the funds that we need in order to bring our future son or daughter home.  Seeing it all begin to come together already has caused such FAITH to rise up in Stan's and my hearts....Faith in the Father's passion for adoption, faith that He really is allowing us (and all of you who are on this journey with us in prayer and/or by contributing financially) to partner with His heart in this way, AND faith that He HAS A CHILD already set apart for our family, and for HIS FAMILY, and is perfectly orchestrating all of the events in our lives, in our child's birth mother's life, and in our child's little life (whether or not he or she has been born yet), to come together at exactly the right time.  He is beautiful, and all He does is beautiful.  We are so blessed to get to participate with the Father in what He is ALREADY doing in the life of our child who we don't know yet.  May He continue to be glorified in this!

Blown Away

Quick update:  The final wire transfer (of the set of 3 that came from our good friends who I last posted about) came through today and bumped our "Current Goal" thermometer up ABOVE THE HALFWAY point.  This means we are over halfway toward having our entire placement fee - the largest of all of all the fees on our "fee schedule."

Woah...  We are still in awe.  God is so faithful and NOTHING is too hard for Him.

:)
D