When You Plan Something Awesome and It Turns Out Sucky

Sometimes our family's adventures in serving turn out amazing; Not this time.

I developed a plan, and it was brilliant, in my head.

My family and a group of friends would hold a Shoe Cutting Party for Sole Hope, a local agency seeking to provide shoes for children in Africa.

I watched the demo video, and although I am not a crafter, the project looked simple.

Trace, trace, trace. Cut, cut, cut. Safety pin together, and voila, a pair of shoes.

I emailed friends, created patterns, cued the video, and sat back.

I bet we could create shoes for a whole village. 

The only problem was the jean cutting scissors weren’t really fabric scissors, and the pinking shears were non-existent, and the little, plastic, heel pieces were difficult to cut out, and oh, the whole idea of creating an entire shoe out of matching fabric was completely lost.

So, after an hour and a half of trace, trace, trace and cut, cut, cut, outfitting a whole village in shoes, turned out to be something closer to creating two pairs of shoes.

Two pairs, people. Did I mention sixteen people worked on this?

Sigh.

What about you? What brilliant plan of yours turned out a tad suck-ish?

: :

Sole Hope is the cool cause of the week (see sidebar). Don't let our lack of the right supplies deter you from creating shoes with your friends. Click over to check them out. Although this is an organization out of Asheville, NC, shoe cutting parties can be held anywhere.

Oh, and what became of all the mismatched shoe pieces? Some of my sassy, high school students have been enlisted to repair our handiwork.

If you have a cool cause you’d like me to highlight, drop me an email.

*Thanks to Lori for the Sole Hope lead.