It's Happening at The Create Exchange

Sep 25, 2016

2 min read

The last few days have been a blur of activity. I am physically and emotionally exhausted. A major flood is on it's way to our community, expected to hit it's highest level just about 24 hours from now.

There are really no words that can truly express how thankful i am for the amazing crew of customers, friends. volunteers and random strangers that came to our aid and made our flood preparation possible. The building is empty, inventory and displays safely tucked away in more places than i can count and we have left the flood zone. It was extremely difficult and emotional as we drove away, not knowing what the next days and weeks will bring.

Several people offered to take down the window display but I insisted on leaving it up. Since the building is on a busy corner (one of the streets is still open for now), I wanted to leave something colorful for people to see and something cheerful to come back to.

We have been told to expect around 3 feet of water and that we will be out of the buildings for at least a week. After that...who knows. It will really depend an the amount of damage and the repairs required. So for now we wait. We have prepared for the worst, now we hope for the best.

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One Last Project Before We Go

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After the store was completely cleared out and we were waiting for the furnaces to be removed, there were some folks hanging around so we decided a little art therapy would be fun.

This was truly a "make it work" moment. All we had were some scraps of cardboard boxes, one sharpie marker, and a pair of smallish scissors. No tables and chairs left, we sat on the floor.

We were eventually able to round up a couple more sharpies, a pair of scissors and a box cutter from a business down the street.

We drew simple fish shapes on the cardboard and cut them out. The kids had fun adding details to each of the fish. We swiped a yarn ball from the other window display (thank goodness I had left them in place) poked a hole and hung each fish in the window so they would be looking out at the flood waters.

Everyone laughed, and for a little while we were all able to find some humor in the face of disaster. Just goes to prove, making art, even in it's simplest form, truly is good for the soul.