A Succos serendipity

I am always delighted to see how Hashem makes things come together in one's life in so many ways. How things seem to materialize out of nowhere when you need them. When suddenly ideas or books or whatever seems to rain down from the sky and drop into your lap. Recently, I was reading a book of short stories called the Inside Story, very good short stories. There was this one story about a man who loved the mitzva of succah and really invested himself into it. He personally built the walls of his succah and spent a lot of time lovingly carving out elaborate decorations out of wood for it. So it got me thinking about Succos and decorations and the whole idea of making mitzvos beautiful. I was thinking that it is really a good idea to combine crafting with a Torah/mitzvah theme such as an upcoming holiday. So besides practicing practical skills and learning about the holiday, it's a wonderful opportunity to help children to truly invest themselves into Torah and mitzvos and really make it their own. So I was taking a mental inventory of our succah decorations from last year and remembering reading about a family who made it their summer project to make really nice succah decorations and make it really special without the last minute pressure and how perhaps we should do the same. And then as I was browsing through my various favorite internet haunts, I suddenly found this amazing site,Creative Jewish Mom with a whole section of stunning succah decorations to make in August and other great projects as well. So I am very excited about this. I also remembered the post I saw a while back on making a succah banner out of an old pillow case so here it is while we are on the topic, together with the packing tape sculpture technique that we used last year to make some really nice succah decorations. A veritable Succos serendipity bonanza, indeed!