Sometimes a small idea blossoms into something big and beautiful. Something that has a ripple affect across the community.

A couple of weeks ago, while planning our annual holiday wrapping paper, we were hit with an idea: What if this year our paper was literally gift-wrapped with hand-drawn images from kids in our community?

What could be more meaningful than representations of what the holiday season means to the most precious in our town?

We reached out to Principal Kate Fish at Crossroads Public School to see what we could do.

The idea was big: Let’s get every student in the school involved and have them draw what the holiday means to them. It could be anything. A Christmas tree, a menorah, Diwali lights or Santa hat. Anything at all and we’d print every single one on our wrapping paper.

The response was an overwhelming yes from Crossroads and Mrs. Fish jumped into action to put it all together.

This week you can see the results of that project — 294 images drawn by nearly every student in the school across all grades.

There are images of the Grinch, Frosty the Snowman, lots of mentions of the NOTL Wolves hockey teams, a family watching Home Alone by the fireplace, Christmas bulbs, Diwali lights and a menorah.

The diversity of submissions was pretty astounding.

It’s such a wonderfully Canadian thing. Such a NOTL thing. Such a Crossroads thing.

Putting it all together took  hours and hours of work. From the students who took the time to draw something special, to the teachers and Mrs. Fish who printed, handed out and collected the images — and even scanned them all and sent them to us when we had a scanner malfunction.

Then there was the meticulous cropping work and placement on the page. That took about 12 hours on its own.

Even further, the school printed off the images and cut them out as decorations for this year’s float in the Christmas Parade. Such an amazing display of community spirit at Crossroads.

There was little time to pull it all together during a busy December, but we pulled it off and we’re grateful to everyone involved.

We want to thank Mrs. Fish for her enthusiasm in the project. We can truly feel the spirit of the Coyotes with this wrap.

We invite you to please use this wrapping paper, and if you do, take a photo of it and send it our way to add to our collection. We’d like to see creative uses.

Next year we’ll try to widen the scope to include even more schools if there is an interest. Because it might just be our new tradition.

editor@niagaranow.com