A Retrospective or, as Matt Calls it, a Clip Show

For some reason, holidays in my parents' house always inspire in me the long, unwieldy project. It's an old house crammed full of the treasures of two grandparents who grew up during the Depression and aquired then, as did most people, a slight hoarding fetish (Twist tie? Butter tub? Bank statement from the 60s? They have it), and it screams for the kinds of organizational projects that quickly snowball out of all hope of control. One year, I cleaned out the attic, utilizing a large stock of both trashbags and Rubbermaid bins; another year, I looked through all the photo albums and scanned all the photos of...well...me. Last Christmas, I sorted through my dearly departed Mama's entire adult wardrobe, most of it very well-used--I donated much and cut down some into outfits of remembrance for my girlies, but the majority, too worn and stained to be anything other than someone's else's trash? Well, they weren't Papa's trash, but his treasures, and back into the closet they went.

This Thanksgiving, oddly, I've spent the past two days sorting out the crafty photos from my nearly 13,000 digital photos that I store in an external hard drive (Yep, 13,000, and I DO look at them. Often.). It was by turns tedious and sweet, as I'm sure you can imagine of such a big project. Here are a very few of my favorites of those 4,000 crafty pics:

As you can tell, some of the photos reflect my pride in the things I make to give or sell, but most reflect the pleasure I take in creating for and with my family, and the pleasure of watching my little girlies growing creatively.

Speaking of creative growth, I have a date tonight to go to the Southside High School football game to watch my little baby cousin Zachary, somehow a freshman in high school, play the tuba in the marching band. That sweet little lamb with the short-alls and the mop of bright red hair, who called me "Jewee" and played me in Super Mario Bros., is pretty much a man now, and a good one at that.

If only he didn't have to attend my rival high school--Southside? Ugh. Northside High School RULEZ!