Thursday, December 4, 2008

Nifty Little Gifties

Phew! I managed to catch a cold on top of whatever intestinal flu nastiness I had, so I'm not feeling all better, but my choices are no longer to either lie down or faint so y'all, I'm declaring it--I AM WELL!!!

Mind you, I still did a lot of tricking the girls into lying down with me today, and they've basically run through their screen time for the rest of the month, but I did finish my biggest, most important project this evening--my Craft magazine tutorial submission is ready to roll, as soon as the editor sends me her dpi and size preferences for the photos. For those of you who've been following my photo saga or who know something about photography, I'll just tell you--middle grey matte board, it rocks.

In other news, I'm waaaay behind (obviously) on prepping for the Fair and Green Gift Festival that I'll be vending at this Saturday (along with the Kitchen Girls, among other awesome local celebrities), but while languishing in bed off and on yesterday I did manage to finish up punching out the tiny little holes in these nifty little gifties:
Gift tags! From old greeting cards! I wrote a quick-and-dirty tutorial for them over at Crafting a Green World, but they were a Thanksgiving event unto themselves, I tell you:It seems that my late Mama, before she became too unwell, collected every single greeting card she had ever received--in our back hallway was a huge drawer, crammed to overflowing, with cards dating back from the 1950s. While spending the better part of Thanksgiving weekend sorting through them just to cull out the cards from exes (cards from exes are EXCELLENT for crafting with), I came across so many fabulous treasures that you'd just never find unless your grandma was a packrat, too.

For instance, look at this awesome card: It's freakin' adorable, right? It's from a big stack, held together with a rubber band, that came, apparently, from a baby shower held for my Mama when she was pregnant with her baby who was stillborn. The condolence cards for his death were in the same stack--keepsakes of joy and keepsakes of grief, all together.

There were other bittersweet cards from loved ones long gone, cards for graduations and anniversaries and Christmases 30 years ago, and cards from...
me. You betcha, in grade school, I used to dot the "i" in my signature with a CAT HEAD. Sometimes, though, I'd just sign my name like this: It was my trademark, see?

Here's the biggest mystery of the bunch, though:That's to me, when I was a small child, from Aunt Birdie. She sent me a Christmas postcard, and a Christmas sticker, and some Christmas cut-outs from a box top, and just check out this beautiful letter:

"Dec 23 83 (I was seven)

Dearest loving niece and loved one. Wish you was here with me for Christmas. I guess you are looking for Santa Clause to come Christmas. I hope he brings you a lot of nice gifts and nuts and gum and apples, oranges, and all kinds of good things to eat and nice presents. Are you looking for him to bring you a sweet baby doll? I hope he does.

I love you so much, wish you was here with me. I so all alone and so lonesome. Tell mother, dad, grandmother, all hello for me. All my love to my sweet thing.

From Aunt Birdie Gann."

Breaks your heart, right? Here's the thing, though--WHO IS AUNT BIRDIE? Never heard of her. Never seen her, never seen a photo of her, don't remember anybody speaking of her, don't know this name At. All.

But wow, she loved me, didn't she? And she was all alone and lonesome on Christmas. But because Mama saved her letter and sticker and postcard and cut-outs for me, after I probably looked at them and thought they were stupid and left them lie, I can remember her now. I feel more loved today, thinking about Aunt Birdie, who wanted me to have gum and apples and oranges for Christmas and wished I was there with her.

And thanks for the Christmas cut-outs, Aunt Birdie. I'll put them on the tree this year, I promise.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, sorry, I had to laugh at your having no idea who this Aunt Birdie is!

I hope you'll actually be 100% well very soon; the holidays is no time to be sick...not with all the food to be eaten and the crafting to be done. ;)

Have a terrific time at the Festival! I'm so out of touch with the local scene, I had no idea it was happening.

julie said...

Ah, dear Aunt Birdie...whoever you were.

Anonymous said...

Oh, my goodness! I actually teared up a bit after I read this! That is the sweetest letter from your unknown aunt!

cake said...

that is so funny that you had a trademark! i did too. i had a little flower, that was drawn in some stylized bubble-letter way, with two pointy leaves on either side. my best friend had a cute penguin that she drew next to her name. sometimes we would just sign with the drawing, like your cat.

just catching up on your blog...we are in houston at the moment. sorry to have missed the fair and green. sounds great, and i want to get a glass ornament from you at some point...