{walker whimsy}: 7x7 Post #3: Keepsake Boxes

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

7x7 Post #3: Keepsake Boxes

Hello peeps,

I'm switching gears a bit today to show you a *drum roll, please* completed project! It is quite possibly the only semi-creative thing I've done in the past eight weeks (besides, you know, bringing a human being into the universe).

Behold, keepsake boxes!

A thousand pardons for the photo quality in this post.

I've been a keepsake keeper (keepsaker?) ever since my aunt gave me a "memory box" to fill when I was 10. I have the ticket stubs from our family vacation to SeaWorld San Diego, my totally tricked-out Girl Scout Brownie vest, the notes my husband wrote me when we were dating, and various other paraphernalia.

During the too close for comfort wildfire last summer, I grabbed a box of baby/wedding keepsakes out of the attic. After we went off pre-evac, I didn't put it away. I went through it while watching TV much too late at night and thought, "Hey, it's kind of dumb to save all this stuff if it's just going to collect dust." I wanted to do something that would a) get it out of the attic so I could see it and get warm fuzzies and b) be portable in case we ever had to evacuate again.

So I ordered shadow boxes from Joann (here's links for the 12x12 and 14x17) and used some scrapbook stuff I bought like five years ago (not exaggerating) to make one keepsake box for each kid (with an extra for the future ... and also so I could make an OCD-pleasing grid on the wall):

Seeing these every day reminds me of how much I really do love my munchkins ... even when they smear poop everywhere at nap time and hide my camera memory card in undisclosed locations. It's also helps me remember just how quickly time flies when you're ~~having fun~~ scraping fecal matter off walls.

Since I was on a roll, I made a wedding shadow box, too:

Seeing this one every day reminds me of where we've started, how far we've come, and that I regret nothing.

It's rather helpful on a day when T pees in his closet, G gets an eye tooth and refuses to let go of my leg, and K goes for gold in the diaper explosion Olympics. How they planned all this to coincide with the #7x7 challenge, I will never know.