SOME GOOD THINGS IN A GOOD BOX

I love absolutely everything about this red, tin lunchbox. It was my mom's when she was little. So that's cool. It's red and plaid and has a poem in rhyming couplets inside on the lid, entitled "Safety First." There are pictures of little kids being safe. This lunchbox is one of the best vintage things ever. So I use to it hold a slightly random, extremely meaningful assortment of objects. Some things have an attachment to family, some of the them good memories, some of them just objects that have established a place in my heart after years and years of love and use. Here I'll share some of them with you. 

A rabbit family, a chipmunk family, a seal, and two foxes. My favorite little gathering of forest (plus one marine) animals. These were in a cabinet at my grandmother's house, and I loved to look at them when I was little. When she moved out and downsized, they made it into the same cabinet at her new place. I was older, and I still loved to look at them. I'm not happy that she's no longer here to have them in her own glass cabinet, but at least I have the memory of her now, while looking at them in my own home. 

Concert and movie tickets are perfect relics to keep over time, to remember a night you had with someone. I mean, they even have the date on them! I've been holding on to concert and movie ticket stubs for a few years. The concerts are mostly memories I share with my best friend, Katie. The move tickets span from my first movie with Douglas, movies I had excitedly talked about with my mom which we ended up seeing, random afternoons of seeing a movie with a lack of anything else to do. I love these tickets. They, kind of like a photograph, are proof that these fun, exciting, relaxing, anything times actually happened. 

I have always loved writing letters to anyone - friends who moved far away for college, my grandparents when I was learning to write cursive in school, not out of necessity but because it was something fun to that I didn't really have to do in order to keep contact with someone. When Douglas was in basic training about two years ago, I learned what it was like write and receive letters when it was the only way you could contact someone. I wouldn't want to live that way, but it was an experience I'm glad we had as a couple. I now have these letters filled with emotions and stories and words about my life at that point in time. 

As you can tell, some things that belonged to family members are important to me. I love this cigarette case because it was my mom's and also because it just looks so stylish and sharp. Black and gold are always good together. 

I have traveled to so many places with my dad, and our trips together are some of my favorite experiences of my life. So his old passport from traveling in Asia when he was younger holds a sort of importance I can't put my finger on. I know he has always loved to travel -and has always wanted to travel more, see more places- so I love that I can be his partner in these travels. I can't wait to see more of the world.

Okay. When I was little I had a Stickopotamus binder that would barely close, stickers of all sort busting out of the sides. I carried it to school most days. It was serious. Since that collection of stickers started, I couldn't stop. Since then I've collected weird Japanese stickers, stickers from artists I love, letter stickers, any kind that I see that I like. I use them every once in awhile - when something really needs a sticker. Okay, so maybe it's more than once in a while. 

Some of these photos came from my lifetime and others from lifetimes I can only imagine. They show me things I didn't see and will never see again. As someone who loves family mementos, these photos from my childhood and from my mom's childhood never fail to move me when I look through them.

Just like everything in this special box. Thanks for taking a look inside with me.