It's All in the Cards

When I was a little girl, I was a pen pal... with my great grandmother.  It was my mom's mom's mom.  She lived over an hour away so I didn't get to see her often.  So we would write each other letters.  I always used a goofy Lisa Frank type of stationery and she would always use the same flowery white card.  I was probably between the ages of 6 and 10 while I was writing and receiving letters from Great Grandma Dot.  Because of my young age, I wasn't thinking ahead very well and either lost or threw away all of the letters she ever sent me.  I didn't think much of it at the time.  She died when I was a senior in high school.  I remembered the letters and searched high and low for them but never found them.  A while later, my grandma (mom's mom) was going through all of great grandma's belongings and found a stack of all of the letters that I ever sent her, full of brightly colored stickers and even some silly jokes:

Yes, that is Pocahontas.

I still have all of them to this day.  Which is why it is hard for me to throw away cards.

Every year you get what seems like millions of cards for your birthday, Christmas, Easter, and any special events like a wedding or graduation.  Some of them are lame (let's face it), and some of them are really special.  But you always seem to keep them for a little while because you just feel like you have to.  For goodness sake, some of them cost as much as five or six bucks!  But... eventually you realize that there's really no point in keeping them and throw them out.  That's what I have a hard time doing.  So I have a ridiculously large box of cards from all sorts of events and from all different points in my life and from all different people.  But, because I am really weird, I keep the most special of all cards in a file in my filing cabinet.  Yep, I know it's weird, but it's true.  See?

And to this day all of the cards/letters I ever wrote to great grandma Dot live in the special card file.

When I saw this spring green beauty at Michael's (of course), I knew immediately what would go on it and where it would go.  It had to go in my closet and I had to put some of the most special cards I have ever received on it so I could see them every day.

Some cards are from family, some from Josh, and one from my best friend.  And I don't feel bad about keeping them anymore because they are special.  And my "card" file is a tiny bit lighter :-)