i am so grateful for my gran on my mom's side. a women who gave her whole life to God. she laid down everything and lived for Him. sometimes even going without food to provide for the hungry, young and old, black and white, good and bad - she cared for them all. she was the one spent her life helping others and giving 'our' stuff away to those others. with my recent love affair with the vintage, i realize what she gave away - the wonderful furniture were amongst the things i would now so appreciate. but what she didn't give away to others (OK let's just go with that for a moment) but gave to me was her 'frugality'. she taught me how to save and re-use and re-purpose. so that is where my love affair with postage stamps started - she taught me how to lovingly soak them in water and remove them from envelopes to be re-used again on whatever. even at a young age i started collecting stamps and even belonged to the philatelist society.
so just where am i going with all of this...
well my family doesn't really have an understanding of who i am and what i do. but they try. so when my mother arrived at my doorstep the other day with a plastic bag filled to the brim with old stamps i was in heaven - stamp heaven. and i even for a moment thought that she got me - really got me. so for the past 2 days i have been soaking and lovingly removing stamps from envelopes and i haven't even made a dent in the pile! i am in heaven! so i will keep them in a box and use them in my layouts and cards and splash out on other projects and still i will have enough stamps to use for the rest of my life. ah the simple things in life. it's the little things in life that end up being the BIG things.

my grandmother: Joey Brink
hope you have a fabulous and creative week. i am heading to the kitchen to soak more stamps!