EtsyRecycle Yahoo Group (and my Great Aunt)

Today I joined the EtsyRecycle Yahoo Group. The reason it happened today was due to my genetics. Yes, that is right, my genetics. I have hoarding in my genes. I hate to throw things away. My grandfather's shed was like a farming museum... but that is not the worst of it. My dear Great Aunt (that is pronounced "Ant", remember I am a country girl) Virginia was a for real hoarder. And she was also a collage artist and up-cycler before it was cool. Every Christmas, each family received from her a Reader's Digest, but it was not any old Reader's Digest, it was a transformed Reader's Digest. All year long, she would cut out clippings from magazines and newspapers and glue them to the pages of the Reader's Digest and create a new book. And it is not until this instant that I realize how for granted we took those books. I can not even imagine the amount of time she spent cutting and gluing and I am not sure I ever read any of them. It hurts my heart and makes me wish I had one right now to read. Anyway, back to the hoarding, she would hoard magazines, newspapers... all kinds of stuff, it was piled all around her house. And she had a terrible husband who was mean and scary (he really was a mean man) and would smoke his pipe and fuss at us kids and he was missing a lot of fingers and he was always dirty.... anyway, I digress... where was I? Oh, yes, Aunt Virginia's books... it is in my genes to be a mixed media artist. My Aunt, who we thought was crazy and maybe a little scary, put so much time and energy into those books, and being ungrateful little kids, we thanked her (my family was strict on manners) but we never appreciated those books like we should have.
So, back to the point, I had to do a flyer for Ladies Night out at the Movies for church and I used this really nice card stock. Well, when I cut the paper in two it bugged me that the image was not centered so I cut each flyer to center it. This left me with a huge pile of cardstock strips. Being the pack rat I am, I could not stand the thought of throwing perfectly good card stock strips away, so I posted a thread in Techniques and Materials and somebody pointed me to the Yahoo group, EtsyRecycle. So, I am now an official member and I am looking forward to participating. And, tonight, I am going to say a little prayer to my Aunt and thank her for all the time and energy she put into those books each year and hopefully one of my Mom's sisters kept one because I would love to have one to remember my aunt by and acknowledge the fact that I am probably a lot more like her than I ever realized.