We’ve been in our new home almost two weeks now.
Taking care of both of you has definitely slowed down the unpacking process significantly. And I mean sloooow. The last time we moved there were no little feet in our house. I had everything unpacked and organized in 3 days.
We’ve been here 12 days and there are still boxes to unpack, my closet is a hot mess, and we can’t park both cars in the garage because it’s full of 128 unpacked boxes waiting to be broken down. For a neat freak who loves everything to be in its place, this is wretched.Part of me wants to stay up all night putting everything away. But the other part of me realizes I have to take care of two littles all day. Since sleep deprivation turns me into the worst version of myself I’ve decided to tackle a few boxes every day.  There is about an hour in the morning when you are both napping.
You are both asleep.
In your beds.
At the same time.  At this point in my life, this brief hour is totally amazing and quiet and helps me get through the rest of the day.

One box I was especially eager to unpack was the box with my printer’s tray.
This is one of my favorite things in the whole house. I can’t remember when I first saw a printer’s tray. I just remember my daddy had one for years and I loved looking at all the little trinkets he would put inside.

I have to stop here to give you a brief history lesson, so you fully appreciate the printer’s tray as I do.

Years ago, before Google and texting and Instagram, people read newspapers. As in, actual pieces of paper they would hold and read. Crazy town, I know.
By the time you read this there may not even be a Google. It will be replaced by something newer, faster and cooler. You will probably have to look up what Google was, which makes me laugh a little.

A printer’s tray was a wooden tray divided into compartments. The compartments held letters of the alphabet and other characters and symbols. Printers used these to print newspapers.
Originally they had capitals and non capitals in separate trays (cases). This is why capital letters are called “upper case” and non-capital letters are called “lower case”. Is that neat or what?
Later they combined both cases. Printers could travel easier carrying one case rather than two. Everything is all digital and techy this days, so I hope this all makes sense to you. If it doesn’t, here’s a picture below to help you understand.

A combined case is the kind of tray I have. Only, people no longer put types in them anymore.  Instead of using it as a drawer, people hang them on their walls and put trinkets and toys and what-nots in them.Here’s my printers tray. (If you look at the very bottom you can see the black drawer handle.)

Here’s my dad’s. (He hung his with the drawer handle on top.)

Clearly his is much cooler than mine. But he filled his over the course of many years. I’ve only been working on mine for about 5 years.

He has miniature oil cans and a tin man he found while remodeling the farm house. Old bottle openers and rusty keys.  A few items are fairly “new”, but the majority of them would be considered old junk by most people.

Because the compartments are fairly small, you have to find tiny things to put in each slot.  Daddy and I loved going to flea markets or yard sales looking for little items to fill our trays.  The older the better.

This is a picture of your PawPaw and I at a flea market.  I am pregnant with Neala.

His tray had been full for quite some time, so he started putting things on the very top.  This is when I decided he should start sharing.  Over half of the trinkets in my tray are stolen borrowed from my dad’s tray.  It then became sort of a game.  I would take a few things and put them in mine.  When he would come over he would always walk to the hallway to look at my tray.  He would either take his items back, or take a few of mine.