On Thanksgiving, I was talking about a course I had taken in college, and decided to look for the course materials. It was like opening a treasure chest.

My old bedroom had been converted into a general use room, making it hard to remember how it looked when I was a teenager living there. But I started going through the boxes in the closet and found all sorts of goodies. Trophies, ribbons, photos, and old yearbooks brought back tons of memories. I found my first pairs of high heeled shoes that I wore ragged. There were lots of paintings and sculptures from years of art classes.

I’m sure my parents would love for me to take it all away from their house. But since I only have two hands, the room was super cold (just the way I remembered it…) and I also don’t have that much of an attention span, I only grabbed a few things.

The Useful: My first ever english saddle pad, still usable, and will add to my continually growing stock.

Also useful: A yoga pad, as I want to start doing yoga regularly. It kind of hurts to do it on wood floors.

The sentimental: A stuffed horse my mother gave me. My tiny dog tried to attack it with her razor teeth. I told her to get away and her reaction was to sit primly and stare at me.

And a treasure trove of knowledge, all contained in this slightly damaged binder.

This is where I kept my 4-H club packets. If you are not familiar with 4-H, it’s basically a youth group, where we do activities, community service, and learn things. My group was focused on horse things, so we went to shows, had an annual “Project Horse”, and there was horse judging, and probably more things I never got around to doing.

This is all the reference material that was in there. They are kind of dirty, I suppose I ruffled through them while in a barn. I feel oddly unfulfilled as I seem to be missing many of my projects. Possibly because I turned them in, but also possibly because I lost them.

But I didn’t dwell on that for long, because I had lots of other things in there!

Information on textiles and sewing!

Community projects (?)

Public speaking.

And finally, one on food and one on photography.

I believe I went to the 4-H office and literally picked up every single available booklet. It should be worth noting that while I did start a few of these, I never completed any of them, or got anywhere close to completing them. And while they are intended for children/teenagers, I have a desire to look through them and see if I can learn anything. The textile one I find particularly interesting since I’m trying to learn to sew. How timely of it to show up…

Edit: I can’t believe I wrote “Treasure’s” instead of “Treasures”. Please forgive me internet!!!