“My great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and mother were and are great cooks and have been collecting recipes for years and have all owned restaurants. The recipe collection is huge. Lots of recipe books, handwritten recipe cards and notes in notebooks are around our house. My mother started a recipe book when I was born and kept adding to it since I was little. Family has always been super important to us and food is always at the center of getting together. I have a lot of recipes from both of my parents’ sides of the family. My parents’ families have been friends for a long time and so we combine them all for our get togethers. My favorite thing is cooking with my grandmothers. I love to bake with my dad’s mother and cook with my mom’s mother. I use our recipes regularly. My mom has always wanted me to know how to take care of myself and be able to cook for any kind of event. Since I have been able to be home by myself I have been helping or making dinner on my own. My parents work a lot  and so it helped them out to have dinner ready when they got home. I have always been collecting and many times I get recipes from family in my birthday cards or new recipe books.”

“My Squishmallow collection has a lot of cute little animals. I have eleven Squishmallows. I have a dog, cow, panda and more. They all vary in size. I have two that are about a foot and a half tall, and the rest are about nine inches tall. I also have two really small ones that my dog tries to eat. My sister got one about a year ago and I thought it was so cute so I made her drive me to Walgreens that day and I bought one of my own. Ever since then, everytime I see one I just have to have it. They all come with names but I usually change them because they come with human names, so I change them to make them seem more ‘un-human-like.’ I named my dog Squishmallow Chocolate Milk, my cow is named Milk Bread and my mushroom is named Shroom. I usually get them at Walgreens, but Hallmark has really good ones too. My favorite Squishmallow is named Paco and he’s a parrot. He was actually my first Squishmallow.” 

“I have 46 pins and four patches on my jacket. I’ve been collecting them since middle school. Most of my pins have some meaning, whether it be that it reminded me of something, it was a gift, helped me express myself or just made me smile. My ‘Girl Power’ pin was a gift from my Girl Scout troop when they saw me in the fall musical ‘The Music Man’ which meant a lot because it showed me how much they supported me. My New York taxi pin reminds me of my trip to New York in 2019. My Lisa Simpson pin was one I bought at a small shop in Wichita the day before our improv team won state, so it reminds me of that triumph. I connect a lot of memories to these pins and track my growth through the years with them. I usually buy them, but the ones that mean the most to me are usually the ones that were gifts or my lettering pins. I received a pin as a gift from a relative and didn’t have anywhere to put it so I bought a jean jacket specifically for the pins but I thought one side had too many pins so I bought more and it still looked uneven so I continued to buy them until I eventually had a collection and people just started giving them to me as gifts for my jacket. The pins and patches really show people who I am. I get a lot of comments and compliments on the jacket and now it’s become my favorite way to make new friends.” 

“I first started collecting vinyls because my aunt and uncle got me a record player. I have roughly 50 records that I have been collecting over the past couple of years. To see how much they cost, I usually go on this website or app called Discogs and it shows you how much they’re worth and how many around you are being sold. Then to get them, I usually just get them off the artists website. I pick the vinyls off of the artists and songs that are on them. My favorite vinyl that I have is ‘Sour’ by Olivia Rodrigo because I really like the blue on the cover of it.”