My mother-in-law is a crafter. She make cloth pumpkins, bobbin angels, and wine-bottle lights. She’s painted, sewed, cross-stiched, knitted, scrap-booked, decoupaged and quilted. Tonight, during a baby shower, she brought by three wine bottles that have a hole drilled in them and Christmas lights stuffed inside. They are nice, I enjoy the unique labels and they will make nice winter decorations, but I think that this is the indicator of a larger problem.

That problem is the crafted tchotchkes.

I subscribe to a minimalist style, I want clean lines, sparse decorations, no clutter. My mother-in-law, with her craftiness, is quite the opposite. She falls into more of the Victorian style, which essentially means that every surface needs to be covered by something, with some type of decoration.

I foresee a looming war with tchotchkes. I have put it in writing so when the first shots are fired in this war, it can be said that saw this coming.