This idea and beautiful photo come from a new blog called Inchmark, written by Brooke Reynolds, a mom who is a former art director for Martha Stewart Kids and Martha Stewart Living. Say no more, right? Of course she’s bound to have some fabulous ideas and beautiful images to go with them.

She jots down the funny things her kids say and pops them into a jar, to be read later, when she needs a good laugh. I loved this idea immediately because it solved two problems I’ve been having. First, I have been trying to write down the great quotes from my kids, but then I’d leave them on the counter and eventually they’d get scooped up and put in a basket somewhere. Meanwhile, I have a growing collection of glass jars, because I can’t seem to be able to throw away any of my spaghetti jars, pickle jars, you name it. If it’s glass, somehow I feel the need to hang onto it. Maybe because they seem so… well.. non-plastic.

Today’s jar contribution will be a story my son dictated to his teacher the other day. I got a copy of it this morning. His first “written” story. It’s called “The Ghost and the Boy”. And because I’m a proud mama and I think it’s a pretty sweet story (and in case I lose the piece of paper), here it is…

Once upon a time, there was a ghost in the Ghost Eye tree. And he liked to climb until one day he didn’t want to climb. He wanted to go out into the human world. But he was stuck up in the tree, so he decided to jump down. And so he jumped. And he fell down, down, down…PLOP! He fell down and skinned his knee. And it’s good he had some extra band-aids in his pocket and some cream. And so he put the cream on and a band-aid on and then he got up and he went out into the human world. And he walked and walked and walked until he spied a person and the person said, “Do you need help going out into the human world?” The ghost said “Yes,” and he set off through the woods following by the person. And it walked and he walked and walked and walked until the boy said, “This is the human world.”