Martha Stewart, I'm available.

All those little scraps of paper that men leave behind. The ones that say "Call me next time you're in town". At home, you empty your pockets, and think to yourself "He was fun. Gonna save his number." Years go by. You never call the guy. One day you come across the scrap of paper and you can't recall the man who gave it to you. (This sometimes happens a week later.) You say to your partner. "Who's this? Luis? From Inwood?" Neither of you has any recollection. A year or two later you meet the guy again and none of you recalls the first meeting, but now you have two scraps of paper from the same guy...

I've never been able to toss these out. Instead, I save them in a box labeled "Ephemora", referring to either those scraps of paper or to their authors.

Several years back, I found a wooden footstool that someone had put out with the trash. I took off the old uphostery and stuffing, exposing the wooden frame work. I made a new cushion for it, refinished the feet and added some knobs. What to do about the bare sides?

Why not decoupage them with those little scraps of paper! I selected some of my favorites (truth to tell, we have enough to cover a fridge) and set to work with the appropriate paste easily acquired at any art supply store. Once the surface had dried, I protected it with two coats of urethane tinted slightly to diminish the impact of the information and also to pick up the color of the new upholstery.

Here is what experience teaches you: some ball point ink is fugitive, meaning that it will fade to invisible with exposure to sunlight. In order to preserve the writing on your decoupaged bits, apply a fixative UV light-repellant spray before you apply the urethane. These sprays are also easy to find in art supply stores. In our case, since some of the scraps are now blank, we will simply return to the Ephemora Box, select new ones, and apply a new layer over the old wherever needed.

PS: I've doctored the photo a bit to protect the guilty even if you click to magnify it, but I should think it a source of pride to find one's name among a pantheon of this nature, and to know that one's information now supports the honorable feet of our mothers when they visit.