4 Family History... in a shadow box

Unfortunately Monday Morning B*tchfest was a huge flop (thank you Jenn for linking up your posts)!  I was expecting great things with the response I received, but it just didn't come to fruition.  However, the MckLinky is still up, so feel free to jump down a post and add your MMB. 

Back to crafting!
After my husband's Grandmother passed away last year, we started helping his parents go through all of her belongings. She had lived in the same house for 60 years, so had accumulated A LOT of items! We found so much memorabilia that we did not know existed. Letters dating back to the 1800's from my husband's Great-Great-Grandfather. We learned so much from these letters. Lots of different stories that we knew nothing about. Not all of the stories were sordid (although there were some!), but most were very interesting, including many from when his Grandfather, Dana, was over seas in WWII. He was a decorated sharp shooter and saw a lot of action.

It was great to get to know Gram as well. She didn't speak a lot about her husband who had passed when he was in his mid-thirties. We knew that they had divorced when my FIL was young and that Dana died when my FIL was 5. We didn't know much about his family and had never met his relatives. Because of all the historical items we found, my husband became very interested in learning more about his Grandfather. He turned to the internet and started researching some of the names, etc. Through many twists and turns and without meaning to, he found Dana's half sister. He began communicating with her via email. She was just as excited to be speaking with him. She had met my FIL's older siblings, but hadn't seen them since they were young. She loved her brother very much and misses him every day, so to hear from his direct descendent pleased her to no end. After a few months of chatting, my husband came to find out that she had Dana's purple heart, which was something we had been looking for but had not found. She decided that she wanted our family to have it, so they arranged a time to meet.

It was very exciting for my husband to hear more about his Grandfather. He saw even more family pictures and letters and has documented everything. His Great Aunt was very happy to meet him and they stay in contact regularly. She did end up giving us Dana's purple heart, as well as his army hat from WWII and some of his other uniform items.

We decided that we wanted to present these to my FIL for Christmas. My husband picked up a shadow box frame with a place for a flag and asked me to include the medals, patches and some pictures into the rest of the frame.

This is what I came up with:

My FIL really loved it and it is on display in their house. And I know that it will be treasured for years to come.

Happy treasure making!