Once Upon A Time...

Even though no one asked, I just know that everyone is dying to hear about my DIY art project for the nursery.
You know, this one...

It all started with my insatiable desire for information. For some reason, I was wondering why we begin stories with "once upon a time". So, I hopped on the Internet (dear wireless internet, what would I do without you??) and typed "once upon a time" in the search box. Up came a link to Wikipedia. Now, in hard core research situations, I am pretty anti-Wikipedia... but in this case it seemed like the perfect place to look.
And wouldn't you know it, Wikipedia knew how we started using this phrase...

Once upon a time -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that
has been used in some form since at least 1380 (according to the Oxford English
Dictionary) in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a
widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600. These
stories often then end with '... and they all lived happily ever after', or,
originally, 'happily until their deaths'. These are examples of the narrative
form, and occur most frequently in the narratives produced for children aged
between 6 and 8.

It is particularly apparent in fairytales for younger children, where it is almost always the opening line of a tale. It was commonly used in the original translations of the stories of Charles Perrault as a translation for the French il était une fois, and of Hans Christian Andersen as a translation for the Danish det var engang, and the
Brothers Grimm as a translation for the German es war einmal.

Now, Wikipedia didn't stop there, although I would have been satisfied with that answer.

No way! Wikipedia had a list of 69 other languages that also use this phrase in some variation as a beginning to their stories. And it had the translations. Now, that just jumped out at me as being way too interesting to just click away from. So, I methodically copied and pasted each and every translation into a word document.

I found the big "O" on Daily Drop Cap where the designer posts a newly styled capital letter every day. It is pretty fun to scroll through and see your initials, or the initials of your yet unborn son (wouldn't you like to know the letters I looked at!).

I printed it all out and slammed it in a frame we already had lying around and TA-DA free art for the baby's room. And I learned a little something in the process.