You.
Sincerely, you, whoever you are reading this right now. When Sweets received the message that C’ster was going offline, there were moments of piercing shock and sadness. From a personal perspective, at the very worst time. I was headed to a meeting and then getting on a plane the very next day to be gone for a few days. Fast forward a couple days, I’m at the airport, drinking an amazing hot green tea and eating a salmon salad (sometimes, airport food is amazing) while chatting with @sweets4ever via text message. By now, all the stages of grief had happened and we were living in acceptance and hope. It’s at this moment that you all became intricately-involved (perhaps not even knowing it yet). Sweets said to me, “It’s not the crafts or the past I’ll miss, but my family. Let’s make a new home for everyone.” We have two hard-fast rules in our house, and I believe they will keep us together forever – when someone is extremely frustrated about something, don’t take the other side (seriously folks, if it isn’t as important to you as you can obviously see it is to the other side, just let. it. go.) and the other is creativeness and innovation.
About the latter… one time I thought about buying a monkey, another time I thought about making a bubble wall the height of our house, I’ve built solar arrays for our house, we built an entire music room. We have a shelf in the garage labeled specifically to my mind’s projects (one supply tote is actually labeled, “That Time Justin Wanted to Build Rockets”). If one of us connects to something, the other will naturally get as excited. I mean, truly excited, ALL IN, reading up on things we have no clue about, and just ready to run straight into the storm because we feel there is, for certain, a party happening on the other side. 
This all takes me back to you (really, it does!), the reader who may have made it this far. 
I told her to let me investigate a few things, finished up my tea, and walked to my terminal. I boarded the plane, thought about servers and hosting and domains and security and the scale to which this could grown and, I’ll admit, I panicked a bit. I was sold already, beyond sold, I was getting excited but, wow, this would all take a major amount of time and funds to make it run, and there are areas where I’m self-admittedly weak.
The mind is a magical place. I mean it. I was looking out into the vast darkness, that 30,000 feet looks like at that hour, and suddenly memories crashed into my mind more beautiful than all of the endless expanse that was before me. All of those memories focused down to one, this one…
(Chicago Craftster meetup where a few members got held and robbed at gunpoint outside a craft show. Of course, they had to pose with the officers for a photo.
I would expect nothing less from our crew.)
I have dozens of photos and countless memories of so many of you. We’ve laughed together, we’ve cherished moments, we’ve grieved together, and most importantly, we’ve grown into something well beyond a community. This is a family. Over a couple of weeks, this entire new home came to fruition. It wasn’t easy, and it’s going to forever be a work in progress. It’s genesis is love and it’s because of you.
Looking back on the previous month, calls with hosting sites (“Sir, I see you selected the blur-blang server, but maybe you should consider the slurzzle bee-bop instead because it’s got moar purrz - only $20 more a month!!”), breaking things to see what we CAN break 
(I hear @MareMare does this, too), gaining appreciation for DNS tables, waking up on a keyboard, going to sleep on a keyboard, putting sticky notes on everything in sight and then we’d totally rearrange it all around OVER and OVER again – all while simultaneously working full-time and being a family. And now, looking at the site only days in, let me unequivocally say one thing… “Totally worth it.” The motivator to everything is, you, dear reader of this lengthy post.
Thank you for the push, and most importantly, thank you for making the internet a beautiful place.
Mr. Sweets 
…love you both
this enough. Thank you!
Cheers to a New Year and Lettuce Craft! 
That’s kind of how I feel. Or a long lost prodigal or something.