Looking for extra plates at Thanksgiving dinner turned up a classic.

In their younger years, my kids created a lot of dishes using those Make A Plate kits. Most got shipped off as cherished presents for relatives. The ones that remained in our house, were the very personalized plates that my kids wanted to eat every meal on. They were designed to be washed by hand but because my kids had a mother who hated to do dishes, they went into the dishwasher. After a year of high powered dishwasher cycles, they would fade and become fragile, like china. One drop to the floor would send them into several pieces and right into the trash can.

Several years ago, I must have placed the remaining two Make A Plates underneath a back-up stack of dinner plates that I use for large parties. This Thanksgiving, while searching for additional plates, I found one.

One of my boys recognized it immediately as their older sister's.

"Must have been her early princess years" he said. "Check out the crown."