Small "freelance" projects - not impressive projects, but should I include on resume?

Basically, for the past year and a half I've been working on various projects in my spare time. Some personal, some for local small business/artists, etc.

The projects aren't particularly impressive generally speaking, nothing you'd look at and say "WOW THAT IS AMAZING." Some of the projects are works in progress. BUT, a large part of the reason I worked on these projects is to learn things that I felt I wanted to learn. For instance, I wanted to learn the MVC design pattern, so I've been working on learning CodeIgniter for a while, and to help I worked on a few small projects using CodeIgniter. Same thing goes with a site where I wanted to practice jQuery because my "day job" doesn't allow me to write any jQuery. Etc.

Also, I worked on editing a flash template for a local business. The template is sort of crap, but I did do some edits and fix up some things, add products, etc. So I have some flash experience. I'm not an expert, and looking at the work I did on the Flash template would probably tell you as much, but again, it's something.

I could go on. I modified a Drupal template with a custom contact form. I redid a static HTML website so it was cross browser compatible. I made a site with details for a local business, and helped get the google ranking of the site up. Same with a lawyer.

Again, none of these sighs are really that impressive, but they each represent something I've learned or been learning.

Thoughts about how to include them on a resume (or not to include them at all?)?

What if I was applying to a Java job specifically?

What if I was applying to a web development job?

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Have you put in significant time into these side projects? Would you be comfortable discussing what you did at length, and perhaps answer questions in interviews about some technology you've worked with? If so, then you might want to put them on your resume. Some companies do like this sort of self-motivation and initiative to learn on your own, others might not care at all.

You might have to tailor your resume for specific jobs. If you were going to apply for Java backend development, the company might not necessarily care that you have done extensive HTML/flash/javascript level stuff. If it's generic web development position, you might want to emphasize these points more.