Month: September 2026

I know I have said this before on this blog, but I have a real thing for retro Christmas images. I love the depictions of Santa in the 1940s; I love the charming representations of cozy living rooms with blazing fires in the fireplace; I love the adorable reindeer; in short, I just love them all. They don’t make Christmas cards the way they used to – that part is obvious.

Last fall I took a few vintage cards and used those images to make a set of Christmas coasters. I still love them every time I look at them.

You really can’t get images any cuter than these. Santa and reindeer in a trolly? Come ON.

I had some metal ornament blanks lying around, so I decided to design some ornaments along the same line. I finally had to stop myself because I kept finding new pictures I loved and designing ornaments from them. I was definitely “in the zone” for a while there.

Here’s what I created:

Cuteness overload – I know! They’re in my Etsy shop if you are interested.

Now if we can just get modern card manufacturers to return to these types of designs, I’d be happy. I always go on a “retro card hunt” when they start hitting the shelves, and sometimes I can find some nice retro design, but other years I have resorted to creating my own cards on Shutterfly.

The other quest I go on when Christmas stuff starts rolling out is trying to find retro-looking wrapping paper. Now THAT is a feat! I have had good luck at places like Home Goods and Marshalls, but it varies wildly from year to year. This year I’ll share some if I’m lucky enough to find a good design. Midcentury-inspired design seems to be getting a little more popular, and there are many products out there that I have my eye on. I didn’t buy these last year, but I’m thinking of grabbing them this year:

You can find them at Walmart. The brand is Mr. Christmas and you can easily find them by searching for “retro Christmas plates.”

If you haven’t visited a World Market around Christmas time, then you absolutely need to if you’re a 1950s fan. Have you seen their retro Christmas houses? I have collected five, and they keep coming up with new designs each year, so I’ve had to hold myself back because they are ALL adorable. They light up and make a charming addition to your holiday decor. Some are kitschier than others, but I love the ones in Midcentury ranch houses, like this:

It comes complete with an atomic cat stretching out on the side of the house!

For the Halloween lover, they even have some Halloween-inspired houses.

Speaking of World Market, my hubby and I will have to make our annual trek there to find our newest “misfit” ornaments.

A few years ago, I started accidentally collecting ornaments that were a little on the bizarre side, and my husband and I started calling them “misfits.” World Market is an absolute GOLD MINE when it comes to offering misfit ornaments. Here’s a sampling:

See? The weirder, the better. It has gotten to the point where I have an entire Christmas tree devoted to just misfit ornaments. What can I say? They make me happy, and normal is boring. Don’t worry – I put up multiple trees, so the traditional ones make it out of the box as well.

But, really . . . . an elephant taking a bath with his rubber ducky? You just can’t say no to that.

When I was younger, I remember hearing older people lament about how time seemed to move faster as they got older.

Being young and full of piss and vinegar at the time, I would roll my eyes.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve found that I have a front-row seat on the super speed train called Time.

I’m here to tell you that it’s true.

I’m looking at the calendar, and it’s September 7. I just opened our pool last week. I was just going to various stores and purchasing plants and flowers and looking forward to the summer.

Now I’m sitting here wondering what sort of coma I’ve been in for the past several weeks because there’s just no way that I’m thinking about closing the pool and wondering when the first frost would be.

This summer was . . . eventful . . . and kind of for the wrong reasons. When I first moved to Illinois, I wondered how the weather would be different here. Living in Iowa and South Dakota was always kind of the same: hot summers, cold and snowy winters.

Because so many people had pools in Illinois (it’s a rarity in the places I lived before), I thought maybe the weather would be better here. Milder. Sunnier. Less wind.

Spring in my town seems to be in a wind tunnel; every day it’s windy. Every garbage day the garbage bins tip over and the lids thump relentlessly until you get frustrated by the sound and go out to drag the bin back in. The wind seems to settle down after that, but man. Tie down your valuables in the spring months around here.

But, GUYS . . . moving to Illinois made me suddenly in the dead center of tornado alley.

Just to put things in perspective:

The previous record for tornadoes in Illinois was 142, set in 2024. (Yes, I was here then, too, but I don’t remember it being particularly bad around me that year.) Illinois normally averages about 60 tornadoes.

This year? We’ve had 210 tornadoes. TWO HUNDRED AND TEN.

I can’t explain it, and I don’t get it. All of a sudden, every storm we have is headed right for us. We’re in the “Level 3” or “Level 4” area of concern by storm chasers.

Honestly, I’ve never spent as much time in my basement waiting out storms as I have this year.

People who know me well know that I have a love/hate relationship with tornadoes. I’m fascinated by them, and I kind of like to watch the clouds, but I still freak out in a warning. When I was a teacher, I had a couple times we were affected by tornado warning, but it was rare. It was kind of one of my big fears, because I knew managing my own terror would be difficult when I had to think of students first. When I have nightmares or stressful dreams, the premise is always the same: I’m in an unfamiliar place and there’s a tornado warning, and I’m running from building to building looking for a safe place to be.

Analyze that one, Freud.

A couple weeks ago, I experienced another first: a tornado warning, this time while I was working downtown.

There I was at my desk, typing away, when all of a sudden everyone’s phones went off simultaneously. Most people just shrugged and went back to work. I, the tornadophobe, was trying to gently inquire about next steps while trying not to reveal that I was kind of panicking.

Yes, I knoooooow we were surrounded by a steel fortress.

But we are also surrounded by HUGE WINDOWS and my office is on the 4th floor.

An email came out from the CEO’s secretary, instructing us all to go to what’s called the “amenity level,” aka the basement.

One other lady went with me. We went down the stairs until we reached the amenity level, where we hung out for 30 minutes with a bunch of people we didn’t know.

My colleague and I noticed that almost every other worker did the “good worker” duty of bringing their laptops into the basement to continue to work. Honestly, that idea never even crossed my mind. What kind of work would I really get done surrounded by a group of strangers talking loudly while staring at the local meteorologist on the TV? I guess it looked good to the higher ups.

And of course, future-focused me started thinking about what else could go wrong. Here we are in a BASEMENT. If we get a HUGE amount of rain, where’s that all going to go? Am I sitting in a future fish tank here? After all, everyone knows that Chicago was essentially built on a swamp.

(It’s fun being my friend. I promise you I will always be thinking 25 steps ahead for whatever situation we are in.)

When the all clear sounded, my colleague and I went up allllllllll the stairs and were greeted by a perfectly serene office setting: everyone was at their desks, working diligently. We were the only two people who went down to the basement.

I couldn’t help myself; I told them they were all crazy and that my colleague and I were the only ones who would have lived if the tornadoes had continued to travel to our area.

Everyone just shrugged.

On top of moving to Tornado Alley, I am also surrounded by apathy.

Since I’m only downtown twice a week, I’m guessing having a tornado warning while there won’t be a regular thing.

Then again, looking at the statistics, I’m not so sure that’s accurate.