by jphilo | Feb 24, 2014 | Current Events
Today’s post is devoted to monkey business, courtesy of the email marketing service, Mail Chimp. That’s the service I use for a quarterly newsletter at Different Dream, my special needs website. The company held a drawing and pulled our my name as the winner Freddie, their little mascot.
Freddie’s kinda cute, about four inches tall, and he’s made of plastic. He’s also quite versatile, with arms that can be positioned in the picture above and the one below.
And even like this:
The view from the back isn’t bad, either. Especially if you’re into back packs. And heart-shaped butt tattoos.
The problem with Freddie is that he doesn’t fit in with the Purgeal Vortex theme I’ve been pursuing with a vengeance for the past two months. The massive purge has continued unabated for 7 Saturdays in a row, and my clutter tolerance is at an all time low. So Freddie has to go.
And, since he came to this house via a drawing, I’d like to select his new home in the same way. To enter the drawing, go to Different Dream and sign up for the quarterly newsletter by March 1, 2014. (Scroll down to locate it on the right hand side of the page.) Those who already receive the newsletter can enter by leaving a comment below by March 1, 2014. I’ll email the winner about mailing information and send Freddie in his original box, so he’ll be worth oodles more as a collector’s item in 50 years.
Quite the deal, huh? Who can resist, huh? Don’t everyone head over there at once!
by jphilo | Jan 20, 2014 | Reflections on the Past
The Great Purgeal Vortex of 2014 continues unabated at our house. This weekend it unleashed its fury upon our unsuspecting and completely innocent kitchen. The that raged inside our kitchen cupboards and drawers revealed some unexpected treasures, mostly in the form of old cookbooks and recipe files inherited from my mother-in-law.
One file was filled with recipes found in booklets slipped inside baking products, ripped from magazines, and clipped out of cereal boxes. But the backside of a page of Christmas recipes torn from the December 1961 issue of the Ladies Home Journal contained a shopping list for Santa Clause for the Well-Equipped Home. For those of you planning a retro-themed Christmas for next December, the first half of your list is located at the top of this post. The second half is directly below.
Just so you know, my siblings and I did not grow up in a well-equipped home. At least not according to Ladies Home Journal standards. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that Mom did have an electric hand mixer, but not one that hung on the wall. She also had cookbooks. But they were published by Betty Crocker, not Ladies Home Journal.
However, as a kindergartener in 1961, I coveted, coveted, coveted the milk shake mixer. But at $14.95 it wasn’t coming to our house. Neither were the travel items, as we didn’t travel much. And the portable oven and the camera “sufficiently light in weight and small in size to fit into a woman’s purse or a man’s pocket” were way, way out of reach for a school teacher’s salary.
The ad begs a couple questions, which you can respond to in the comment box:
- Which of these items made your home well-equipped in 1961?
- Do you think Don Draper or Peggy Olson from Mad Men came up with the idea for this ad?
