Nostalgia

When I got up this morning the new American Girl catalog is strategically placed in front of my computer monitor. It has some strange markings on it, upon further inspection (and past experience) I figured out what they were. My girls love to go through the catalogs and place their initials next to each and every item they are hoping to receive at some point. I love it. They don’t often get these things except for birthdays or Christmas, but they remain ever hopeful. It reminds me of a bygone era.




I remember as a kid waiting for the new Sears and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog to come out and I would do the same thing. I would go through and doggy-ear all the pages with things I loved and then going back through and circling everything I loved in hopes that Santa would somehow read my copy and catch a hint. I loved all the pretty clothes and shoes. I loved the dolls and the doll equipment. I loved the Barbies and the carrying cases. I loved the miniature piano and, are you kidding me, there is a violin in the catalog?!?, and the wonderful Barbie house with the elevator that went up and down when you pulled a string, and the roller skates that looked like tennis shoes with enormous wheels,And Holly Hobbie, and well, it went on and on.
(Here is the Barbie house which, thank you Santa, I did eventually get!)

Another favorite was the Avon catalog. I would scour that thing for new lip gloss. I loved the small lip glosses that looked like things like a chocolate chip cookie. You would untwist the cookie and what do you know LIP GLOSS inside the cookie! How cool is that? I had a fried egg, coke bottle, and box of crayons,a hamburger, pack of gum, a heart, and more. All lip gloss. All my friends collected them.




Another thing was those cute little perfumes. I had one that was a skunk(I did find a picture that had the skunk, it was blurry...) it was a pin that I would very fashionably wear on my shirt. Its belly had a flap that lifted up and inside was a solid (similar to lip gloss actually) perfume, probably Sweet Honesty, that I could delicately dap on my wrist. Ahhh the memories, I adored being a very tiny young girl in the...gulp… 70's.