Plaid Stallions

Getting sick always sucks. But being sick during the holidays really sucks. So unfair. I wish I could have a do-over for the two weeks I was "out" (and still officially not 100% yet). All the things I didn't get to do, the friends I didn't get to see. Oh well, enough complaining. My blog's been calling out to me, begging to be updated, but I've ignored it because, you guessed it, I've been feeling sick lately!

Today's post was going to be a rant about some aspect of volunteerism in the parenting sphere, but then I changed my mind because that would just depress us all. Saving that for later! haha

Instead, I guarantee that I will bring a smile to everyone's faces (who is actually reading this). Everyone, I present the blog I go to whenever I need an honest-to-goodness laugh: The Plaid Stallions. Both the blog and the website are seriously fall-out-of-your-chair and pee-in-your-pants funny if you were a child of the Seventies. If you weren't, then it might be mildly amusing or even downright confusing. But if you lived it, you will love it!

I think if I were a male with a little more time on my hands (ok, alot more time) then I could have dreamed up this website. As it is, I have been obsessed with catalogs since I was a child. Obsessed. Apparently, so was the owner of Plaid Stallions. The only difference is that he kept alot of his catalogs and keeps finding more, and I don't have any of mine because my Mom threw them away.

The website name is Plaid Stallions: Rambling and Reflections on 70s Pop Culture. Plaid Stallions, in it's own words, is "mocking the seventies a catalog page at a time." Seventies toys, fashions, housewares, Halloween costumes, etc. are all there in living catalog color and even some vintage TV commercials. The blog is a daily feast of 70s gems such as:


and this:

(For more 70s "fashion" commentary, see my earlier post about this on my other blog.)

It's not always cheesy fun though. Sometimes I just have to smile really big when I see the toys from my childhood so lovingly revered:

I LOVED THIS TOY! I still have it, my girls play with it, and the elevator still works!

Received excitedly some of this for Christmas, either 1977 or 1978, only to have my Mom give it to the neighbor's child when we moved away. Still mourning the loss 30 years later.

And some days I even feel sad (again) about the toys I desperately wanted but never could convince my Mom to buy:

Barbie Airplane, as seen briefly at a birthday party in the mid-70s and always wanted, even now!

This website and blog brings back memories of pretty much my entire 70s life-- what my parents wore, what my brother and I played with for a whole decade, what we watched on TV, the colors and textures of the world around me.