Happy 4th of July and Happy Independence Day! Enjoy the day together with family and friends or all on your own if you need a day “off” from everything. (Yes, we follow the Quiet revolution with Susan Cain and know that sometimes the best day is a day spent with your own thoughts and dreams or a good book.)
Picnic basket with fun pedestrian safety reflectors.
Just remember to be courteous to combat veterans, pets and children who might not enjoy firecrackers the same way you do! Some years, we head for a 4th of July picnic that does not end until the fireworks are over. Heading back to the car can be an adventure as temporary parking on the meadow makes it difficult to navigate safely with strollers, kids, grandparents, picnic baskets, chairs and blankets. Use plenty of reflectors and blinking bike lights to increase your visibility. Toy glow sticks are fun but their light is not strong enough to warn drivers about your presence. Don’t miss our 4th of July sale! Buy fun and stylish summer pedestrian reflectors for yourself, friends and family! Your loved ones don’t always realize how hard it is for drivers to see them when they are out for summer fun after dark. funflector® are designed to reflect your personal style too!
Red, white and blue star safety reflectors for 4th of July
We are so excited that the 2014 funflector® wholesale catalog is off the press! We hope you are too! It has all our new (and old) designs and our first licensed line of reflectors from the Particle Zoo. New for this year is also an online flip book, (you just need a little bit of patience while it downloads) but we have stocked up with envelopes and stamps and will gladly mail a copy to your store! You can order it here or shoot us an email.
As some or our customers were quick to discover, new colors of the reflective slap bracelets are in stock in the funflectorwebshop. Slap bracelets are always fun, and these double as quality pedestrian safety reflectors!
A bucket of reflective slap bracelets show their strengths when hit by a camera flash
We are thrilled to launch our first line of licensed pedestrian safety reflectors – designs from The Particle Zoo! The personalities reflected in the charming plushies teach us so much about the elementary particles. Now you can get the proton and the photon as safety reflectors to hang on your jackets and backpacks!
Some of our favorite particles – neutrino, gluon, quarks, the Higgs, nucleons, electron and dark matter – from The Particle Zoo
Christkind is to German kids what Santa is to American. Christkind visits on Christmas day to put presents around the tree. Kids are kept away with closed doors to the living room until a little bell is heard. That means Christkind has finished its mission and the family can be let in to marvel at the pile under the tree. Christkind (“Christ Child”) has long golden hair and angelic wings and is a central part of opening ceremonies at many German Christmas markets, which are often called “Christkindlmarkt”. Here is a glimpse of the Nürnberg Christkindlesmarkt
Chicago has its own Christkindlmarket with tight ties to the Nürnberg one on which it is modeled. The opening ceremony (Nov 20, 2012, 4:30pm) often gets visits from the Nürnberg mayor and the previous Nürnberg Christkindl. This year, you can meet & greet the Christkindl on November 22, 11:00am, right after the Chicago Christmas parade. Being brought up with a mix of Swedish and German Christmas traditions, I love to go to the Christkindlmarket for some real German Bratvurst, Kartoffelpuffers and to look at the handcrafted ornaments that look just like those my grandmother had. Except for skyscrapers instead of small half-timbered houses surrounding the market, it does take me back to Germany for a little while. German vendors come all the way here just for this, which gives it an authentic flair. This year, there is a new section at the NE corner of the plaza. That is where you will find the booth of the Swedish Amercian Museum, filled with Swedish ornaments, handcrafted collectible tomten (Santas), Angel Chime rotary brass candle holders, wonderful wood toys for children, funflector® safety reflectors in fun shapes for kids and adults, and a wide assortment of Scandanavian books. Here are some pics from previous years:
Hot pretzels at Chicago Christkindlmarket – one of many culinary memories revived
Chicago Christkindlmarket – a genuine piece of the old world in a new world setting.
Handcrafted German wooden choir boys with typical curled wood trees and a chapel.
My own set of cherished wooden choir boys, probably bought by my Grandma in the 60’s.
Coming soon: Made in the USA! (and so is the scrapbooking paper by DCWV INC.)
We are super excited about being on the way to move production of some funflector® reflectors from Sweden to the USA! It makes a lot of sense to us to manufacture locally but we are also very proud to do more to put Americans to work! Future batches of our popular chubby ghost safety reflectors will be made in the USA! The funflector team
Sweden is closed today. Very closed. It is midsummer eve. Check out this funny and accurate video Swedish Midsummer for Dummies if you want to know what Swedes are up to!
Here in the lower 48, the nights are not nearly as long and bright as in the Scandinavian countries or Alaska. Instead they are dark and warm, inviting to outdoor activities while the blasting sun is in hiding. Pedestrian safety reflectors are a must-have.
The International Space Station passing by Chicago, June 21st, 2012.
Last night, we were out to watch the ISS (International Space Station) passing by Chicago at sunset. With a crystal clear sky and a sliver of a moon, we were amazed that we could see its prolonged shape.
An angel has landed 😉
We also discovered that a funflector® wrap, our slap bracelet reflector, looks like an angel’s gloria when you use it around your head, which reminded us to let you know that we now also have angel safety reflectors in our webshop!
Angel reflectors are now available in our web shop.
Bike shaped safety reflectors, available also for wholesale and bulk orders.
Did you know that you can order in bulk and get quality reflectors significantly cheaper? You can even get reflectors with your logo or slogan! Contact us so we can tell you more! We have just shipped bike shaped reflectors to a school to be used as rewards at a bike derby. Lucky kids! We put some red and blue ones in our web shop as well, in case you just would like a few… In December, we posted about Vienna Elementary School, who bought reflectors as part of a walk-to-school program. They have “Walking Wednesdays” where some parents walk or bike with the kids to get to school safely. The kids are rewarded with tokens to hang on their backpacks and sometimes the token is a funflector® pedestrian reflector. Parents are rewarded with coffee, sponsored by a local coffee shop. Lucky parents! On March 14th, walking/biking kids were rewarded with Shamrock reflectors (Can they get more lucky?) and here is some amazing statistics for that day’s turnout: Half the students walked or biked to school (only 21% of the students are designated walkers). At least 38% of our bus riders walked to school. 340% more students walked or biked to school compared to an average day last school year. 59% more students walked or biked to school than on the best day of last year’s Walk/Bike Challenge Week. Here is a Patch video from last spring (before they had reflectors). What a great community! Congratulations and keep up the hard work! Elisabeth
Only one week to Halloween (where did October go?) and new Halloween decorations are popping up every day in the neighborhood. Are you planning for a safe Halloween? All over the country, funflector safety reflectors are popping up in people’s mail boxes. If you want some in your’s before Halloween, please order today, tomorrow or Wednesday before noon (central time)!
Funflector Halloween safety reflectors
To make it easier and quicker to order our most popular Halloween safety reflectors, we’ve bundled the Jack O’Lantern, the white ghost and the orange cat and give you $4 off compared to buying them separately! The glimling webshop has all the details.
Modern Mom awarded funflector with a “must-have” seal 🙂
Recently, we wrote about how to attach Halloween reflectors to costumes. If you don’t want to tape the reflectors to swords and light sabers, wands or broom sticks, you can put a (strong) rubber band around and then slip the chain through. From our friend and funflector fan Beth, we got a cute duck tape candy corn candy bag. Instead of putting reflective tape on the handle, she made a loop for her funflector and taped the loop to the outside of the bag! While in craft mode, you might want to check out this milk jug skeleton by the Party Animal. We are up to five jugs, so soon, we’ll get started on ours! How is yours coming along?
Duck Tape bag with Halloween safety reflectors
The DIY milk jug skeleton by Party Animal
Have fun and safe Halloween! – the funflector team
Don’t worry, photoshop helps us keep our models safely on the ground!
Hello IKEA,
There are two types of expat Swedes: those that live near an IKEA and those that don’t. For us that live close, IKEA helps us stay Swedish—but that will soon change. Many of us grew up with Billy bookshelves or the Poäng armchair and we go shopping for furniture and clever things for our homes. However, the main attraction is the little food store after the checkout and that one brings us back often. Our IKEA trips get scheduled when our freezer is out of meatballs, when we need Ahlgren’s bilar (yummy gummy cars) for Saturday candy, when the kids request Ballerina cookies for their birthday parties or when the cravings for Marabou chocolate bars overwhelm us. I have lost count of all the times I’ve given away a box of Paradis chocolate as an inexpensive but special thank-you gift.
It’s not just that Ballerina, Singoalla, Marabou, Abba’s herring, etc. taste good. Moving overseas is a BIG change in one’s life and eating food that taste exactly like the food we grew up with is very comforting and brings back memories. I’d also like that to be part of my kids’ memories. Every time I eat Brago cookies, I think of my mom’s story how she and her sister shared a roll on Saturdays while they were college students. That was in the late 50’s and because the cookies still taste the same, they bring stories and memories. We can buy food anywhere in America, but foods that carry a greeting from “the old country” and our families is harder to find. Last chance to pick up this kind of childhood memories at IKEA (except that it should have been Singoalla raspberry, but there were none left).
There are rumors about a decision within IKEA-US to replace all classic Swedish food with IKEA’s own brand. I hope that you realize that that you will loose quite a bit of your Swedishness! Seriously!!! Your meatballs, and gravy are great (after we moved here and served our American friends your meatballs, IKEA meatballs have become a staple in their freezer as well. And they have picked up some pieces of furniture while they were in your store anyway…) !
However, when it comes to chocolate, I prefer Marabou, Lindt or Ritter Sport (I’ve lived in Germany and Switzerland too) and the latter two I can easily get at Target, so I’ll go there instead. I haven’t yet figured out what I will do without the Ballerina and Singoalla cookies. Whatever you come up with to replace them, no matter how good they taste, they won’t carry any greetings from my childhood.
I know you can’t make your stores go around on Swedish expats only, but we do bring you repeat business and new customers, so please don’t let us down! Please reconsider your decision—and if you change your mind, add Brago cookies to the must-haves! Elisabeth
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