Today we honor those who sacrificed their lives to keep the world open and free. Peace and freedom is a never ending project that requires commitment on all levels and, unfortunately, sometimes unavoidable wars.
As a kid, I loved Astrid Lindgren’s books. Not so much Pippi Longstocking and her early series, but her grand fairy tales “The Brothers Lionheart“, “Mio, My Son” and “Ronja the Robber’s Daughter“. They are set in times of snow white messenger pigeons, black tyrants with evil dragons and plundering robbers who could have been Robin Hood’s distant cousins. Although set in a fairy tale time and landscape, they are universal and time-less, covering all human traits like good and evil, brave and cowardly, humorous and serious and love and hate. The kids in them experience horrible things but learn to overcome their fears to do what is necessary to save the world from evil and eternal darkness. “Then Jonathan said there were things you have to do, even if they are dangerous. ‘Otherwise you aren’t a human being, but just a bit if filth.’ ” – from “The Brothers Lionheart”
Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter by Astrid LindgrenMio, My Son by Astrid LindgrenThe Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
Seeing on the news what is going on in the Middle East today makes these books more important than ever. When I read them as a kid, and again just a couple of years ago for my own kids, I could not imagine that I would see scenes from the books on the news. But that is where the world is today and we are more dependent than ever on having brave men and women defend the freedom we want to keep enjoying.
If you haven’t read these books already, now is the time!
We often surprise people when we tell them they can significantly increase their nighttime visibility withoutclumsy vests and high-viz colors. If you choose a funflector® safety reflector, you can wear stylish designs ranging in colors from from subtle to bold and still increase visibility up to 500 feet. After hearing several independent stories from people whose friends have been hit by cars in Chicago at night, we decided to add the Chicago flag motif to our collection of funflector® slap wraps, our super reflective slap bracelets that can be worn on ankles and wrists by walkers, runners and bicyclists.
We are excited to announce a funflector® wrap with the popular Chicago flag design! It will be available in the webstore on May 9th.
funflector® reflecive wrap – The Chicago flag carries a lot of symbolism
We can’t imagine any Chicago visitors going back home without having noticed the symbolic two blue stripes and four red stars waiving on flagpoles on every block in the windy city. The top blue stripe symbolizes …
April is distracted driving awareness month, a subject that is near and dear to us. We keep telling walkers, runners and bikers to make themselves visible with reflectors to help drivers see them in the dark, but drivers also need to be focused on what’s on and along the road!
It’s estimated that 5,000 deaths a year or 16% of all fatal crashes involves distractions mainly from cellphones (texting/talking/downloading music) or passengers. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has put faces to the numbers. See here what distracted driving looks like inside some cars. Hold on: …
This morning, my Facebook feed was full of photos of Swedes wearing colorful mismatched socks. That’s on a day when I had planned to blog about some fun colorful socks I recently found in a Swedish gift shop. What’s going on? To honor her older sister with Down’s syndrome, and to celebrate that difference is good, 10-year-old Nathea Anemyr had called for everyone in Sweden to rock their socks today, i.e. wear mismatched colorful socks. Many of my friends and others, even the ministers of the Swedish government, showed off their colorful mix of socks.
Police horses rocked their socks today in Lund, Sweden! From the Facebook page of “Polisen i Lund”.
Even the police horses in my home town, Lund, rocked their socks today!
Sock Rockers from Sweden, 2015
Some more digging reveals that March 21st is the UN World Down Syndrome Day which involves wearing fun socks to get people talking. So today, I mismatched my new socks for Nathea and Noelle and to celebrate the beauty of us all being different. Tomorrow, I will wear the other mismatched pair to trigger conversations about Down’s syndrome.
As I mentioned, I found the socks at the Swedish Gift store “The Gift Basket” in Geneva, IL, and they are all made by Ozone. One of the sock designs is inspired by the Swedish Dala Horse and the other one reminds me of embroidery that my mother made in the 70’s and 80’s from Swedish “Hemslöjden”. The striped ones are called “Scandinavian Stripes”.
Rock the socks – celebrate that we are all different by wearing mismatched socks on March 20. Use mismatched socks to trigger conversations about Down’s Syndrome on March 21st.
My kids wear mismatched socks every day. Even for band concerts, when black socks are required, do they manage to find two different black socks. I buy big stacks of similar socks with harmonized color schemes, so the mismatch does not get totally out of control… 😉 When I hear other moms complaining about unmatched socks gathering in their laundry room, I realize how lucky I am that my kids embrace being different every single day!
I was driving home a sunny afternoon and suddenly one car caught my attention more than the others. That car had it’s headlights turned on. The sky was already turning pink and 5 minutes later, most cars had their lights on. The human eye is an amazing construction and adapts quickly to the available light.
Wear reflectors if it’s dark enough to notice the car lights!
We believe today is just as bad as any other day to step outside in the dark without reflectors! But just in case we are wrong, here is reminder to some extra caution on Friday the thirteenth!
Even a black cat safety reflector from funflector would do some good to improve your luck. Find all cat safety reflectors in our webshop here>
Less bad luck on Friday the thirteenth with funflector safety reflectors!
The stores are overflowing with red and rosy Valentine’s cards. Some funny, some cute and some sincere about your love for grandma, daughter, boyfriend, wife or friend. The sales of funflector® safety reflector hearts are picking up and we guess that many of them will be given away as a thoughtful little-something for Valentine’s day. Have you tried to send funflector reflectors as gifts with Valentine’s card to friends near and far? They fit perfectly in greeting cards, just double check the postage. Wether you choose a pink, red or striped heart (pst. on sale right now) – or a baseball, black car or green paw print – a reflector on a jacket or backpack will keep telling your loved ones every day that you are thinking about them and care for their safety. Isn’t that something?
We all enjoy celebrations, so of course we will go out for dinner with our loved one if we get the chance. Saturday next week is Valentine’s day, and you will find a lot of good deals at restaurants and get-away hotels. But why February 14th? Isn’t April or May more typical for affectionate love?
Curious about the origin of this romantic holiday, a couple of years ago, I set out with the Swedish “Nationalencyklopedin”, Wikipedia and some google searches to get a trustworthy basis for a blog post. But bah, what a mess! Just like the Swedish Lucia, Valentine’s day seems to be a coincidence between one or even several pagan traditions and the name in the (old) Roman Catholic Saint’s Calender on that day. Let’s recap what I found out back then:
One, and probably the most popular, legend is about the priest Valentine who was martyred about AD 270. He had befriended and fallen in love with his jailer’s daughter and left her a letter signed “from your Valentine.” However, there are several saints named Valentine connected with this day. And after all, in 1967, they were removed from the Roman Catholic saints calender since there was too little known about their deeds and lives.
Another theory is that the traditions of Valentine’s day come from the Roman celebration of Juno, Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses, which was followed by the Festival of Lupercalia. By drawing names from a jar, girls and boys were randomly paired to be partners during the festival and or course some partnership turned into love affairs. Later on, the church tried to tone down the tradition by using saints’ instead of the girls’ names to be drawn.
Funflector safety reflectors make perfect gifts for those you love and is easy to send with a Valentines card.
“Nationalencyklopedin” states that today’s celebrations stem from a pagan belief that the birds started to mate on this day. However, reading in wikipedia make me think that the pagan belief might have originated from a poem written in 1382 by Geoffrey Chauser. Parlement of Foules was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia and not really about mating birds. In more modern English line 309-310 would be
“For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”
After quite some digging around, the only conclusions seems to be that no one really knows. Without big parades and serious speeches, this day is for you and your loved one to do something special—so just enjoy it your way but don’t forget: it’s better to be seen than sorry!
Snowflakes are amazing creations. It’s mind-boggling that they are all different. At a time when large parts of the USA and Canada are buried under inches of snow and the northeast is expecting snowmageddon tonight, the uniqueness of each snowflake is hard to comprehend.
The funflector® snowflake pedestrian recflector is currently our bestseller. We’ve shipped to places with and without snow. Could it be that some northerners living in southern states miss snowy winters?
Stylish snowflake safety reflector for walking, running and bicycling. Thanks Mae, you look fabulous!
We have noticed how unshoveled sidewalks make people choose to walk or run in the streets more often. Please don’t do that between dusk and dawn without any reflective gear! The icy/snowy roads make stopping hard and when the roads are lined with ploughed-up snow there is nowhere to go. No driver wants to hit pedestrians, but many walkers, runners and bikers are too difficult to see in the dark and crashes sadly happen . 7 out of 10 American pedestrian crashes happen at night and that number could be greatly reduced with reflectors! Mae is a Chicago area realtor and often out and about in the dark. We think she made a fabulous choice for her purse, don’t you?
As you can see above, we have collected some pretty snowflakes on our pinterest board. Many of them, we’ve found on snowcrystals.com where we were surprised to learn that there are over 30 types of snowflakes. Some of the shapes you would not necessarily think of as being snowflakes. The funflector® snowflake pedestrian reflector is of the type “stellar dendrite” which means “tree like”.
We wish for all our readers in the northeast to ride out the snow storm safely and patiently. When the wind has mellowed out and before the cabin fever get’s to you, it’s time to go outside and be amazed by nature’s artwork!
Our first order for the year, submitted when 2015 was just a couple of minutes old, was for shamrocks, ladybugs and stars. We take that as a sign that this will be a lucky and stellar year and wish you the same.
Happy New Year!
The funflector team
Wishing you a happy and safe 2015 – the funflector team
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As a kid, I loved Astrid Lindgren’s books. Not so much Pippi Longstocking and her early series, but her grand fairy tales “The Brothers Lionheart“, “Mio, My Son” and “Ronja the Robber’s Daughter“. They are set in times of snow white messenger pigeons, black tyrants with evil dragons and plundering robbers who could have been Robin Hood’s distant cousins. Although set in a fairy tale time and landscape, they are universal and time-less, covering all human traits like good and evil, brave and cowardly, humorous and serious and love and hate. The kids in them experience horrible things but learn to overcome their fears to do what is necessary to save the world from evil and eternal darkness. “Then Jonathan said there were things you have to do, even if they are dangerous. ‘Otherwise you aren’t a human being, but just a bit if filth.’ ” – from “The Brothers Lionheart”
