Mail order catalogs were my JAM in middle and high school. I obsessed over the Speigel catalog's home décor section. When I grew up I swore I'd have a breakfast nook with a pink table, pink café chairs, a pink fan light, pink coffee maker, and pink microwave just like I saw in Speigel. But when Pottery Barn came on the scene, my tastes changed. While Pottery Barn has been around since 1949, its mail order catalog didn't start until the late '80s. The catalog would arrive and my sister and I would flip through it a dozen times, circling what we wished to have in our future dream homes.
Christmas, senior year of high school, I asked for a tree topper from Pottery Barn. My family already had one and I wouldn't have my own tree for many years, but I felt this would be an heirloom, a signature piece that I would pass down to my children. My parents, so patient and understanding, bought me the large silver-plated star. It was too big to fit on our family tree, and way too heavy for the tiny tabletop trees I had in dorm rooms and college apartments. Even after college, my sister and I decorated our fake ficus instead of a fir and it didn't have a top (or a branch strong enough) for a tree topper. When Karl and I bought our first place together, the 700 or so square feet wasn't enough to fit a tree that could hold the weight of the silver star.
