Category Archives: My Life

Narcissa Niblack Thorne was born in 1882.  She fell in love with her childhood sweetheart, James Ward, and they married.  He was the heir to the Montgomery Ward fortune, one of the biggest in the world at the time thanks to a chain of department stores that were once as ubiquitous as Target or J.C. Penney.  A graduate of art school, the Chicago socialite wasn’t content to sit around and make small talk all of her life.  She began designing and orchestrating these incredible one-foot-to-one-inch scale historical replicas of different architectural, interior design, and furniture styles throughout history to serve as models of how homes and spaces had changed over the years.  She was meticulous and insisted upon accuracy (e.g., the wood, down to the grain direction, of the tiny furniture had to be made in exactly the same way as the model piece upon which it was based.)

Aaron and I arrived in Chicago less than two hours ago and are spending the weekend visiting our friend Jimmy from college.  We had promised to come up for awhile and he wanted to show us the city.  We’re having dinner at an Italian restaurant called Tocco in the Wicker Park district. [mainbodyad] Afterward, we…

On the way back from spending the week with friends, Blake and Karen, on Captiva Island, we decided to take a detour to meet up with two other old friends we don’t get to see very often, who happened to be at Walt Disney World.  We were heading toward Tampa and re-routing to Orlando would only a few of hours to the trip, so we arranged to have lunch in a pub at Downtown Disney before we had to get back on the road, again.

We stayed at a rental house called Otter Banks on Captiva Island, Florida, when our friends got married and invited us down for the week.

We’re at home wrapping presents, baking cookies, and getting ready for the family dinners that are coming up in the next couple of days.  Since Aaron and I are gifting stock this year – almost all of the transactions were completed yesterday with a settlement date of the 26th – there isn’t a lot left for us to do.  However, to give the kids something tangible they can open under the tree from us, we went and got industrial size boxes of their favorite candy along with an explanation of how their stock in The Hershey Company is going to work.