Items not appearing on desktop?

Items I save to the desktop are not appearing. I can see what is on there on my desktop using the finder, but I cannot see it on the actual desktop. I tried to click everywhere on the screen to see if it just is invisible, but nothing works. The only thing that appears is that if it is a video that is exported to the desktop, or an existng file dragged to the desktop. It will not be seen if a file (ie. an image) is saved to the desktop. Help!!