The Bertie Box on Minor Details

Jenn from Minor Details posted a lovely write-up on her blog today about the new Bertie Box. If you haven't checked out her blog, get on over to it...and quick! She finds the best in modern kids design and her finds are always an inspiration to me.

Here's a little bit about Jenn's company and her background. If you're in the market for an interior design consult and are in the NYC area, check out her site at http://www.minordetails.typepad.com/ !

Minor Details is a children’s interior consulting firm focusing on collaboration with parents to bring about an imaginative and constructive space for their family to thrive in. The approach emphasizes independent imaginative play, and developmentally appropriate challenges while maintaining a fresh aesthetic. We offer interior consulting services that include architectural and structural concepts, renovation, furnishings, color studies, design concepts, procurements, installations and baby proofing. Along with these offerings, we also provide commercial and recreational design for children's spaces. To find out more about our services, please go to www.minordetailsnyc.com or email us at info@minordetailsnyc.com.

Jennifer Ward, Creative Director
As a former Architectural project manager at The Apartment creative agency in Soho, New York, Jennifer Ward has developed a strategically focused and personal appreciation of design. With the primary task of supervising production and conceptual design of residential and commercial projects, Jennifer has established an understanding of all aspects of the creative process.

Earlier in her career, Jennifer brought her talents to the commercial, print and film industry with roles consisting of art department coordinating, prop styling, art direction and production design. A few directors from her long list of experience include Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Christopher Guest. At one point, Jennifer also served as an assistant photographer at Vogue magazine. A former student of Parsons School of Design in New York, Jennifer is a mother, wife and overall rockstar.

The Bertie Box

We did it!!! And we're not getting divorced! My hubby and I managed to collaborate beautifully by calmly yelling, belittling, whining, and occasionally praising one another during our two-day process and came out on the other end with a new toy box! We put our heads together to come up with The Bertie Box!

This little guy will be heading to the Baby Celebration LA Show on April 12th but I'll also put on my online store very soon.

The bird's (or chick as some see it) orange body pulls out like a puzzle piece (similar to the Owyn Toy Box). The cut-out that looks like a wing is the opening for little hands to lift up. The toy box is made from 1/2 inch adn 3/4 inch birch plywood and sits on casters so it can be moved around easily.

Natural birch on the inside

White body, birch top, orange lid and walnut stained veneer as cut-out legs and beak.

Isn't it just ducky?!? (that was bad, I know.)

K.A.C (Kids Against Crack)

I tried to find one of my corporate executive photos but no luck. So this will have to do to make my point. I'm the one in the pink.

Then:
See photo above, circa 2002.

Now:
I was bending over to pick up some wood that had fallen on the garage floor. It's important to note I was wearing my low cut, hip slung jeans. Then Grace said, with much excitement and pride, "MOM, your butt ISN'T showing!!" YEAH!!!! Then she skipped off happily like it was just what her day needed.

Boy, have times changed now that I'm a woodworkin' mama. Tomorrow, I plan to purposely not hike my pants up when squatting down to work on a toy box. Her childhood shouldn't be all sunshine and roses, now should it?!?

a la mode

Linda at A LA MODE is a very talented artist designing bags, switchplate covers, and much more! And she's also a fan of a few of my pieces. Check out her post on Mod Mom Furniture at http://www.alamodestuff.blogspot.com/ and be sure to also check out her website (mentioned above) or her etsy store, http://www.alamodestuff.etsy.com/.

Easter Tennis, Potato Salad, and Rockin' Hairdos

Check out our Easter fun! Nice to get a little break from glue and polyurethane!!

First up, Grace's new do. Comes complete with a very natural smile.





Coming down off of a potato salad high....


Sadly :) there are no photos of me showing off my unbeliveably "mad tennis skills." Maybe next Easter.

Happy Easter!

Enjoy the weekend eating loads of ham and potato salad! Atleast that's the way we did it growing up in Ohio. We're off for our annual tennis tournament at a friend's house where I will inevitably throw my back out, eat way too much potato salad, and then go back for more potato salad.

To my family back East (and in San Fran), we miss you all terribly and wish we could be eating potato salad together!!

Happy Easter!

potato salad word count: 4

GearHeadMom Writes about Mod Mom Furniture

Missy at Gearheadmom wrote a very kind article about my "mad skills," as she puts it. I love that she says I have mad skills. Anyhow, Missy is a fantastic writer/mom who reviews kid products and shares her findings with the world. Check her site out when you have a minute.
She, too, has mad skills!!

Here's the link to the article: http://www.gearheadmom.com/post/comments/1_mom_1_table_saw_crappy_old_garage_mod_mom_furniture/

Booth Fun!

Guess who wanted to be photographed in her store? Check out these work-in-progress photos of the ever-evolving tradeshow booth. Logo, orange circles, and believe it or not, FURNITURE, still need to be installed. Oh, and the carpet squares need a good fixing. But so far so good. The booth will be easy to spot in the 10 x 5 booth section at the show since the rest of the vendors in my section will likely have the black backdrop. Sometimes I have tiny moments of brilliance sandwiched between many moments of complete idiocy and forgetfulness.

Now, what was I writing about? Oh, yea, that's right....

The booth was easy to figure out....it's my wardrobe for the show that will be hard. Sequins, no sequins, sequins with the tool belt, such hard decisions to be made.

Booth Building Bonanza!

This week I've substituted building kid furniture for building a trade show booth for the Baby Celebration LA show coming up in April. Scott and I have been working on it for the past three days and it's coming along! I'll take a few pictures today and post them so you can see the progress.

The funniest part about it is that Gracie thinks that the booth, which is sitting in our driveway, will remain there and she can sell scrap wood pieces from the booth...in our driveway. LOVE THAT! She desperately wants to help so we've been keeping her busy, when she's not in school, doing everything but "helping" with the booth. So far, she's stacked all the extra wood bits into a sculpture that sits in the middle of my new "store." I really have a good feeing about her sales capabilities. She may even make Sales Girl of the Driveway if she really puts her mind to it and does some suggestive selling!

The Gracie Toy Box in Walnut

For toys...or magazines....or karaoke cds and microphones. Yep, you read right. That is what is currently in our Gracie Toy Box (in maple.) Maybe next time I"ll write about how many karaoke stages we've built in our houses over the years. Lights and all!

Design Public!

I'm thrilled to announce that Design Public, one of the leading online modern furnishings websites, will be carrying a few Mod Mom Furniture pieces! I was contacted a few weeks back by their merchandising department about their interest in my line. I, of course, acted about as cool as a five-year-old in a candy store, and giddily announced my reciprocal interest in selling on their site.

Look for Mod Mom Furniture on Design Public in the coming weeks!

Busy Busy

It's been a little while since my last post, sorry. I've been focusing on lots of orders lately. That and ignoring getting my tax stuff together for our accountant.

I'm on my last week of 10 straight weeks of building and I'm physically whipped!! Guess they call this manual labor for a reason, eh? I'm getting excited about the Baby Celebration LA show coming up on April 12 and 13. Do I have any inventory for the event, you ask? Hell no. That would be too easy! I'm going to start cranking out inventory and the building/designing of my easy-to-assemble hard walled booth for the show. That's what's on the schedule starting next week.

Ok, back to the garage I go. I need to actually do a load of laundry to make it easier to get to the table saw. I think my husband did that on purpose. I feel like Dora the Explorer....first you go OVER the mountain of dirty clothes, then you go around the workbench and straight to the TABLE SAW! YEAH!!! I DID IT, I DID IT!!!

Sugarpharm

Happy Friday everyone!

I just found this very nice new post from Sugarpharm...

http://sugarpharm.com/furniture/what-at-pretty-pretty-bench/

Back to the garage....

"It keeps you busy" rant

"It's good...it keeps you busy," said the nice man at the hardware store after learning what i do. Really? It keeps me busy?? Like I have NOTHING else in the world to do and I'm just doing this to pass the time. While at the moment, it certainly doesn't pay as much as my old job at A&E, but it definitely helps! And it pays more than babysitting OPKs (Other Peoples Kids.) I did that for a little while after leaving the corporate world and landing in the very inexpensive city of LA before I realized one toy box equalled two days with an OPK. Maybe I should put that on my website with little baby icons and the "=" sign and a picture of my toy box. Now I'm thinking like an ex-tv marketing executive!!

Anyhow, back to my rant. Some men like to say the "keeps you busy" line to me even after they find out I have a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old. I think the next time someone says that to me I'm going to, with a smile on my face, say, "Yep, I made a million in sales last year just keeping busy." Or the more likely response to come out of my mouth will be, "Yep, it sure beats prostitution."

New Items or Options

Lately, I've been doing some custom work for several clients and thought I'd post photos of the variations. For the most part, we've simply customized what I'm already making. What do ya think??


(variation on the Sam Toy Box with more mid-century style)



(Eamonn Table and Maisie Stool set with walnut stained lazy susan)

Cross Things Off My Hand

Polyurethane toy box. Check.
Do bills. Check.Buy a laptop so I won't kill my husband when he wants to use my computer. Check.Take kids to an amusement park. No check.

Now that last "to do" written on the palm of my hand hasn't been crossed off yet. Here's why. We were all geared up to take the kids to either Knott's Berry Farm amusement park or (cringe) Disneyland today to do something fun as a family. It's been awhile. And low and behold, both kids woke up this morning sick as dogs. Of course, a different kind of sick than the staph infection sick Grace had earlier in the week. But nonetheless, not in any shape to put forth the energy they'd have to muster to complain about their feet hurting after standing in line for an hour at the pirate ride.

The funniest part was I was really trying to get them to rally. I'd administered the cold medicine/help-you-breathe-out-of-your-nose medicine and then it happened. Noah was saying he wanted to go to Disneyland and Gracie wanted Knott's Berry Farms (think rides with Snoopy and Charlie Brown for those of you unfamiliar with Knott's) and Grace very sadly and with the most downtrodden look on her face said, "I don't want to go to Disneyland."

I almost laughed out loud. The nerve of this little child to be so over Disneyland. I think she's only ever been twice in her life, even.

I resisted the urge to make them feel guilty about kids begging and stealing to go to Disneyland, other kids not having enough to eat, or homes, or little ones who have to walk through snow in bare feet to get to school.

I just quietly smiled and announced I was heading out to my office (garage) and told the kids that maybe tomorrow was a better day to fight over amusement parks. And I told Grace that she needs to be a bit more pouty tomorrow when she pleads her case against the happiest place on earth.