Mahar Dry Goods Selling Bertie and Owyn!

Robert Mahar, from Mahar Dry Goods, could not be a nicer, more thoughtful guy. I met him on the craft show circuit last year and fell in love with his online retail shop and blog. He's the real deal - a former contemporary art appraiser with impeccable taste in kid gear, toys, furniture and clothing who carefully selects each piece for sale in his store. In addition to his shop and the blog attached to his shop, he runs a second blog called Junior Society which is such a great read! My favorite part are his instructions for the secret membership handshake. That and the fact he calls himself the Grand Poobah of the Junior Society.

I'm proud to announce that both the Bertie and the Owyn are being sold on his online shop, Mahar Dry Goods, as of today!

Coffee Talk

This was my day today. Check out the coffee from 9:00am this morning on the table saw. I took that shot around 4pm today. You'll be glad to know that the coffee is still sitting just like that in the dark garage...at 10:51pm. Tomorrow I'll have the energy to walk it ALL THE WAY to the kitchen.

** Oon, aren't you glad to see my toes painted?? I do toe painting goods, don't I?

Did I mention I'm not a neat-freak, anal-retentive woodworker? Just the kind that will eventually, after building four or so pieces, suck up all the saw dust with my shop vac. But only after I can literally skate through my garage. Cuz that's just fun.

Modern Nursery

Super cool online retailer, www.modernnursery.com, is now selling Mod Mom Furniture! You can even look up furniture by designer. If I'm being honest, it blows me away when I see my name under the designer list. I get a tiny thrill each time I do it. Which is like 45 times a day :). One can never get enough ego boosting- aka, motivation - in between table saw cuts (in a dress).

Adventures in New Table Saw Shopping...and much more!

Pneumonia! Table saw shopping! LumberJocks!

SO much has happened in the past few days I'm not even sure where to start! So this post will serve as a catch up post and will most likely make little sense and have no cohesion and MANY run-on sentences because I haven't slept much in a week. And here's why...

• Pneumonia! Grace was showing signs of pneumonia last Monday so we, as good parents who didn't take the other son to the doctor until he had full-blown pneumonia, decided to take her in right away on Tuesday. The doc told us she didn't hear anything and that we probably brought her in too early and that it was probably a virus. Cut to Friday when we haven't slept all week and she's worse so we headed to an Urgent Care. The Urgent Care doc couldn't hear anything in her chest either but did listen to us when we said we'd just been through pneumonia with our son. He ordered an x-ray and sure enough, FULL BLOWN PNEUMONIA. She's getting better but sadly, is not sleeping well. So sadly, neither are we.
  
• Table Saw Shopping! I'm in the market for a new table saw so I've been researching like crazy. Yesterday, I marched into three different stores to hopefully take home a saw. Apparently, having boobs and wearing a dress make it difficult for anyone to answer your questions about table saws with smart answers. The condescension in the air was palpable. More later on this one, I'm sure....
  
• Check out the cool site I just joined -- http://www.lumberjocks.com/! It's a great place to get advice on woodworking. I'm now a LUMBERJOCK!
  
• Nikki from Ohio wrote a very kind post on her blog "And Audrey Makes Three" on Friday. http://hudsonnews.typepad.com/baby/2008/05/friday-feature---mod-mom.html
  
• Confession. I cut wood yesterday on my old, falling apart, table saw in the same dress I wore to shop for saws. I just couldn't be bothered to change clothes. No heels, though.
  

Whew! Ok, gotta run Noah to school. I'll be back with another post because I'm waiting for the world to wake up before I crank up the table saw again. This time, not in a dress.

New Website Design!

Check out the the Mod Mom Furniture website for the new design!!

Thanks so much to Lisa Sommer at Venturesom for the fantastic web design!! She's an amazing web design guru who also manages to run several other companies all while taking care of two little Sommers. Check out these links for chic baby gear and so much more!

www.chicshopsbaby.com
www.chicshopsconnect.com
www.pulpfactorycalendars.com

Happy Friday!

I've been building like crazy the last couple of days so that I'm able to go on a field trip with my son's third grade class on Friday. It's the first one I've been able to go on so I'm thrilled and a bit nervous all at the same time. It seems silly to me that I feel that way...about the nervous part...because, after all, I actually HAVE a third grader. I do know something about them. But somehow knowing I'm responsible for five or so other third graders at an art museum with those velvet ropes to jump over, paintings featuring naked boobs to be pointed out loudly, and a few very stern looking museum workers giving me the stink-eye when one of the kids gets overly excited makes me get me get just a wee bit anxious.

Wish me luck! I'm off to bed so I can get some rest. I need to get my strength up so I can be witty and charming for my son's friends (and their mothers who have gone on field trips before and will undoubtedly call attention to my lack of involvement.) I really just want to be the cool mom but will go to sleep tonight knowing that I'll probably be the mom who loses a kid.

Procrastination Station

I'm a bit like that Dunkin Donuts guy from the 80s(?) who says in a very tired voice at 4:00 am, "it's time to make the donuts." I feel like that today but I think I have time for more procrastination by way of looking at photos from our family Christmas trip!

I came across these today (thanks, sis) and hadn't really looked at them since January. My carpentry mentor known as Dad, is featured in two of these.


Two woodworking geeks getting ready to ride the tube down a hill that doesn't have a conveyor belt to get you back up the hill.

If I had gotten my act together in the Christmas card department, this would've been the card photo.

Dad getting some air! This was hilarious because a few other families were on the same, steep, non-commercial hill listening to us cheering on Grandpa. Needless to say, when Noah and Grace yelled, "Go Grandpa!", heads turned. He's quite a Grandpa, isn't he!!!

Ok, now I'm done procrastinating. Back to my office I go. It's time to make the furniture.

Workplace Dress Code

I now have a new woodworking outfit. No longer am I wearing my hip-slung jeans. Since the thermometer outside says 104 degrees, I've decided for a change in workplace dress code. Mod Mom Furniture is now being designed/built by me in the following attire...

flip flops
bikini top under white Hanes halter
cut-off shorts that used to be thin sweatpants
two pencils in hair (one for marking, one to keep the hair up) - bun type updo

Back out to sweat to some country song about drinking in Mexico....

Sunset Blvd and Heels

Last night, Scott and I got all dressed up (complete with 3 inch spiky heels) and headed down to Sunset Blvd for dinner with a friend. During the evening, two things occurred to me.

1. The three-inch heels spiky heels hurt like HELL. And they make me 6'1". So I end up looking like a giant on wobbly feet. When did I lose the ability to wear those heels? Either my feet have changed or my tolerance for pain or both.

2. If we stay in LA, there's a chance my kids, when in high school, will want to walk up and down Sunset Blvd with their friends trying to get into bars with their fake IDs. We saw so many teens/twenty-somethings parading past us as we waited for our car to be pulled up by the valet. Here's what strikes me about that. I used to cruise downtown Defiance, Ohio with my friends and eventually we'd end up at the seedy, debaucherous, Burger King parking lot. That's not much different than Sunset Blvd, right? Yep, we'll be moving.

Design Mom

Gabrielle, a designer/art director and mother of five, at Design Mom said some really nice things this morning on her blog! It was a nice surprise to see a message from her in my inbox this morning because I'm actually DREADING working today. It's supposed to be close to 100 degrees and shockingly, my "workshop" built in the 1940s doesn't have air conditioning. I'm trying to look at it from another angle. It'll be like a sauna and surely I'll lose at least five pounds, right?

Here's the link to the article....

http://www.designmom.com/2008/05/mod-mom-furniture.html