Martha Stewart: American Made. Just Like a Texas Truck built in Mexico

America is pretty innovated.

We’ve created such life-changing inventions here like iPhones, Airplanes, Jazz Music, Chicken in a Bucket, Prozac, The Internet, and Lionel Richie. 

It’s all pretty amazing when you think about it. And if you take a Prozac you can really sit back and think about it some more. 

So imagine my excitement when I find out Martha Stewart is encouraging new inventive creators by running a contest honoring those entrepreneurs who are making just plain cool products?

Then I discovered that one of my favorite designers-turned-mom, turned-mom-designer makes it into the top 100 finalists out of thousands of applicants with her super swanky, Eco-friendly mobiles and wall art.

Can you vote for her to win this (please?)
http://americanmade.marthastewart.com/profiles/diana-jess-643
You can vote once per day through Sept 24th.

Her shop of Modern Modular wall art, bunnies, robots, kittens, and robot kitten bunnies…
http://www.etsy.com/shop/daswooddesign?ref=seller_info

 

Maybe one of these days she'll make a Lionel Richie mustache one or a bucket with floating chicken pieces - both perfect for any nursery or home office.

The Art Of Christmas Shopping Procrastination: Don’t Think About It And It’ll Go Away!

So what did you do over the weekend? Perhaps you, like millions of others, did some Christmas shopping? What did “I” (and family) do you might ask? Well, surely not Christmas shop. We did what the French do best - just ignored it and did something fun (minus the cigarettes). We went to San Diego. There sure is nothing like 78-degree, cloudless, sunny weather that gets you into the “Christmas Spirit” (I even had Hot Chocolate with marshmallows- you can’t get more “Christmas” than that!) Although I can’t honestly say the weather was that good all the time; it did get down to 50-degrees at night (Brrrrr! – practically snow weather.)

We haven’t been down to San Diego in about 4 years, and we heard about this event they have called “Christmas at the Prado” (which was renamed “December Nights”) up at their Balboa Park area. We had a good time, Balboa Park is an absolutely amazing place – it looks like a piece of Spain landed in the area. Ornate Moorish/Spanish Renaissance architecture with towers, manicured gardens, great city views, and enough museums to make any 16-month old scream from boredom. Add Christmas lights and about 4 million people there that night (well, not 4, maybe ‘3.4’) and you have quite a bash.

The best part was walking past the (lonely) Atheist Coalition booth that had a bunch of creeping looking, sour-faced hippies working it and then about 100 feet up the way was some crazy over-the-top Jesus freaks wearing t-shirts and holding signs like “Repent!” When I passed the dude with the sign, I told him that he should talk to the dudes down at the booth - they needed Jesus (I would have liked to have seen that conversation...)

One thing I really like about San Diego which is much different than L.A. -- the people -- they're much friendly there. Total strangers will just chat with you as if they’ve known you for a while. You don’t get that in L.A. unless you know them somehow (or you just had a fender-bender or sell crack).
Or it could be the fact that if you have a kid (or a dog) people deem you as “approachable”.

What about all of you? Does having a young kid (or dog) make it easier for strangers to talk with you?

Who’s That Guy Singing Along At A Lionel Richie Concert?!

What chou’ talkin’ bout’ ? It wasn’t me (…well, maybe…)

So Friday was the big day. The wife got her ultimate, dream birthday gift – orchestra seats to Lionel Richie. She claims it was the second happiest day of her life (#1 being our wedding day - but the look on her face made me a little suspicious…) Just before Lionel walked on stage, I think every single woman was ready to toss her underwear (including this weird squealing guy sitting behind us.) He opened with the ultimate “cheese” song “Hello” and ended 2 hours later on a 9-minute rendition of “All Night Long” (complete with a 2-minute drum and guitar solo – don’t ask). Somewhere in that 2 hours he sat at the piano and sang some “strangely familiar to me” songs (“My Love” and “Say You, Say Me”), which reminded of this weird girl who made a few tapes for me back in H.S. (I attracted the odd ones back then.)
After my apprehension about going, I must admit, I had fun. Seeing how extremely happy my wife was made me happy. And I shocked myself a little, I actually knew more songs than I thought I knew. I remember my grandma and parents having the “adult contemporary” radio station on in the car growing up - you know that one station that played Hall and Oates and Captain and Tennille (at least that’s my excuse.)

Shopping At The Mall?

Did anybody venture out? We did on Saturday and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was made out to be. We were down in Orange County and ended up at South Coast Plaza – which is a huge freakin’ mall! We were there for about 3 hours and managed only to get 3 gifts. We should have just bought everybody Lionel Richie Fan Club T-Shirts at the concert. I wish I had thought of that earlier.