Fun Friday Finds

Last night I got to enjoy the rare and elusive thing we call a "date night," celebrating my husband's birthday...our first in the over 4 months since our 2nd child was born.  I'm talkin' the real deal here: leaving the house with a small purse that held only MY belongings, driving in our little VW Beetle that won't even seat our whole family, a 2 and a half hour meal at Solera where we got to actually converse and eat all of our own food, followed by a walk around downtown Minneapolis, topped off with a FULL EIGHT HOURS of sleep!! HUGE thanks to my parents for giving our boys yet another time of their lives so that we could reconnect (especially since my hubby has been traveling for 17 out of the last 27 days), and another big thanks to Toby for picking last night to sleep longer than he ever has!  Wahoo!  Three cheers for Gramma and Grampa!  Hip-hip-hooray!!  Hip-hip-hooray!!  Hip-hip-hooray!!

So, enough bragging about my hot date...time to share some fun Friday finds!  Here are a few cool things spotted this week on the blogosphere, hand picked by IDMommy for your viewing pleasure...

Plum Organics have teamed up with Boon to create this cool package with their built-in spoon!  For $3.99 you can get the spoon, which screws on to the Plum baby food pouches.  You may remember me posting previously about the Boon spoon, which Toby did finally get in his Easter basket this year. I personally prefer to make my own baby food, so I am excited to try out the Squirt spoon.  But, this is a great alternative when you're out and about for even more convenience, if you don't want to worry about filling up the spoon. (via Daily Candy)

Here's a fun building toy idea that mixes art with architecture. (via Inhabitots)

I may not have a beautiful dress with poofy sleeves in my closet, but one of my favorite t-shirts has a plate of tater tots on the front, with the words "give me some of your tots" written in ketchup.  I got it at a garage sale for $0.50 cents...from a 10 year old boy. Yeah, I know, this 30-something year old Mom loves Napoleon Dynamite just as much as 10 year olds, but I can do whatever I wanna do.  GOSH!  That's why I just had to share this sweeeeet wall mural that Design Mom did for her son's bedroom.  Check out the great tutorial!  Makes me want to erect a tether ball in the back yard and make myself a dang case-a-dilla!

Aaaah...Spring!

Living in Minnesota, it's always extra sweet when the warmer months roll around and we are finally able to get out and enjoy the yard. (Well, AFTER the snow melts and I finish the daunting and disgusting annual task of cleaning up a season's worth of dog poop, that is.)

Yesterday we got out Sammy's "gazillion bubble machine" that he got from Santa (who told us he found it for half off just after the previous Christmas), and had some fun playing in it's 4,000-bubble-per-minute output.


We blow bubbles just about every time we set foot out the back door, however, it was pretty fun to just be able to flip a switch and dance around in a GAZILLION bubbles!



...we even got to watch this ant carry a caterpillar up a 90 degree incline. Impressive, I must say.



Then I got a phone call with a request for a showing a couple hours later, so went back into my familiar "showing rush" of cleaning, staging, and rushing the kids and dogs out the door.  Fortunately we were able to enjoy the great outdoors even still, with a picnic at our neighborhood park.  So, it wasn't all that bad.  Bubbles, bugs, and picnic lunches...3 great ways to enjoy some nice weather!

Let Baby Chew on This!

If you have kids, and you wear jewelry, you probably have experienced the dilemma of keeping the two apart. I know before I had kids and noticed that my nieces couldn't keep their hands and mouths off of my jewelry, I thought, "someone should make jewelry that's made for kids to chew!" Luckily, many people have done just that. Here are a few examples...

Momma's Jewels creates some pretty jewelry that's designed for baby to chew, even with rattles inside. I like these pretty bangles, that don't look like toys at all. (Via Inhabitots)

"Oh Plah," which is French for "here you go," is designed to stand up to your baby's teeth, and is even eco-friendly. When you're done with it, the company will pay for the shipping for it to be returned and recycled into another toy! (via Eco Child's Play)




SmartMom has some colorful coordinating "teething bling" bangles and pendants. While they are made to look like stones, these pendants are made from a soft, chewy silicone, safe for baby's mouth. If you're looking for a fun baby shower gift, give the new mommy the gift of an online shopping trip, and let her pick out her own with a gift card! An especially fun gift for the non-first-time mom who already has all the usual baby stuff.


Hmmm...I think I have an outfit that goes with this one. On second thought, maybe I should get another color, and then have an excuse to get a new outfit to go with it too! ;-)

ID Mommy Tip: Home Made Tarnish Remover Recipe

I picked up this pitcher on Saturday at the thrift store. I paid a little more than I normally would for a thrift store item, at $7.99. Not because I thought it had any value whatsoever, but because I just thought it was really neat. Not sure if or how I will ever use this to pour anything, but I just really liked the contrasting raw materials of silver and cork, and the chain that holds the little cork in the spout. Just a cool piece!

I realized I had packed away my bottle of tarnish remover already (during a day of closet de-cluttering, since we're trying to sell our house). But, I wanted to shine this up a bit. So, I did some online searching for a home made tarnish remover recipe.

I found one that seemed to work pretty well, so I thought I'd share. It may come in handy if you want to polish up some silver, or find something cool like I did at a garage sale or thrift store that needs a little TLC!

I had to triple the recipe in order to totally submerge this, because it is a large item and I had a big bowl. But, here is the single recipe:

Dissolve 1 Tbsp salt and 1 Tbsp baking soda in 6 cups of warm water. Pour it into a bowl that has been lined with tin foil. (This is not to protect the bowl; the tin foil is actually a part of the recipe!) Drop in your items to be cleaned, and let them soak for an hour. Here's my bowl:

(You can see I also dropped in the napkin rings I got last week at a garage sale too!) After an hour, remove, wash off, and buff dry!

This didn't get my pitcher completely spotless, but really did a good job of getting that blueish-black tarnish off. I was surprised how well it worked. I'm thinking if I had let it soak longer, it may have gotten even cleaner. I'm sure this has been sitting around tarnished for a long time. The napkin rings came out really nice!

Here you see the before and after. Not bad for items you have in your kitchen! So there you have it...a cheap and eco-friendly way to remove tarnish from your silver!

ID Mommy Bargains: Garage Sale Finds of [Last] Week

So this past week I found some great garage sales, and a plethora of treasures. I wanted to share just a couple this week...they are my SMALLEST finds of the week (don't laugh Mom, I know you are picturing my jam-packed Jeep last Thursday when I said I was NOT going to buy anything big!), but I think they are cool little treasures and of design interest.

The first is this neat salt and pepper dispenser from Whirley Industries, made in the 1950's. I call it a "dispenser" and not a "shaker," because it requires no shaking.

You hold this thing over your food, and if you want salt, you push the white button. If you want pepper, push the black button. Pushing the button releases a little plunger in the bottom, dispensing the seasoning of your choice. (on the far left you see me dispensing pepper. On the far right I've pulled out and turned the plungers to access the holes to refill it.)

Using Google's patent search, I entered the patent number on the bottom of the shaker, and found that the design patent was filed for in 1952.

Of course, it's still not really an improvement over the traditional "shaker" style with holes, because you can't see very well how much is coming out, and shaking is just a lot easier and quicker to spread salt or pepper over a larger area. But, I thought it was a fun concept and a great little piece of design history for the $0.50 cents I paid!

I also found these great napkin rings at the same sale. I've been wanting to get a nice set of napkin rings that were clean and modern, but of quality material, and I really liked these. They were originally asking $4 and had "slashed" their price tag to $2. I think they might be silver but not sure...you can see they have a little tarnishing to clean up. They are really nice and heavy.

Wait a minute...see how I made that connection..."nice" and "heavy?" I bet you've done that too when shopping for products. You pick something up, and if it feels heavy in your hands, you perceive it as being of high quality. As industrial designers, we call that "perceived value." It's when an element of the product's design, be it weight, material, color, texture, or any other factor, contributes to the consumer's viewpoint on whether the object is of great or little value. Yup, there's a name for it, and people out there designing stuff for you with that concept in mind. I've actually heard stories of products that sold for more money after simply adding in some weight. Interesting, huh?

Fun Friday Finds

What?!  Friday already?!  This week went fast.  I'll have to share a couple of my weekly garage sale finds tomorrow, because today is "Fun Friday Finds" day!  Enjoy!

To brighten up your boo-boo, try these cool "Art School" Bandages.  I found these at Spoon Sisters, one of my many favorite online shops:

Here's another great product design...a very simple way to help solve a very common problem...keeping your toddler safely nearby while also pushing your baby in the stroller.  My double stroller actually has a big handle on the side, and I've always had my toddler "hold the handle" whenever he wanted to walk and not ride.  This is a way to add a handle, if you don't already have one. (via MomFinds)

I love re-making thrift store finds, and I love Carrie's blog.  Here's a neat idea, to turn a woman's dress into a little girl's dress:

So, being currently a mommy of two little ones, including a nursing baby, and someone trying to both sell and buy a home, I of course can't afford the time or money to attend ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair), although as an Industrial Designer I'd LOVE to some day!  For now, I am happy that I can live vicariously through Grace Bonney of Design Sponge.  Check out her great photos from this year's fair, including but certainly not limited to this cool lamp made from wire and velcro:

Bad Illustration: Magnetic Learning Center

Today I picked up this little "write & wipe magnetic learning center" toy at a garage sale for 50 cents.  It's like a little wood briefcase that opens up, with magnetic white boards and magnets inside.  It looks really ugly in this photo, which is probably why it was only 50 cents.  But, I love wood toys, and good travel toys, so I picked it up.  The marker cleaned right off with a little Expo dry erase cleaner and it looks like new!  I thought it would be fun for Sammy to play with the magnets on a road trip, or color with a white board marker.  (once he's old enough that I can trust him with a marker in the car)


But the real reason I'm posting this is because the image on the outside of the thing is just hilarious.  Look at the boys' faces.  Gee, they sure look like they're having the time of their lives, don't they?!  This really reinforces the idea that learning is fun, now, doesn't it?!

The boy in blue looks jealous that the other boy is actually writing letters.  Clearly the other boy has a super awesome toy like the "magnetic learning center" that taught him to write so legibly.  That, or he's just jealous of the other boy's super sweet red sweater or perfectly smoth and spherical head of "Ken" hair.

Or maybe he's just depressed because the perspective in this image is so out of whack, that he's afraid if he even tries to write anything down, it'll just be skewed in the wrong direction.

 Alas, blue shirt boy is destined to a life in the shadows, staring aimlessly at his blank piece of paper, longing for "the good life," that only the magnetic learning center can bring.

Upon closer examination, however, this lucky, literate, dashing young lad in red doesn't look so thrilled himself.  Maybe the grass isn't as green on his side of the fence after all.  Perhaps things aren't all that easy for him either.  Just because your parents can afford to buy you fancy red sweaters, weekly haircuts, and incredibly effective learning tools like the magnetic learning center does NOT mean that life is any easier for you.  Noooo sireee bob.  Nobody understands the kind of pressure you're under, being expected to get straight A's just because the magnetic learning center has made you intellectually superior to your peers...not to mention the hour and a half of sleep you have to lose by getting up earlier than everyone else to start taming your locks into the fine, sculpted specimen that everyone has come to expect.



On second thought, maybe the magnetic learning center is not such a great toy after all. 

Yes, folks, these are the things that I notice and think about on a daily basis as a designer.  It's a blessing and a curse.