Grab Bag Agrarian Gear:

Williams-Sonoma has a new division called Agrarian which offers all things garden, including this very handsome chicken coop. I am still slightly obsessed with chicken coops, or at least the thought of one, stuffed with fresh eggs and fluffy chickens.

Aren’t they adorable? Anyway, Agrarian also has a nice selection of Kombucha kits, raised planting beds, beekeeping (!) supplies and gorgeous garden tools, among many other goodies. A great place to find a gift for the gifted gardener in your life (if he’s a father, order somethin’ right now for Father’s Day).

Grab Bag Apple Envy:

More daddy diversions for Father’s Day…. or for yourself…. Does he love his iPad? Does he wake up looking for his iPhone? These kinds of material attachments are more common than ever, and need to be addressed.

No, not with psycho-therapy, but with retail-therapy.

Here, for your purchasing pleasure, are the latest apples of your eye that the most devoted of followers can not do without. Click pictures for links to buy.

APP MAGNETS – $5.50 for set of 18

APP CERAMIC COASTERS – $15 for a set of 4

iPHONE ALARM CLOCK DOCK – $40

ANTIQUE BOOK iPHONE DOCK

RETRO iPAD SCREEN FRAME – $60

Grab Bag Daddy’s Day Gift Guide:

No? Still haven’t found the perfect doodad for daddy? Click here on Netted.net to link to these fun gadgets for the padre in your posse (click on the lower right corner to enlarge this slideshow).

Grab Bag Clean Up:

Because daddies want you and your family to be healthy….

It’s been long said that the pollution we breathe indoors can be far more damaging than what we encounter outside. Chemical off-gassing from flame retardant fabrics, harmful ingredients in cleaning products, inhalation of personal care products... it all mixes together to create a soup of unsavory ingredients that we stew in every day.

Here is a video to show you how easy it can be to reduce your exposure to harmful elements found in commercial cleaning products. By law as it stands today, many ingredients are allowed to be left off the labels of cleaning products in the U.S.

Beat ’em at their own game, save money and optimize your health:

Grab Bag Brain Game:

Watch this video… you will be asked to keep your eyes on the crosshairs, between the celebrity faces. Within a few seconds the faces, which are seen in your peripheral vision, appear to grow deformed and grotesque, yet when you look directly at them they are normal. Researchers at Tangen Cognition Lab in Queensland, Australia, discovered a new optical illusion which they are dubbing the ‘Flashed Face Distortion Effect’, wherein aligning faces of normal people a certain way and flipping through them makes them look almost alien. Kinda fun to see some of these gorgeous faces not having their best day 🙂

Grab Bag Funny Stuff:

Before you think you want to be a daddy or make your beloved a daddy, read through these highly recommended exercises:

11 Step Program for Those Thinking of Having Kids

• Lesson 1 •
1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.
• Lesson 2 •
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.
• Lesson 3 •
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)
Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.
• Lesson 4 •
Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?
• Lesson 5 •
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this – all morning.
• Lesson 6 •
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
• Lesson 7 •
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
• Lesson 8 •
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.
• Lesson 9 •
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years  (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’? Exactly the point).
• Lesson 10 •
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
• Lesson 11 •
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.