Monica Pedersen talks about the HGTV 2013 Dream Home Giveaway, the new Kohler Sensate Touchless Faucet, & gives tips on how to wave from a Rose Bowl Parade float. * Note: Dream Home Giveaway Sweepstakes entries can be submitted through February 15th @ 5pm EST.
Mark: We’re back in MyFixitUpLife at the Therma-Tru and Fypon booth at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, Nevada and we are joined by the ebullient, glowing …
Theresa: Ooh. I agree, I agree. Glowing absolutely, fancy.
Mark: Hold on, hold on one second. The thesaurus also says … Monica Pedersen.
Theresa: Thank you so much for taking time out. I know that you are busy over at the Kohler booth giving presentations and sharing all the information about their new products.
Monica: We are busy but it’s always great to see you guys so I’m happy to be here. I very much like the décor of your setup; little sofa, the musician, decorated beautifully.
Mark: When I designed it I really, really put some thought into it.
Monica: I could tell, and the flooring … it’s great.
Mark: All by myself.
Theresa: I always think that I work better if I’m sitting in a comfortable chair; even at a trade show.
Monica: At a trade show more than anything in the whole world it’s all about finding a comfortable chair. It changes everything.
Theresa: Everywhere you go it’s like a five-minute walk and you’re standing up all day.
Mark: How many hours in a row are you standing up at the Kohler booth?
Monica: We’re doing eight shows a day, so it’s the top of every hour and we’ve got about 15, 20 minutes off at the end of each hour. It’s all day long so it’s nine hour a day.
Mark: This couch is available for a small fee.
Monica: Good.
Theresa: Really?
Monica: I’ll see you in 40 minutes.
Mark: That’s right.
Monica: Do you take debit card or cash?
Mark: Square now. Here it is; it’s right here. I’ll just stick it in my phone, it’s paperclip.
Theresa: Monica Pedersen is presenting the new faucet over there and I went over and checked it out.
Monica: Very cool isn’t it?
Theresa: It is super cool.
Monica: Yes. It’s called the Sensate and it truly is a touchless faucet. It’s got this great high arch to it, the gooseneck faucet and there’s a little LED censor underneath the arch. What you do is you put your hand underneath it … Some of the touchless faucets out there they say it’s touchless but you really have to touch the mechanism to turn it on. You don’t have to turn the handle if you touch it but this takes all that out of it.
Let’s say you’re baking or cooking, your hands are greasy, you’re making dough or something and you want to wash a pot or a pan, you can just put it right in the sink, lift it up underneath that faucet and will go on and then lift it back up to go off. You don’t need to touch your faucet, you’re not spreading bacteria, you’re not going to get dirty; you can also control the volume, the flow of the water, the temperature, everything from the handle. That’s already on. You already have the handle on and just leave it on. If you’re entertaining big parties just throwing in there, wave your hand; it was pretty fun. We actually … we’re going through we have four lined up and we were acting like 12-year old running through a fire hydrant. It was like, “Oh let’s get them all going at once.”
It’s beautiful. It comes in the stainless, the brush stainless then also in the polished chrome, so it’s cool.
Theresa: It is beautiful and I do like the feature that if you have a pasta or something out of pot and you don’t have to …
Monica: It’s easy. Exactly. You’re not juggling and not spilling over, you’re not having to touch anything. If you want to you can, you can operate it manually but it’s just cool. Everything was just cool.
Mark: It makes sense because you’ve got things all over your fingers, you don’t want to take and then put it all over the faucet itself. You just go in there and you’re not doing the whole juggling routine.
Monica: How many times … let’s say … even like say you’re cutting up a chicken or you’re pounding your meat or whatever and then you’re going to wash your hands and … you don’t want to touch your faucet handle with your hands because you’re like, “Oh my gosh,” they’re covered with whatever and so you’re always doing the elbow dance with …
Mark: The elbow dance.
Monica: Okay, let’s take it this way.
Mark: Can you hum me a few bars on that?
Monica: It can be any song you want. It’s the emotion. It works at every beat, it’s just emotion.
Mark: No, it’s true. We cook a lot of chicken and pork and meat at our house and fish …
Theresa: He’s a huge meat eater.
Mark: Take it out of the package and there you go, you’ve got the cross contamination happening. Now you don’t have to touch anything.
Monica: Yes, it’s really nice. More things should be like that.
Mark: A lot of people feel that way about me.
Monica: Do they?
Mark: If there’s any way I could not be in contact with you Mark, that would be fine.
Theresa: Usually they write me a note about that whole …
Monica: This like have sanitizer and stuff like that.
Theresa: Yes, yes.
Monica: I keep those little packets in my purse because I’m afraid of you.
Mark: I’ve got my 12-year old question to ask because you’re talking about 12-year old.
Monica: Do it.
Mark: You’ve got your super awesome sport center college game day mic on which is fantastic.
Monica: Double mic.
Mark: I’m hoping … really hoping that this is also being broadcast at the Kohler booth.
Monica: I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be fun? I wonder if I could reach back of my dress and turn something on. There’s a mic pack back there.
Mark: Somebody back … “Where is she? Where is she? We got to get Pedersen stat.”
Monica: They will not find me either. We’re like in this little cozy corner on the sofa. They’ll never find me.
Theresa: I’m desperate to ask you because I saw you at the Rose Bowl Parade, on a float.
Monica: I know, with Carter Oosterhouse. Can you imagine what it does for your ego? Oh my god, everyone screams Carter all day. At one point I had to put my sunglasses on I’m like, okay, “Hi!”
Theresa: Really? I can’t imagine why … okay.
Monica: It’s a blast … it was awesome. Yes. Rose Bowl Parade, it was fun.
Theresa: Riding on the float in the Rose Parade is that the first time you’ve ever done that?
Monica: Yes. I said it was never on my bucket list because it’s nothing you ever think is going to happen to you, right? One day in my life, I’m going to be in the Rose Bowl Parade but it didn’t so it’s crossed off.
It was really fun. Six miles of waving so, yes, so your arm gets tired. You start out and so people are so excited and you’re waving your heart out and then, “Oh my god, my arm is going to fall off for real,” and so you switch arms. It was cool.
What’s really the best … what I thought was the best part was the day before you go in, when you’re on a float they do this float judging so you have to go the day before and they just randomly pick times that you’re going to go in and be judged. We had a time like 6:00 in the morning. We got up early, Carter and I had to go in and then you go into this huge garage and have six other floats there. They have these garages all over Pasadena where they go in to judge. You get to see all these folks up close and personal and when you actually see those flowers … I’ve watched the parade, I’ve been there and interviewed people before, unless you’re up close to it and you see it, you can imagine the detail; the amount of flowers and I think that they only start putting them in two days before. People are around the clock placing stems. It was nuts.
Theresa: I can’t even imagine.
Monica: It was really a great thing I have to say. I feel really blessed that I got to see it.
Theresa: How’s the smell?
Monica: It doesn’t smell that much because a lot of it … roses don’t have a huge fragrance so it didn’t really smell …
Mark: I’m with you on that.
Monica: They do interesting things like beans, little Spanish moss. There was a lot of fragrant. I would love to be on a float with a bunch of stargazer lily, they’d be like, “Whoa! Here she comes!” You’d smell us a mile away. There wasn’t like that.
Mums are really cool. There was this great … big helmet that they do every year, they do the helmet float for the two teams and it’s always a white helmet because they know last minute. That’s really cool too, that’s like mums. Mums were great. I saw a lot of detail on that. It’s really cool to see it and then when you get up early, you get down there then you have to be in line, 6:30 in the morning to get in the float. Its dark, it’s cold. There’s like behind the scenes excitement. Everything’s roped off and you get your float and there’s a little space heaters to keep you warm because until the sun comes up its freezing there in the morning. It was cool.
Then your text message goes off with friends you haven’t talked to in five years and they’re like, “Oh my god! You’re on the float.” Our teacher from high school emailed me, she’s like, “I just saw you on the float.” It is cool. Do it. If she’s going to invite you, you have to do it.
Mark: Well, yeah. I’m already training.
Monica: Listen …
Theresa: Let them know that we will do it.
Monica: The way … it was got to be like at the elbow, that’s what I learned.
Mark: Oh, because you’re in agony if you do this?
Monica: We were like, “Yey! Hi!” we saw our friends we were doing high wave and I was like, “Oh my god, my arm is falling off.” Yes, you have to do the low wave.
Mark: Oh yes, you got to keep the center of gravity …
Monica: Yes. It’s easier to tuck in extra body.
Theresa: It’s cool too like, “Hi!”
Monica: Yes. When girls do that and everybody looks … it’s okay, they get your arm up there because it’s secondary.
Mark: Yes, yes, exactly.
Monica: It is cool but you never know. I never in the million years thought I’d be in Rose Bowl Parade so you don’t know.
Mark: How long did it take to actually travel to six miles?
Monica: Gosh! How long did it take us? I want to say like an hour and a half maybe. Maybe two hours. It was long.
Mark: Did you actually shove Carter out in front so you can answer your text messages?
Monica: No….
Mark: “They are yelling for you Carter.”
Monica: We did not have our phones near us so that we were … that would be so obnoxious. They’d be texting on a float like what a jerk. No, we didn’t have any of that stuff near us. We just have bottles of water but he’s such a nice guy. It was fun. It was fun.
His wife was there and a couple of my friends came out. My husband stayed home. We take care of my mom. Holidays we can never get good care giving help so we usually stay home. He stayed home with my mom and I brought a couple of friends that are obsessed with the Rose Bowl Parade, so we had a nice group of people there and it was really fun. It was good.
Theresa: Wow! I’m really jealous.
Monica: Hey, can we talk about HGTV Dream Home? Have you guys seen the Dream Home? Can I plug it?
Theresa: I want to talk about it!
Monica: Can I? Kiawah Island, near Charleston. Yes. You can still enter twice a day every day until February 15th.
The website is Hgtv.com/dream-home. The house is incredible. It’s the most expensive house you’ll ever had and built in the smallest lot. Because the real estate in Kiawah Island is through the roof expensive and awesome.
Theresa: What is it like there?
Monica: I actually go there on vacation with my husband so when I heard that it was Kiawah I thought the producer was joking because she knows I love it so much and people say, “Kiawah,” they don’t even know how to say it. I’m like, “Oh my god! We love it there so much.”
It’s a small island so its 30 miles South of Charleston and Seabrook Island is right next to it. It’s known for the low tide beaches so it’s just as quiet … it is the Atlantic Coast. You have that rocky Atlantic Coast look to it with the waves, with the beach itself, it’s just really tranquil, peaceful, quiet, ride your bikes on the beach as far as you want; we golf. They have the ocean course there which they just had the PGA Championship there in August so …
Theresa: Wow!
Monica: It’s an amazing place. It is laidback. When you go to the island all the trees have Spanish moss hanging from them. It’s like you’re in a movie. It looks like Savannah midnight. It’s just magical. It’s really cool. Kiawah Island, great beach vacations, it’s amazing. The house is just … it’s awesome.
Theresa: Oh my goodness.
Monica: Yes, so you have to enter.
Mark: I can just feel the Southern air coming through.
Monica: You can live there. Sometimes these houses are so amazing but sometimes you’re like, “Oh, could I live there? Could I work there?” You can work in Charleston. You could commute if you wanted to.
Mark: You could have like a real life there.
Monica: Yes. The vacation you only fantasize about there too. When you come home it would be like fantasyland.
My dream, I’m working hard because I want to retire there so I’m thrilled to plug it and talk about Kiawah Island.
Mark: That’s beautiful.
Monica: I hope that someone that wins is really excited about it too.
Theresa: You guys get to go to the most amazing place to start a dream home. Enter twice a day until February 15th, and we have to go to break. Check out Monica Pedersen online, check out Kohler and we will be back in just a minute.
Monica: Like me on Facebook please because I’m nothing without likes on Facebook.
Theresa: We like you Monica.
Monica: You did? Okay, thank you. Thank you, thank you.
Mark: We’ll be back with more from the Therma-tru and Fypon booth with more MyFixitUpLife.
