We Did It - Opening Day

*GRAND re-opening is still May 10th*

Great balls of fire, we are officially open! Now this may seem like no big feat but I can't believe I'm even moving my fingers right now. We've gone in and out of hyper creative active mode and low-charge robot mode for many sleep deprived nights. Our first night in weeks to relax after lots of late nights but I'm too excited not to post some fun photos of the progress. Not to mention I'm very moved by the thoughtfulness of lots of people - friends and strangers - who have helped us with a long-time goal. We had lots of good folk come out to help us and seriously - if it weren't for them we'd still be painting the walls.
SO COME SEE US, AIGHT??

Checking out the new sign! Our former intern, Daniel Johnson, donated his talents (18 years of sign-making!) to our new spot. You can see him on the roof with Super Raymondo, the best carpenter this side of the Mississipi.



This is Andrea. She miraculously appeared from the apartments across the street and offered her talents which are many and included painting these awsesome paint-by-number looking backgrounds in our housewares and baby sections.



Jason, on the right, is another miracle volunteer who we didn't even know but now feel like he's a brother. He put in tons of hours working on our lighting and major installations.

Look at Emily with her cute butt (the butt on the right). She did tons of painting and inventory for us and saved us lots of time.

As if teaching us Quick Books and helping with our build-out wasn't enough, wonder couple Brad and Julie came in and ROCKED the merchandising until 1:00 in the morning the night before we opened! So did Jody and Aubrey, two fellas that didn't even know us! It brings tears to my eyes!















Here we are bumbling around the window boxes at 3:00 in the morning last night before we opened. At this point we couldn't remember what it felt like to be a real live human; we were full-on Androids groping blindly around Planet Huh? What? Do You Know Where The (drill, paintbrush, screws, etc.) Is?



That's some of the work-in-progress photos, now you have to come in to see the real deal!

We want to say a very heart-felt THANK YOU to everyone that helped us. We love you guys!

Julia, for finessing our spankin' new logo.
Evelyn and Jen Moriss, for hours of inventory madness.
Luther, Brayden, Mandie, and Emily, for hours of painting madness.
Jason and Raymondo, for being such awesome and dependable carpenters.
Herb, for getting our local music section off the ground.
Jeanee, for merchandising our beautiful jewelry section like only she could have done.
Stephanie, for taking all those dang clamp lights and cables down.
Shana, for hours of painting on the tallest ladder I've ever seen.
John, Brayden, Christy and Davis, and Steve P. for helping us move all our crap!
Jody, Aubrey, Julie and Brad, for beautiful merchandising.
Cuyler and Molly for rescuing us from a QuickBooks catastrophe on opening day.
Richard, our...Network Specialist (is that right?? sorry I keep calling you our "computer guy") for rescuing us from the hell that is setting up a new system.
John Lukens, for volunteering to do our website and for getting it off the ground.
Matt Kew, for designing a website mock-up for us.
Our families, for all the cheerleading.

And most of all to Aubrey and Jenn, for sticking out the deceptively simple seeming at first- turned out to be absurdly involved - store design project. We are so happy to get to work in it every day!

We apologize to anyone we're forgetting. Androids aren't perfect.

*Now don't forget to come see the opening of the gallery on May 10th! It's bigger with higher ceilings than our last space - we might even have room to get down to the sounds of DJ Chris Davoe!*

I almost forgot! Here are pics of our first three customers: