Well we blew past the Summer months didn't we? There has been big changes around here but things are finally settling down a bit, allowing me to finally write a blog post.
{What happened to Spring 2016?}
One of the many changes is that we now occupy the entire 5300 sf of our old grocery store building in Stillwater Minnesota. Our tenants, whom occupied the front and more prominent side of the building, left in February. We quickly knocked down a passageway into the vacant space and proceeded to fill it up with, well everything. The plan is to move our packing and shipping to half of the new space and the shop / showroom into the other half. But first it needs to be gutted and re-modeled. Our existing spaces will be for offices, storage, and creative endeavors. The walk-in shop has been, once again put on the back burner, but we are hoping to have an opening for the holidays.
This is the old "front" of our shop.
What's nice about this building is that it is located in a vintage neighborhood in beautiful Stillwater, and it has it's own 19 space parking lot. However, there is no walk-by traffic, sans the occasional jogger and dog walker, but we don't mind, we are not your average shop.
The front space has already been opened for a rummage sale, and for a 2 weekend pop-up sale before we closed again to start the remodeling. Keep in mind, we are literally a mom and pop operation. Pop is very much in demand with his mad carpenter skills, and mom, I guess that's me, I design, and plan, and sort, and sort, and oh gosh this sorting is getting old, but I digress. We have decided that we need to focus on the pack and ship areas first, {sorry} before we can adequately give justice to the shop build. Our website is our bread and butter, but our joy is the walk-in shop.
{and now for a rare glimpse of my personal life}
Actually our real joy is our three grown kids, and not so grown granddaughter. {did I say grown?} Our youngest, our only son, decided to join the Marines. . . . . . . Yup, he is now one of America's finest. Actually, he is America's finest, as far as I am concerned. He is kind, hard working, a big thinker, tall dark and handsome {do people say handsome anymore?}. Talk about emotional roller coaster. I grew up in the Service, my dad was a "lifer" in the Navy. But he retired when he was 40, the same year I graduated from High school, such a looooong time ago. I never thought that I would become involved in military life again. Let me just say that if there were ever another draft, I would have moved with my son to Canada. I have strong feelings about forcing someone to "give" their lives, etc. But...when it's a choice, that is something different altogether. I couldn't be more proud of my son, the Marine.
{Of course we went to his boot camp graduation in San Diego, he's the one on the right. :-)}
{So while Erik is now hanging out in North Carolina, we need to keep ourselves very busy not thinking about how much we are missing him.}
Another bittersweet thing that happened this Summer, is that we sold our beloved home that we had built in 2002. We are currently living a bohemian lifestyle while keeping a look out for a small vintage home that needs our TLC close to our business. Here is a link to my site about the house.3216 Summer Fields Ct.
But alas, time is a ticking, we need to prepare for the September Junk Bonanza show which is fast approaching. The Spring show was very successful for us and we are hoping that the Fall show will be even better. We debuted our monogrammed vintage bowling pins, {get'em while they last} and more colors of my hand dyed silk velvet ribbons and linen bits at the Spring show, which we will have more of. Of course for the September show there will be lots of new "vintage" items. So if you can visit, I would love to see you at the show.
Other than all that we will be heading to Phoenix in January debuting our newest crafting lines. If you are a retail crafty shop, you should attend.
xo
mi
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