What a difference a day can make!

My two Helpers, my son Max and my niece Samantha, and  I got a lot of stuff done. The sewing area is set up because I have orders coming in! (Yikes!) So much more to do, but tomorrow is a dump run day.

but we got some great pictures today!
so here are some before and after:

Before

After! Like my disco Ball?

My big machine is all set up and ready to go, all the other smaller machines are scattered around, and the shelves with all my folded fabrics. that is maybe 1/3 of the fabric. sheesh, a lot will be hung in the storeroom.

getting cleaned up and organized. we are going to have a resident pet rat foe a while, Mocha.

And Max took some time to take some artsy photos

in the soon to be "courtyard" with a view,

with props

my best sewing machine, a close up of the foot.

and my old singer. I have about 6 or 7 machines, but i will mostly just the juki, a newer singer and a even newer singer that is an embroidery machine.

Next: More painting and more setting up.

thanks for reading my blog!

We are Here!

Hello again!
We have finally made the move and now the work on the shop can begin with gusto! or maybe after i take another nap..
Right now the shop is full of everything ive been carrying around and adding to my stock of stuff, fabric, machines thread, trims and in the last year things i think might be good deco items for the shop.

Now the real work will begin! Ive got 2 helpers for 2 days and then one helper for a big chunk of the summer. I hope now that we are here and there are many hands to make lighter work, I think the shop will begin to materialize.
here are some progress photos I took when i was here working on the shop last:

Base coat of paint almost done, so now we can start the deco! In the meantime we have to work around all of the additional furniture and machines.

the storage room is getting full

This is supposed to look like a sewing room, but it dosent-yet!

More and more and more stuff!

maybe in a week or two I can think! and Hopefully there will be more progress soon.

more paint and a recon mission to a local thrift store

Q: How many layers of kills does it take to cover up 30 years of pipe tobacco smoke?
A: more than 2 apparently.


The painting is going along and I am so glad Tom(my dear husband) decided to buy the big 5 gallon of base coat, because in some places even laying it on thick 2 layers isint doing it, but i think it will be enough, because Im not really trying to get it White, I will be going over again with a cream and some accent colors. and there will be some vertical stripes  and stencils... Im looking forward to the blank canvas so I can start with the decorating!
Speaking of decorating Ive been finding various treasures and stashing them till ive got the painting done, and in that light i went into Fredricksburg today to look at a few thrift stores and an antique mall or two. one i had stopped at before was closed down and I learned that the owner had suddenly passed away, sadly. But the thrift store i went to had potential, and it might be a good place to take some of the last of the puzzles that my dad had collected. as I am packing them up I find i want to hold onto a few, which i think i will for long winter evenings.
Im collecting quite a pile of interesting tidbits and things around that fit perfectly with my concept of the shop.
Another fun thing is I have been wearing my Fez on this trip and I have had several people asking where did you get that hat? So Ive been handing out cards and telling people about the shop. I also have been researching how to promote my business and looking for local magazines to submit my info to. People seem to be very interested and curious. This is getting so exciting!

heres my deco collection- oh hey theres my wood glue! I was looking for that, sheesh.

and you can see the porthole mirror front center in the brass bowl.

painting painting painting

Yikes! theres a strange lady wearing a fez!

I was chatted up by a lady from the Harper Chamber of commerce. I will probably go to a meeting or two, but i dont know how many Harperites I see as regular customers. Who knows?

Progress! A little at a time and eventually all will be ready!

Today I worked on the shop! My brother Chuck helped a Huge amount today too. we took down the amazing and scary looking florescent light fixtures my dad Made in 1976, and began to get the ceiling ready for the new fixtures, Some I am making :) and some we will be buying. There are a lot of very nice steampunk/victorian looking fixture designs, but also I am cutting large gears to be sortof like big wagon wheel chandeliers, but instead of wagon wheels they will be Gears!. I also got inspired with some extra painting i think i might want to do... no more spoilers!
here are some photos of what happened today:

Gears drawn

Gears cut- 2 of 4, still have 2 to go, but by the time I'm done I will be an expert gear cutter!

My Dad's lovely light fixtures, and a fan- Must go!

Now you see them, now you don't! 2 fixtures and a fan taken down with no casualties except i think Chuck knocked some bark off his thumb.

we will see what else gets done this trip...

Rough year, but things are looking up!

It has been A Very Long Time since I updated this blog and for that I apologize, Lucky Day Hats fans. Let me tell you in brief its been a rough year, My lovely man has been very sick off and on all year, with him ending up in the hospital for an emergency lung thing after pneumonia, believe it or not things are finally looking much better!

Weve got a date for the grand opening...and we will start pushing out the announcements in the next few months. 

So weve been working on the shop in between trips to the Dr. getting some painting done, and many new ideas, it is going to look a lot different than where it started, thats for certain. Here are a few new transition photos:

this big grass hopper is the latest new resident of the shop.

Welcome to Harper

A couple of weekends ago Harper celebrated its 150 year birthday, its Sesquicentennial Celebration. I set up booth there for hat selling, but mostly to introduce myself and let People know that I am setting up shop in Harper in about a year. The funniest response to that was, "Why?" or "Why Harper".  So I would explain my situation and my Dad's gunshop and that I do a lot of my selling at shows and on the internet anyway.
A nice thing that happened was that I had a few oldtimers tell me how great my Dad was and how they miss him, how many guns they bought from him etc. I knew he was a well respected man about Harper, but it was nice to hear anyway.
The best part was when i told people about my plan to host saturday Tea parties, it generated a lot of excitement, people were genuinely interested.
So meanwhile back at the celebration in the park: There was a parade and people dressed up in costumes and good barbeque, and old friends.  Here are a few pix of the parade and the doins' at the park:

I had a dream

A few days ago I had a dream, it was a little of a Dr who dream, except it was my Dad and he had a key to a tardis like something, but it was the key to the shop!  My dad wasn't very much like Dr Who, but when I was a kid I remember people calling him "Doc" all the time, he was a Doctor, a PhD in range and forestry sciences. Somehow all the Dr Who watching with my kid, fez and Bowties are cool, Making Fez, working on the shop all coming together in my mind shaped like the episode where Rose tries to prevent her father's death, causes changes in the timeline, bringing monsters when and the Dr calls her stupid monkey, and there is the key. The Key. My key. My Dad giving me the key to the tardis and it is up to me to start it up. And it is much bigger on the Inside.
It feels like as much of an approval as I could ever hope to get from my Dad. Wherever he is, I believe he is proud of me.