Black Friday

Black Friday was a great sucess!!! We woke up at 4am to do a little shopping of our own and then headed to the store to be open by 9am. We had many customers non stop for most of the day. It was fun being on the other side of the shopping rush, especially since it is our own store. We were pretty worn out by the end of the day, but it was a blast. We will be doing a food drive with the radio station all this week and are hoping that it will be a huge sucess. Saturday at the end of the food drive the station will be doing a live broadcast from the store. We will let you know how it goes.

Our ad

Do you like our ad? We met with a salesman from the radio station today. He represents the most listened to station in the valley. He had this ad already worked up for us... smart man!!! We love it!!! We are seriously considering hiring them. What do you think?

Bazaar

We went to a bazaar at one of the high schools last Saturday. It was a fund raiser for the dance team. This was the first bazaar that we have done. We plan to be part of a few more before Christmas to help us get our name out.

The store is finally full

We finished unpacking all of those boxes and our store finally looks full. The only open space left is now the air space. We will have to get creative when we get more toys in. Sam has found his home right in front of the front window. He has this great little message board to greet all of the children when they come into the store. View from the back
View from the front

Calico Critter playtable

Freight

This last week we recieved around 150 boxes of freight. It was more than we have ever recieved yet. It did a great job at filling up the store. This pict was a shipment from UPS that was 86 boxes. We have been busy getting it unpacked and on the shelves.

Meet Sam

Since everyone thinks that Erick is Sam, we decided that we needed a mascot. We found this Giant (almost 7 foot) teddy bear from Gund. He is ginormous!!! It took both Erick and I to lift him out of the box. He will be displayed right outside of the store most of the time to be our own version of a people greeter. He will hold a sign that will have different greeting messages on it.

Our ad

This is a copy of one of the ads that will be going out in November and December Kids Directory. I love how it turned out!!!

We have a sign!!!

Thursday was a very happy day when we saw this truck pull into the parking lot. We are so happy that the sign is finally up.

Zoomorphs

We got a demo bag of the zoo morphs toys and I wanted to find some kind of play table to use for it. I found this great little table and chairs and decided that I wanted to paint them. As I was painting them I had a great idea to decoupage some picture onto the stools. I was trying to think of what kinds of pictures I could use on them. It was then that I spotted the catolog they had sent with the demo's. I cut up the whole catolog and made this cute little Zoomorph's playtable. I found a lap table to put on the top to keep all of the parts in. I think that it turned out great. If you click on the picture you will see a lot more detail.In case you are wondering...Zoomorphs are take apart animals insects and reptiles that you can mix and match to create your own new animals.

View from outside

First shipment of PINK!!!

My first shipment of pink arrived yesterday!! I had so much fun unpacking and displaying all of this darling stuff. It was almost like Christmas.
These were some of our favorites. They are little nursing animals. They have little magnets on the babies and on the momma's. So cute!!!

Toys are arriving

Our toys have been slowly trickling in over the last couple of weeks. Although there are still a lot of holes that need to be filled in, it is starting to look like a store. None of our biggest orders have arrived yet and we still have a few more large orders to place. It is really exciting despite the way the economy is going at this time. We remember the many miracles that happened to get us to where we are today. We do not doubt that we are in the right place at the right time. We ultimately don't know what the outcome will be, but for now we are at peace with this grand adventure.Erick ordered some plush and to his surprise they included this huge white alligator as a free gift. It looks great surrounded by his lizards, snakes and tarantulas.
I went to the ABC kids show in Vegas for a week earlier this month. I would talk to Erick everyday and he would tell me about all of the toys that he was receiving while I was gone. When I went into the store after coming home I had to ask him where all of the "pink" was. Everything that had been ordered was all of the cool boy stuff. He then informed me that it was my duty to order the "pink" stuff and that I had been slacking. Needless to say I have been busy the last couple of weeks ordering lots of fabulous pink to fill the store. Hopefully it will start arriving next week. Then I will have lots of fun pink picts to post.

This is a picture of the crazy hat rack.

Orders, orders, and more orders

There is not alot going on yet as far as the looks of the store, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Erick has been working with about 4 different toy reps (each rep represents 20-30 different toy companies) to place orders. This is probably the hardest part of the whole process. We met with one of the reps last week and I knew we were in trouble when after an hour we had only gone through one catalog. There are upwards of 200 catalogs that we have to look through and try to decide what to put into the store. It is a very time consuming process. Once we get the store filled it shouldn't be as hard to maintain, but initially... WOW. Susan is the person that we bought all of the shelving from. She has been a huge help to us in this whole process and has been working with Erick in writing up the orders. She has over 20 years of experience in the toy industry and really knows what she is doing. It has been a huge blessing to have her and her husband in our lives. I will have more pictures soon as we start getting our orders in. We are hoping to be open in a couple of weeks.

Sign approval

We met with the sign company today and this is the final copy of what the sign will look like on the store. It will take up to 6 weeks before the actual sign is up. They first have to get permits from the city and then once the city approves it, it can take 3-4 weeks for them to make the sign and hang it.

Unpacking the toys!!!

Today Erick started unpacking all of the toys that we have already bought. We bought out the remaining inventory from the people that we bought all of the sales counters and shelving from. We are so grateful to them for all of the help that they are giving us. They came today to help Erick unpack and set up. It was so neat to see the store today. I could actually start to envision what it will look like when it is filled with toys. Groovy girls display
I stood on a ladder to take this picture. You get a really good view of the store from up there.

The kids are looking at these pictures and keep saying "is that what dad's store looks like?" "AWESOME"

Color!!!

We finally have color on the walls. The red still needs another coat, but we are almost done!!! The next step will be hanging the shelves on the walls.

Painting

Wednesday night we painted the primer on the walls.

Hopefully thursday we will get the color painted on the walls. They will be painted red, yellow and blue to match the sales counter. Erick painted the top panels and I painted the bottom panels. After 12 years of marriage we finally bought a ladder.The walls before primer

Hanging up the walls

Today we started hanging the wallboard's up on the walls. This is what we will hang the shelves on. It is so nice to finally get them put up. What you see here is the bottom layer. There will be another layer on top of this one so it will go up about an inch from the ceiling. Then they will be painted in primary colors to match the floor and the sales counters.
This is a view of the store from the backroom.
You can't tell from this picture, but Erick has been working hard today.Luke is working hard today too. He loves coming to the store with daddy.