Here are some pictures taken in the front apartment of the Mission. It is ready to rent!

The girls working at the shop on a Shirt off My Back quilt for Lisa N.'s birthday. You can see how busy every one is with cutting and sewing.

This picture is a little out of order - showing the pillow Marcia made to go with the quilt.

Its been a long time...

I forgot the pictures would post in the opposite order from which I downloaded them, so they are in rather random order! But here is a quick summary of our summer.

We didn't get a picture of Monte and Poppy when we visited them but this is the area of Nevada where they live.

I thought the cookie table at Monique and Daren's wedding reception looked like it came from the pages of a magazine, it was so pretty!

A few pictures from the wedding.

Anyone who knows these two can well imagine they were keeping everyone around entertained. Callie's birthday.

Grandpa fixing pancakes and enjoying having his 3 girls home for a few days.

Callie broke her arm and had a cast and Grandpa was recuperating from rotator cuff surgery.

Della and Amy.

Pictures from our family gathering July 4, 2010.

Mom, Dad and the newest member of the family, baby Dusty.

Dave and I.

Jane and Bruce.

Mom and Dad (Milt and Joan)

Part of the clan that got together at the folks.

Our summer was full with visits from the kids and other company, a family reunion at my folks over the 4th of July, Monique and Daren's wedding, Dave's surgery, a trip to Nevada to visit Monte and Poppy - plus keeping the store and garden and life in general.

Monique Wisseman and Daren Henke were married July 31 at Sheridan, Wyoming - a lovely ceremony and memorable experience for all. Michelle and kids, Melody and kids, and Monique came and spent a few days with us before the wedding - we were so glad it worked out for them to come. Dave helped move Monique from Laramie to Dagmar the week before the wedding - then rushed home from the trip to have rotator cuff and tendon repair surgery in Laramie the next day. His recuperation has gone well and he will start back to driving the school bus on September 7 - the doctor wouldn't release him to drive until 6 weeks from surgery, so he had a substitute for the first two weeks of school. Since he injured his shoulder early in the summer, his work on the remodel project in Lusk has been on hold much of the summer. We took a quick trip out to Nevada just before school started to visit Monte and Poppy. It was great to have a couple days with them - the opportunity doesn't come very often! We enjoyed having Della Williams stay with us for a couple weeks in August. I have kept busy all summer with the quilt store - it has been a good summer there as many travelers stopped to help business. It doesn't look like it will slow down anytime soon - which is a good thing for a business, but keeps me hopping!

Grand Opening

Although we have had the store open for 3 weeks, we have advertised ourGrand Opening for next week, March 23-27. We have been working daily to get everything organized, the shelves stocked, orders in and notions displayed. Dave built these new pine shelves for the front area of the store - which was a big job - and we got them in place and filled with fabric the past few days. These pictures show how it looked at one point - now I have moved things around even more and have the shelves on the far wall filled with fabric also. One thing I didn't like with the shelving we had here before was that I couldn't see over it to the front door - so when someone came in I couldn't see who it was to greet them. Now I can see over top of the shelves. I will be displaying some things on the tops of them as time goes on - right now they look kind of bare, but won't for long I am sure!

The other big change this week was the vertical blinds we put up in the front window yesterday. I was getting paranoid that the sun would fade the fabrics - and this is the solution we came up with. I like it because we can angle the blinds so we can still see out but the sun doesn't shine directly in. It was mid morning when I took these pictures and you can see how bright it can shine in mornings with the window facing east. By 11:30 it has risen enough that it no longer shines in, and we can turn the blinds all the way open or draw them back.

I really like how the wood looks with the fabric - this is an aisle of batiks.

I moved fabric up from the back of the store to fill these empty shelves - and am working at making room in the back of the shop for some classroom space. We moved my longarm machine into the back of the shop and it took up a lot of the room that I had planned for classes - so I need to move things around to make up for that lost space. But I do like having the longarm in there. I am considering renting it out to customers when I am not using it.

Next week all week, Tuesday through Saturday, we will be having specials in the store for our Grand Opening. Also I have a gift to give to every customer, door prizes to register for, and Sharon Barndt is making cookies for refreshments. I hope you all can come join us!

Lickety Stitch Quilts now open...

There is a new business in the town of Lusk - Lickety Stitch Quilts! We opened our doors to the public on March 2, 2010, and are off and running. So far it has gone well. The community has been very supportive and excited to have a new business on Main Street. We had a busy day yesterday, our first day - it was a little quieter this morning, but busy again this afternoon.

We purchased an old cafe building last October and decided in November we would make it into a quilt and sewing shop. Dave worked at gutting the building from the end of December on into January. Bruce and Chantry came and helped for 5 or more weeks in the remodeling phase - and now it looks like a totally different place. Check out www.rockymtn-sunbeams.blogspot.com for some more pictures of the remodel and move in - that is Sue's blog. She and Kathy came and helped us move the fabric into the building.

Today was the day our sign went up for the store! Dave called a friend to run the tractor and lift him up in the bucket to hang it on the bracket. Fortunately it was a beautiful day with no wind - this sign was quite heavy and the method of hanging it a little precarious - but it is now up and inviting everyone who passes by to stop in. We had several people stop in today who were from out of town who just happened to pass by and saw our sign, so it is working!

Polly and Lacey made these cowboy boot purses and we have them on display for sale in one corner - so it is not exclusively fabric and sewing supplies.

I took several shots around the store so you could get an idea what the place looks like - Dave is making new shelving for the front area - between the street and the cash register counters. Meanwhile, we have some temporary shelving and some of the fabric is on the floor. Hopefully when the new shelves are built there will be room for everything on the shelves.

Along the north wall we are using the shelves that came from the Wheatland store. She had a lot of batiks - which is what is mostly displayed here on the top two shelves.

There was a brick chimney that came up from the basement that couldn't be eliminated, so they built walls around it and put slatwall on all four sides - and I have notions displayed on it.

Another picture of the front area of the store.

Do you see your little scotty dog perched on the top of the white thread cabinet pillar near the lower right, Jane? He has gotten a lot of attention. He doesn't show up very well here - sorry. You (or I) definitely need to make up a pattern to show with him.

The quilt Alisa made with the dog, frog, car, plane, and tools appliqued on has gotten lots of favorable comments also. One lady liked it so much she bought the book and several yards of material to make one just like it! That sample worked out well!

We got several bouquets and plants from friends and businesses - and they are making the counter look quite festive right now. These are the counters, called a cashwrap, that we bought from the Hallmark store that was going out of business in the Scottsbluff mall. I'm still working at getting everything displayed like I want it - and probably will be for awhile. If you are in the area, be sure to stop in! Right now we are closed Sunday and Mondays, open the rest of the week from 10-4.

Updating, finally!

Blogging hasn't been top on our list of things to get done lately, as you may have noticed. Lots of things have happened since October when I last posted, and I am going to put on a medley of pictures following this entry.

Dave (with my occasional help) worked hard at getting the basement of the mission property ready for a new cement floor. This consisted of breaking up the old cement with a jack hammer, loading the cement chunks into the wheelbarrow, and throwing them out the basement window into the tractor loader bucket. Then he lowered the floor level about 14 inches - digging out the dirt and also shoveling it out the window into the tractor loader bucket. This was a huge undertaking - but we felt it would be worth it to enable the rooms there to have higher ceilings and regular-height doors. A contractor poured the cement floor just before Christmas. I will put on a picture of the building as it looked last fall after we got some of the rock on the front. (I should clarify that we are remodeling it into a duplex apartment - we refer to it as "the mission" as our pet name for the project - since it used to be an old church building, and has a "Spanish Mission" look to it.)

Just before Thanksgiving I decided to buy out a quilt store that was closing in Wheatland and open a store in Lusk in the store building we had purchased on Main Street. Dave (with my occasional help) has been working on getting that building remodeled and ready for the store. Bruce, Chantry and Amy are here for a few weeks helping with the project. It is hard to say at this point when the store will be ready to open - we are thinking maybe around the first part of March.

All our kids and their families were home at Christmas time - made it in just before a blizzard closed all the roads around here for several days. We had a wonderful time together - I'll post just a sampling of pictures from our time together.

January 7, 2010, Loretta Soderberg, Dave's sister, passed away at Hospice in Casper. Paul (her husband) cared for her at home (which is near Lusk )with help from the home health nurse until 1 or 2 days before she died. We are still trying to grasp the fact that she is gone - glad she is no longer suffering but missing her and her cheerful, steadfast kindness. Some of the following pictures are of Dave's siblings and families that came and stayed with us from out of town at the time of the funeral.

Welcoming 2010.

Here are some pictures taken when Dave's family was here for Loretta's funeral.

Dave with his brother Ben Wisseman from Oregon and sister, Ruth Embleton, from Delaware.

Chris and Julie Soderberg, Paul and Loretta's son and wife, from Pine Dale.

Ruth and Dick Embleton with the members of thier family that were here for the funeral.

Devin, Eldon, and Dustin officiated at Loretta's funeral.

Dave officiated at Lisa and Nate Smith's wedding in October - at Estes Park, Colorado.

A sampling of what you will find at the Lickety Stitch Quilt shop, opening soon in Lusk!

Wayne and Wanda came to visit - and got snowed in with the Wisseman-Frohbieter clan for a couple days. We certainly enjoyed our time together!

Here is the whole clan - getting all the kids together is a rare and precious occasion!

Wade braiding Sadie's hair.

One big project undertaken while the kids were here was to sort through a large collection of photos, letters, and papers that had collected over the years.

A picture of the mission as it looks now. The project has been on hold since December while we are working on getting the store building ready.