MAKE - Over

A day full of fun, painting, friendship, shelf building and MAKE OVERING!

Janine & Lydia - It's just like painting your nails! On a much larger scale!

Ryan supervising Justin & the girls!

Even Caitlin had fun!

Becky & her friend came to paint the front door! 

Oh look there's me pretending to paint & Vanessa actually getting on with it!

Justin painting the roof

Lydia loved her painters beret

They somehow look caught out!

From 6.30am - 7:30pm A full shift for Chris!

We know Ryan would love this as a day job!

Another all day worker! Thanks Jason!

 Thank you also to Ryan who spent most of his day painting the outside of our shop! You somehow escaped the camera! And also to Luke, Shane, Josh, Karen & Connie for last weeks painting of the cafe!

Lots of scrummy food for the hard workers!

It is amazing how quickly work goes when you have a great team helping you! Thank you to everyone who came to help the progress is huge and so exciting!

And thanks to Granny who has come all the way from South Africa to help us and look after these two monkeys! 

The Make Cafe Shop Frontage

So here is the artwork design for our shop. I am so excited! It looks so professional and it certainly pays to have a graphic designer do the work! (You would not want to see what a mess I would make with it!)

The door and 3 windows under the roof sign, will be the fabric & craft emporium, the next 2 windows will be our workshop room and the last window will be our cafe.

We are very lucky that there is a huge parking lot behind the shop, parking at countdown and at the Bush Inn centre - so there will always be space!

There is also a Salvation Army next door, I'm hoping they will be able to start stocking some useful items to up cycle .

Painting again on the weekend! We are opening around the 5th of November so time to get moving!

Picnic in the cafe

Another lunch in the cafe! This one was a lot healthier than the last Mc D's we purchased! It somehow does work out rather nicely to have tables and chairs at the ready for moments like this! Pity that coffee machine is not here yet though!

We skipped church (blush) and went out on Trade Me pick up extravaganza! We found a hutch dresser, display fridge and these awesome book stands rescued from a book store in town and are perfect for Ribbons & Fat Quarters!


The boys also had fun when we had a race with them on top around the shop!

Hum de ho hum

Serge is very excited! A new bird will be on the block - our block, Hummingbird Coffee said yes to us! We are so excited to be working with this fantastic New Zealand owned and operated company!

Nick the general manager has been working in the business since he was 16 and had some great advice for us on getting started in this new venture of coffee making!

And not only do they have in depth knowledge on  how to get things started but they care about coffee too! They were the first coffee company in New Zealand to start co-importing beans sourced from Fair Trade Organic certified sources in conjunction with Trade Aid and both Tim and Nick have been to Guatemala to ensure the sustainability of coffee trees in this area. (see the slideshow from their trip here )

So Serge is happy that he may find true love and so are we! 

Oh the places you'll go!

 We amazingly found a deal on Trade Me - an Indian Restuarant that was in town was getting rid of all their seating and tables! We managed to get all the chairs 35 and 9 tables for $500! And they are such great quality! I most certainly will be ducking under them in an event of another quake!

The boys have just been fantastic through our journey, we are so blessed to have them! They just go where we go and make up the most fantastic imaginary games while they are at it!

                                                                         When Justin went back for load two, I had my two little muscle guys to carry in chairs one by one! This was quickly transformed into a pirate ship and many games of walk the plank!                                        It was not  long after dinner (Mc D's at our new table!) that they found two buckets we had brought for cleaning and we suddenly had acid being sprayed  at us! 

Sady the cleaning lady!

Oh the choices to clean that floor! Too much too many chemicals for my blonde brain! 

Make - Chevron Coasters

In amoungst the chaos of opening a shop, running various trade shows and non profit organisations, I snuck a trip in to Auckland to visit some friends who we have not seen for a while.

I needed a present quickly and wanted it to have a personal touch, sometimes sprawling the shops just does not cut it!

After playing with the Slice Fabrique all weekend at Crafty Christchurch, and then finding a great tip online for using it to cut heavier weight fabrics, whilst flicking through some samples of our latest chevrons, and idea of the circular kind came to mind!

These took me 20 minutes to make and I suddenly had an uber cool gift for some awesome friends!



So here is my late night tutorial for coasters, pin away this is just one image but please link back!

First voyage to the shop

Made my first trip from home to the shop today, 10 minutes via the new bridge! Yayness! Also managed to pick up these fabulous chairs for nothing on the way home! Bonus!

Our new front door in Shop 1!

This will be our fabric & craft emporium, man those floor stains are going to be a mare to get out!

LOL bad picture! This will be the coffee shop and workshop to the left