Spanx Us Happy

OOOHHHHHHEEEMMMMMGEEEEEE...Contractor Steve called this morning and he has the architect plans in hand!  This is some news indeed because a few weeks ago, we were worried that finding a suitable architect would require one of us to mortgage our house (http://peggyjeans.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-would-mike-brady-do.html).  Then in a turn of good fortune, we found the awesome James Van Hooser at TVP Architects in St. Louis and because he completely understood that we were looking for plans for a 1,000 square foot box with no walls, he agreed to do plans for us for about $1,000 and two pies...which is do-able without mortgaging a house or selling a kidney on eBay (http://peggyjeans.blogspot.com/2013/10/elaine-benes-excited.html)

A few weeks and a few phone calls with James later, I received a FedEx tracking notice in my email that indicated two sets of plans were on their way to Columbia.  Contractor Steve worked some mysterious contractor magic that results in meeting him this afternoon at our proposed location with a whole cast of characters...an electrician, a plumber, a concrete person, a painter, and who knows else.  I imagine I'll need a playbill to keep everyone straight in this game.

So, we hope to have a conversation about how to accomplish what we envision for our space and how/when/if that can happen by November 20th.  My main goal is to share my thoughts without grown men falling to the floor laughing about the timeline involved.  The contractor's main goal is get some sort of number estimate on cost.  I honestly have no idea if he is going to say $10,000 or $50,000, but let's all have a collective Internet moment and hope that number is completely reasonable and won't result in us standing with a donation bucket in front of Wal-Mart.

On the ever present, elephant-in-the-room, won't-leave-us topic of Kickstarter, we need $1730 to meet our goal in the next five days.  That is about $346 a day.  We thought we were pretty clever on Monday by offering three full pies and a baby to anyone who donated $314, but it ended up tanking.  We didn't sway anyone to the $314 and since this blog is all about transparency, we are telling you now, our grand plans of woo-ing you in was totally anti-climatic.  Changing directions yesterday, we offered up a drawing for a CreativeChics apron to those who made a Kickstarer pledge through midnight last night.  This seemed more popular and we had a number of awesome pledges yesterday.

So what today?  Well, hold on to your chair because we have something that NO PERSON COULD DENY.  We are offering a $25 gift card to the Spanx Store.  Yep, you read that correctly...Spanx.  Why? Because we freaking love them and everyone should have a chance to be smoothed out by comfortable layers of restrictive material.  If that isn't your thing, Spanx also offers some AH-MAZ-ING tights that will literally transform your wardrobe.

Here's the deal:  pledge to Kickstarter through midnight tonight and be entered to win the gift card.  We won't name you on the Facebook page or the blog because some things need to remain a secret.

Disclaimer:  Spanx doesn't know us, but that doesn't stop us from loving them.  Anything that makes you feel more awesome in an outfit is our sort of thing.  If you've never tried Spanx, pledge a few bucks and see if you win...what's to lose?