Just a thank you.

Hi all! So, this is going to be quick, but first: Rachel, I will get my 7 things up here soon...thanks for tagging me! We have had a wonderful time and Sub Zero is really picking up. We have had some awesome feedback and a lot of help on things that we can improve, and things we are doing well. Thank you to all! 

Here is a couple pictures I thought you might like to see.....Doesn't it make you hungry!?! A big thank you to the Steve and Eric at the Idaho Falls Magazine for taking these awesome pictures and releasing them to us to use. Check out our ad in their Nov/Dec issue! And subscribe to the magazine first of the year, they are going newstand and that's a big deal...we here at Sub Zero wish them the best of luck! Keep checking back and I will get this blog working a bit more frequently.

Our Counter!

Check it out! This counter turned out awesome. I really like it. See if you can see the constellations. These lights are fiber optics and really light up like Christmas. They are way bright, but I like 'em. Our store is going well. We appreciate all of the support everyone is giving us, and all the help we have received. The word of mouth has been wonderful and we keep getting repeat customers, so others must think the ice cream tastes as well as I think it tastes! (And it tastes better!!!) We have some upcoming events that I want to inform everyone of. The first will be on the 25th of October at the Home Emporium. Come check it out! The Home Emporium is an awesome new place on Hitt Road down by the round-a-bout on Lincoln. It's in the industrial park called Trellis Square. It is a Halloween carnival from 10-4 with games and prizes and stuff. We are going to be providing bottled water and ice cream for $1.00. Bring your kids and friends and have a blast! The second event we have planned as of now is on Halloween day, at the Snake River Landing. I am not positive on the time, but I think it is from 3:00-5:30. It is the Z103 Trunk-or-Treat. We are going to be decorating a camper trailer and handing out candy and coupons. We will have a big cauldron with liquid nitrogen and water which will be fun. We may make ice cream, but it depends on the weather. If we make it, it will be small servings and it will be free! So come see our trailer!!! Things are getting exciting and we are looking forward to the future. Our final activity we have marked on the calendar is for November 6th, at 4:00 p.m.  It is our grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony. We should have some influential members of the city there and we will begin a weekend of good ice cream, great prizes, and fun! Come participate!

A night off!

So on Wednesdays, I have appointments and meetings until close to 6:00. So Holli and I decided that Wednesdays would be our day off. So we have tried to get our employees trained well enough that we are able to just leave, and all is well. And tonight was our first attempt...and everything went wonderfully! Holli and I went to dinner and a movie, something we haven't done for quite some time. Don't get me wrong, we have eaten pretty much nothing but Taco Bell and Wendy's the last month. And we've been treated to dinner by our parents and other friends, but to actually have an evening just the two of us was a rare treat. And we enjoyed it immensely! We went to "An American Carol" which was alright. The satire was hilarious, but it was a "Farley" type movie with dirty humor and unnecessary inuendos. While we were there we found a vending machine and decided to relive our childhood. But get this, it was $.50!!!  And this is what we got for our two quarters:  

We thought that was pretty lame. But we had a good time and that was our first real date in a while! I will try to get an update on the store by the end of the week. We are getting our counter worked on tomorrow morning. The front part is being installed. Come check it out...it is going to be awesome!

Check it out! We were on the news!!! 

We are open!

I don't have any pictures right now to post, but I will get some soon. I just wanted to let everyone know that we are open and running business! And things are going really well! We had an awesome first week. Thanks to everyone who came and supported us. And thank you so much for telling your friends and family and neighbors about us. You cannot believe how much help that is. So many people come in and we ask them, "How did you hear about us?" and they respond, "Oh, my co-worker told me about it." or, "My sister said I should come check it out." It is such a huge boost to have word of mouth spreading our good news! Thank you to all! And please, don't stop! We served over 300 ice creams saturday! We are only going to get busier!!! 

http://www.localnews8.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=2989128&at1=News&h1=Sub

We were also on Channel 8 News! Just a couple corrections: We are located in Idaho Falls, not Ammon, and we offer Frozen Yogurt, Low-Fat, Custard, and Premium Ice Cream. Check it out! Doesn't Holli just look so sexy? hehe. And she's a Sub Zero Owner! Yay!!!

Just a quick note.

Here are a couple pictures of our newest addition to our sign. I am so excited and I think it looks awesome!

Yay! A Tank!

Here it is! We got the tank in! It wasn't that bad either. After we got it set, they filled it full of liquid nitrogen (photo on bottom) and you can see the frost that formed on the bottom of the tank. It is 1500 liters, which is almost 400 gallons. It weighs one ton empty and a lot heavier full! It is completely harmless and totally okay to touch, and it is extremely noisy when it is filled! I mean EXTREMELY noisy!  The pipes you see go out to a box that is on the outside of the building where they will pull a truck up to it and fill it. For a couple months we will have a smaller tank, about 230 liters, that we will wheel around because we are having special tubes made to transfer the liquid nitrogen from this larger tank to the counter where we add it to the cream. But it will still have an awesome effect. Thursday they are supposed to start on the floors (I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't happen until Friday though) and then it will really look official! We have all the painting done (as you can see) and just have some touch-ups to do. Tomorrow we are going to stain trim and then put it up after the floors are finished. If everything goes well, we will be making ice cream at the shelley spud day saturday the 20th, so if you are going, look for us! 

So we got our sheetrock all hung! The group that did it was from Phoenix and they like it up here. They drive a Cadillac Escalade! It was kinda funny. But they worked fast and they did a great job! As soon as they got done, and we let the final coat of texture dry, we were already in there prepping for paint! And we got all the primer on today, along with one coat of black on the ceiling.

The black looks absolutely awesome! It just makes the whole ceiling disappear. I am not even kidding. When you look up, you can't tell where the wall stops and the ceiling starts, which is exactly the look we were hoping for. Tomorrow, we should get on the main colors and it will really start to take shape. Our sign is supposed to be installed on Wednesday and Friday of next week, the tank will be installed on Monday, and they are working on the floors starting Tuesday. Things are really starting to come together! A huge thank you to my brother Reid for making it all possible with the painting. He has worked hard (as he always does) to make this paint job happen. And we wouldn't be able to do it without him. And thanks to his wonderful wife and family for letting me borrow him for so much time. I really appreciate it. Sometimes, the time and the interest that people put in and show is worth a million dollars! Thanks to all for your help and support! Opening day, September 29th!

Sheetrock!

Sheetrock!!! Yes, that is right. We got sheetrock hung today. They will be finishing up tomorrow. Things are moving forward. Can you believe it!?! So Dad and I built the soffit (that hanging thing you see) and it was soooo crazy hard! The angles were just so weird and confusing. And then we had to hang it off the ground. Holli's brother, Chad, helped us and we would have been really lost without him. We got it done and it looked okay, (we didn't even care because we knew it would be covered by the sheetrock). Well Nate, our sheetrocker, told us that it looked pretty good. And he gave me peace of mind when he said that soffits aren't easy and that we did a pretty good job. I still think he was just being nice, but hey...I liked it! Oh, and we got the concrete poured too. We had to fill in the trench we dug out to add the plumbing. Things are happening! 

We need your help! Which sign do you like better?  Top or Bottom? The bottom one would not have the three lights. Those don't even work! And the top one has the cone and ice cream in a 3D foam design. Main points: having the cone lean to the left or the right, and having the cone stick out, or placing it flat and behind the letters, and including the website on the sign, or just having it visible inside the store or on the window. Let me know! Every opinion will help. Thanks!

Moving along despite the road blocks!

So we got the walls all framed in and the soffit is up. The soffit is the wall you see hanging from the ceiling. It will have pictures on it of our ice cream and there will be some lights shining on it. Should look pretty slick (we hope!). It was a bugger to get up because of all the crazy angles! It got so confusing and needless to say, we made a few mistakes, but you'll never notice!!! The plumbers also finished their rough-in and the electrician is done with his rough-in too. So things are moving forward. We were told that we would have our permits like two weeks ago, and that is why we went ahead with the construction. Then the city caught wind that we were doing the work on our own, without a general contractor, and then all of a sudden the began demanding that everything be done perfectly with the book. They are requiring that we put up a 3 foot tall, 4 foot long wall near the back door to create a 44" hallway so that we "aren't able to stack boxes in the emergency exit lane." It is absolutely ridiculous. And they even dictate what kind of door handles we have. Yep, they can't be knobs, they have to be lever handles. And we had to change a couple doors too to make them ADA compliant. That part we didn't really mind, but the city could have informed us of these silly rules when we started 3 weeks ago! They have just made life miserable. But our chins are high and our hopes even higher and all will work out for the best. 

This is our sheetrock being delivered. I remember hauling sheetrock by hand and it was always such a pain. Well these guys use this boom arm to pick up the rock, then two guys slide it onto carts, roll it to where it needs to go, and then just pick it up off the cart. It took them about 20 minutes to unload 55 sheets of rock! It was crazy! When we get all that hung, it is going to totally transform the place! 

Say Hello!

So here is our sign! It is in the process of being made right now. I love it! I have heard that it is too big, or leans the wrong way, but I think it grows on you, and that it just flat out makes you hungry for ice cream! We are excited. The ice cream cone and the ice cream itself will be made out of foam and will have a 3D look to it. It is going to be sweet! 

We had one of our subs inform us that there is no way he will be able to get in to do our floors until after labor day. So that set us back about two weeks. It is actually going to be okay, because we are just pushing things to the limit. It will be good to be able to slow down a bit and take more time on each part of the process. We should hopefully be able to catch any mistakes and perfect what we are doing. Focus is becoming ever so difficult for me. And if I didn't have my iPhone, I would be so lost. I keep everything in it. The other day I had to call a guy and ask him what time we had set our appointment because I hadn't put it in my calender and wow how things just start to blend together! And I decided it was a good thing that Melaleuca did not hire me. I registered for school and will have a couple classes at 2:00 monday-wednesday. It would have been impossible to get this to work with Melaleuca, and there aren't any other times to take the classes, unless I want to travel to Pocatello. So things have a funny way of working out. I will just have to work double hard at Sub Zero to make everything work!

Sub Zero Walls Are Up!

PROGRESS!!! We had the electricians in today. They should be all done tomorrow. And we got all the walls up this week. We have one door to frame in in the back right near the bathrooms where we will have some closet storage. Tomorrow we are building a soffit and facia that will go over the counter. I will post some pics when it's done. Things are moving along and we hope to be able to serve ice cream on over labor day weekend! Wish us luck!

Melaleuca

Well, I had an interview last Monday with Melaleuca for a Data Entry job. I thought for sure I would get it. I am definitely qualified, and I know enough people there...but apparently I just wasn't cut out for the job. I received a letter today telling me basically I didn't get the job, but I was welcome to reapply for others. HAH! Oh well. I will just put my time into other things. I have signed up for a medical transcribing class that is supposed to take 3-4 months to complete. It would be perfect because of the flexibility. And I am a very fast typer. But it will be hard to wait that long before I actually get jobs to do and make money. Sub Zero is flying along! I really think we will make our Labor Day Weekend deadline of opening. I never thought it would be possible. But things are working out. We hung walls today and had some awesome help. I know there are lots of people that would be helping me if they could and I really really really appreciate that. I understand that sometimes things just don't work out...and that's okay. I take what I can get when I can get it and I smile all the way! I will try to upload some pictures soon of the progress.