Valentine's Day is coming up fast. Have you bought your sweetheart a gift yet?
For those of you who need a little extra help in the gift-buying department, here are a few ideas.
Mustache heart pint glasses
Shameless self-promotion here, but we think our mustache/heart pint glasses designed by Megan are a fabulous gift for the person who already has everything. Buy one and stuff a bunch of chocolate kisses in it, or buy more and wrap them up as a set. They're $3 each. It's a bargain.
Downtown Lawrence gift certificate
Did you know you can buy gift certificates for downtown Lawrence? Any of the businesses downtown who are members of Downtown Lawrence, Inc. will accept them, including the Sandbar. (Dave is the past president of DLI.) Another perfect gift for the hard-to-buy-for person on your list, because there are so many different places they can be used.
You can buy them at Douglas County Bank, or you can buy them online here.
Guys night at Prairie Patches
This doesn't really help the ladies- well, yes it does. Girls, go fill out a wish list at Prairie Patches. Guys, go down there on Feb. 13 from 6-8 p.m. and get personalized shopping help. And there's a bonus! 10% of all sales will be donated to Habitat for Humanity's Women Build project, and if you donate to the organization you'll get a free rose in a vase.
And there's more! Enjoy wine and snacks and free gift wrapping. How can you NOT do this?
There you have it. Three great options for Valentine's Day gifts. You're welcome.
Now that 2012 is over and I'm way behind in sharing stories from last year…let's feature the second Sandbar wedding of the year: Tyler and Kristen.
The happy couple met at the Sandbar through mutual friends back in early 2009 and became friends. They started dating in November of that year, and the rest is history!
They got engaged, planned a wedding and tied the knot last October.
And it was one heck of a wedding! The Sandbar guests migrated to the bar between the wedding and the reception, and eventually the wedding party made their way there too. Everyone partied the night away at the reception at Abe & Jake's, and the happy couple finally got to take a honeymoon in December.
The Sandbar crew sat in the little Pub at Abe & Jake's, all by ourselves. Kind of like sitting at the kids' table at Thanksgiving. It's better that way.
Congratulations, Tyler and Kristen! Another love match made at the Sandbar…
I don't think we've had a Sandbar shirt picture from Maine before!
The other day at the bar, I noticed some new shirt pictures had been posted on the bulletin board by customers in spaces that were left when other customers stole the pictures that were there before. (Seriously, who steals random pictures of people from the wall of a bar?!)
Paul left this photo, labeled as Bar Harbor, Maine:
Sorry for the bad picture-of-a-picture. Shout out to Pandrea, who apparently are in the photo below this one and should thank me for not cropping their name out.
Where has your Sandbar shirt been? Send us a picture! You can email it to sandbar@thesandbar.com, tweet it to us @thesandbar, post it on our Facebook page or just stick it on the bulletin board next time you're in, and hopefully I'll see it within the next six months.
We recently put out a call for a new Valentine's Day pint glass design, since we haven't crowdsourced a design in over a year.
We got several submissions and we loved them all.
Here's the first one. It's printed and ready to buy!
It. Is. Fabulous.
I'll tell you a secret: I was hoping that someone out there would find a way to incorporate our love (and our customers' love) of mustaches into a Valentine's Day pint design.
And Megan read my mind.
The first run of 2013 Valentine pints is behind the bar, waiting for you. They're $3 each and yours to keep forever. Bring them back in every Thursday for $2.50 tropical drink refills.
These will also make perfect Valentine's Day gifts!
We hope to have a second Valentine's Day glass soon. We're waiting to hear back from the artist. Stay tuned.
Since the crazy new Wheel of Happyness isn't quite enough to make people blind, dizzy or cross-eyed, Dave thought he'd add something else to the mix: another spinning light thingamajig.
Another box showed up today (following up the recent deliveries of a new fog machine and more fog "juice; we're keeping the UPS guy in business for sure). In it was this:
(Ignore the bad photo. And the zebra in the background.)
It's a new light to hang from the ceiling, somewhere in the bar- because we don't have enough things already hanging from the ceiling- that Dave can turn on during the hurricane, or during certain jukebox songs or whenever he feels like it, really.
It's got bright colors and flashing lights that spin all around, and it's guaranteed to ramp up the party.
2012 was the year of Sandbar weddings. Not one, not two, but THREE of our former bartenders got married last year.
First up, our man on the street Pat and Andrea.
Here's what Pandrea, as they are affectionately known to their friends, had to say about their romance:
Being locals and having several mutual friends, we knew of each other
for a while before actually formally meeting each other at the Sandbar (editor's note: another match made in Sandbar heaven!).
Andrea had been going to the Sandbar for years and we all know timing is
everything…so, when the time was right I finally got smart and asked
her out. On our first date in August 2011 at the Casbah, we found out
that we both loved Key West, which just made us like each other that
much more!
And we planned a trip to go there for her birthday, which
we did last February. I popped the question in May on our favorite bench
on Mass St, after a dinner out downtown, and we got married on Sept.
15 at Wells Overlook.
The wedding party was made up of Sandbar regulars like Dave and bartender/art director Justin. We honeymooned in San Juan
& Culebra, Puerto Rico, which coincidentally also has its own
Sandbar. (Click here to see a picture of it. Pandrea also sent us back a picture from their trip.)
Congratulations, Pandrea! The Sandbar crew wishes you a lifetime of love and happiness and trips to Key West.
Photos by Frank Wiles, ownder of Revsys, Guiness drinker and resident Sandbar technical consultant.
They would certainly tell us about all the strange things hiding in the bar.
Dave came home from the bar today with a gift for his toddler: a pint-sized chair.
He found it in the up above the women's restroom, where there's a bit of landing. Once upon a time, we had an old wooden boat sitting up there. Old-school Sandbar regulars might remember it; the boat later found a home at the Sandbar in Ottawa (now known as Southbeach Cove and not affiliated with the Sandbar in Lawrence).
Dave's been around the Sandbar since the mid-90's. We have no idea how long this children's chair was hanging out above the bathroom, or more importantly, WHY it was there.
Our crowdsourced pint glass designs have been popular the last several years, but it's been a whole year since we asked our customers to submit their best designs.
The last customer-designed glass was our happy new year glass from last year. We've been so busy this year, we haven't had a chance to hold another contest! And, we've been busy with the super popular mustache glasses. More of those are coming soon, I promise. In fact, we may let YOU choose which mustache comes next…
Our Valentine's Day glass in 2011, designed by Alison, was one of our most popular pints ever.
The fine print:
The design has to be a black and white line art drawing. We only print single-color designs, so a design with multiple colors won't work. Shadows and other shading won't work either.
Keep it simple. Remember, pint glasses aren't huge and the design will only be a few inches in size. The design should be fairly basic and not have a lot of tiny detail, and it should also translate well to a small size.
You don't need to include the Sandbar name or logo. Our logo will be on the other side of the glass.
We aren't going to pay you money, but if your design or idea is chosen, you'll get a pack of pint glasses, a T-shirt and a whole blog post dedicated to the things you want to share with our friends.
We'll take submissions for the next two weeks, until January 21. Then, we'll pick our favorite design. We might pick more than one; we might combine designs and create a whole new one.
If you can't draw, it's not a big deal. Do your best, or if you really can't draw anything at all, or design something basic on the computer, just email us the idea and we'll try to create it.
So, if you've got an idea for a Valentine's Day glass, send it to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com!
Disclaimer stuff: submitting your design to us gives us full rights to use it on our websites, social networking sites and merchandise. We'll give you credit everywhere we can, of course.
