New Traveling Book Boutique Bopping Around Casper
Bibliophiles grab your book bags! There's now a traveling book boutique in Casper. It's called Bookin' It.
Kristy Bussey is a mortgage lender for Wallick & Volk. She originally planned to roam the land selling books as a retirement gig, but then thought, why wait?
In her mind, she was picturing a van; but then her husband Jason found an old Lula Roe truck for sale in Denver and it was love at first drive.
An alternate headline for this story could've been: Find Yourself a Jason and Marry Him.
Bussey gushes about how helpful and supportive her husband has been in this process.
He spent three weeks off from work helping create shelving and making her book boutique dreams come true based off of Pinterest pictures.
There's no way this could've worked if she had hired someone to be at her beck and call, dishes Bussey.
At first, she was a little nervous. "When you love something so much you don't know if anyone else will, too," but her husband was quick to point out that she had nothing to lose - in the end, even if she never sold a single book, she'd be doing what she loved and meeting lots of new people.
Their first event was at the Casper Pride Fest last week. "Lo and Behold, everyone loves books," she reports.
She explains that traveling and book-buying is "kinda their thing." As we chat on the phone she is literally on her way back from buying books.
"I have a book buying problem" jokes Bussey.
The boutique will be here-and-there spontaneously. The whole point is to be traveling, so they'll be all over the state, but you will definitely catch her at coffee shops and breweries as she has already been invited to host pop-ups.
This Thursday you can find the boutique at Bullhorn Brewery around five o'clock.
The truck is stocked with lightly-used books. She finds a lot of them at thrift stores, and she accepts trade-ins, too. You get a dollar credit for every trade-in or every five children's books.
She is happy to be recycling, helping to cut back on waste and rehome perfectly good books.
"It's just a fun time," she says. Bussey has always loved books. She remembers being an avid reader as a kid, and she read to her two boys as they were growing up. "I never feel bad about spending money on books."
CLICK HERE to see a video of the Bus Transformation!