Pet Crates/ Tanks

Hello, and thank you for shopping with us! Here you can see the many different types of crates or tanks for any of your pets! We also have an option to adopt a pet along with the crate. You can not only buy a crate but a friend to go along with it.

This section of the store ties into the deep love I have always had for nature. When it comes to being in nature the thing that has most interested me are the animals which live all over the globe. When I was a kid I watched all types of nature documentaries, my favorites by far being the ones about the Wildebeest in Africa and the herds of buffalo in the natural parks of America. I would watch these for hours, and it's all because of my kindergarten teacher. Mr. Farrone always incorporated animals into the classroom, whether it was the butterfly cage in the back of the classroom or the African Dwarf frogs in the front. I have made sure my home is always filled with loving pets, over the course of my life I have had: a golden retriever; African Dwarf Frogs, inspired by Mr. Farrone; chicks, also taken from my kindergarten class; a pet seahorse, which I caught in my flipper while swimming in the ocean; many beta fish; a bearded dragon, which replaced the seahorse after I released it back into the wild; crayfish, taken from my 4th-grade science class; a french bulldog; and finally a bernedoodle. Safe to say my parents are tired of my pets, but I will never be. These pets have taught me to take responsibility for the things in my life. Having to take care of a living creature is no small task, and since most of the pets on this list were in my house because of me the responsibility to care for them fell upon me. I spent my childhood walking dogs in the dark and cold, picking up feces, cleaning tanks, feeding the proper amount on time, bathing, grooming, and many other tasks. Although tiresome and not always fun doing these things taught me that to have something that you love many responsibilities come along with this. My pets have also taught me that if you truly love these things you will take those responsibilities on with open arms, and do them to the best of your ability. I will apply this lesson to every aspect of my life to be sure I am willing and ready to do what is needed to have what I love.   

Children Play Boxes

Welcome to the most fun part of our store! If you have spent any time around kids you know that one of the greatest things that can happen to them is getting a HUGE empty box to play in. Here you will find plenty of play boxes that your kids can turn into whatever they please, they can draw all over them, and turn them into pirate ships, a cave, or their own mini house. Only the imagination stops what these boxes can be. 

I decided to add this section to the store for one reason, and that is my experience in babysitting my younger brothers. For context, I have two younger brothers, Sam and Eli. When I got into high school my parents began to use me as a free babysitter every once and a while. It was my job to feed my brothers, wash the dishes, make sure they didn’t get hurt, get them to bed, and have some fun in the process. This is a massive amount of responsibility, especially when dealing with two hyperactive kids. To get through the night successfully I needed to become a leader to my brothers, which is hard to do as they see me as a kid too. Stepping up and taking on that responsibility for the night was no easy task, which made me respect my parents all the more. One thing I remember always doing while babysitting is giving my brothers boxes to play with. We kept a stack of them in the garage while they waited to be recycled, so I would go get a decent-sized box and let them go at it. To me, this was the best because they could let their imagination fly while playing with the box that to them was a pirate ship, a cave, a spy headquarters, or whatever else they thought up that night. It was also good because they could destroy that box and it would be fine because it was already in the trash! Although, looking back while my brothers sat in that box together that box was doing more than being a tiny boxing ring but it was holding all my responsibilities. That box held my most precious treasures in life, the people that would be my best friends for the rest of my life, and it was my responsibility to keep them safe and happy.  That's why these seemingly simple boxes hold so much meaning to me. 

Shipping Boxes

A huge part of my life as an athlete is being able to lift in a gym. As a lacrosse player committed to playing at a D1 school, I need to be in shape all season long. To do this I taught it would be a good idea to build a gym in my attic. If you have never built a gym before I can ensure you this is no easy task. You need to find quality equipment at a good price, or else you will spend thousands or you will have bad equipment which could be dangerous. I spent months researching everything from the perfect weight rack to the right plates to buy. After much work, I presented the plans to my parents only to get denied. There was something wrong with what I picked out, which forced me to go back to the drawing board. After roughly a year's time, I had picked out the perfect gym and ordered it only to see that it would arrive in a very short… 6 months. I waited and waited for the supplies to come, and finally, one Friday when I got home from school I walked into my garage to see what we estimated to be 175-200 boxes of varying sizes filled with heavy metal. These boxes would be an image burned into my memory, as I needed to unpack each one over the course of several hours. The reason I needed to do this alone was my parents were gone for the entire weekend on their anniversary trip. My dad's advice was to wait until he got home, as this task was simply too large for me to handle on my own, as this was many years ago. Although that would have been smart I had waited long enough, and my determination mixed with excitement put me to work. I spent all of Friday night unboxing the equipment and it took me all of Saturday and Sunday to put this together, all alone. The worst part was that if you are building a gym in your attic you need to carry the materials up, so in the course of a day I carried around 1,000 pounds or more of metal up two large and steep flights of stairs. I sat painstakingly reading and building, making multiple mistakes and having to fix them. I built the whole gym without a power tool, meaning I needed to hand-screw the hundreds of screws required for the build. In the end, my gym had a rubber floor installed, a power rack built, cables set up via pully systems, a dumbbell rack, two benches, and weight plates ranging from 5’s all the way up to 45’s along with dumbbells going from 2 to 40 pounds. All of that was carried and assembled by one person. It was only after I finished that I realized this was the first ever project I did without the help of my dad. I had independently built a brand new state-of-the-art gym. Researching and building this gym was a massive responsibility, and if anything was wrong the whole gym could have been ruined. Building this gym taught me commitment and attention to detail. The year and a half that went into this taught me that the things I want out of life required me to be committed and patient. The two and a half days of building taught me to pay attention to the small details, as I needed to focus on every last nut and bolt of this massive machine. Most of all, it taught me that if I had large aspirations I need to take the responsibility of doing things on my own. I couldn’t just ask my parents for this and expect it to show up, I need to work on every piece from A to Z. In celebration of this, I am adding this part of the site so you too can take on the responsibility of building something for yourself.