"HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?"

Or as one customer asked, "Did you go crazy all at once or slowly over time?"  It happened slowly. As a child, I often went shopping with my aunt in the big city of Sioux Falls, SD.  We would go to the cute historic downtown, have a cherry coke at the Shriver's tea room and go to an antique store.  I was completely bored, because she was drawn to pretty porcelain teacups, hand painted Victorian bowls, and delicate glassware.  And then came the collector plates. Oh, the plates.  Years later, we inherited that very large collection and I started selling them on ebay.  My aunt and uncles were born during the Depression, lived through WWII and were part of a generation where things were used, reused and never thrown away; a time when pieces were meant to last.  And so my siblings and I have many family pieces we cherish - a pump organ, a beautiful living room rug, the dining room table, just to name a few.  A move to Arkansas and a smaller house required me to liquidate furniture from my Victorian home to a smaller house.  I opened a booth at a local antique mall, and as they say, the rest is history.  The collecting bug had bitten.

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"WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR STUFF?"

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I hear this question almost daily.  Most of the pieces in the store are found locally through many hours of sifting through the average minutia at estate sales and garage sales.  Countless hours of sitting through an auction to get those two unique pieces. The frequent stops at thrift stores. The picker who stops at my store after he's been digging around in a barn that is falling down.  These pursuits take experience and patience above all. I am fortunate to have a few vendors that have a great eye for the unique.  Donna has an art background and finds beautiful original art.  Ron comes from an engineering and military background, so he loves gadgets and military history.  Zach travels from coast to coast and loves primitives and signage.  And me, well, I search for the stuff that makes me think or laugh - quirky and unusual do the trick.

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