Pickin' Paradise

I feel like I have a million and one things to say after the last week or so, but I'd be remiss not to start with my amazing pickin' adventure last Thursday. I now know what it feels like to win the lottery. Thursday was the Olympics of treasure hunting for me and the gold medal that I adorned was rust, dust, dirt and a knuckle splinter. True story.

As I've shared before, my great aunt is beyond generous. She just gives and gives and gives, and all with a smile. She sits there and encourages you to literally take her stuff. I want to be more like her. I'm pretty sure that's how we're all called to be, but when I look deep down inside, I'm not there yet. I can tend to cling to some of my stuff. But she gets it and whether she knows it or not, she's teaching me to loosen my grip of "stuff". She fully embodies the "it's better to give than to receive" like no one I've ever seen. So thanks to her offer to pick the warehouse, coupled with her beyond giving heart, the perfect storm was created. Hallelujah!

And before I go any further, I'd like to give a shout out and a deep thanks to my great uncle Maury, who's no longer with us, for his gift to my aunt of 8 shopping carts. An odd gift to some, I'm sure, but a brilliant gift when you own various floors of a warehouse and a collection of items that spans about a 60-70 year window. We filled those babies up. Some women receive flowers, and others, shopping carts. Brilliant, I tell you.

With only about 1.5 hours allotted, we began to dig. And dig, we did. In boxes, in cargo crates, in bins, on rolling factory carts, etc... I have never seen so many treasures in all of my life. I was beyond giddy. Rust is my crack, apparently. I'm a proud rust fiend. From antique family photo albums complete with old photos of families who are now nameless, from maps to furniture to light fixtures, we scored big time. One of the items that she gave us are these awesome mint green trash cans that Mike, from American Pickers, also purchased from her warehouse. There were 10 in the lot and he bought 7 of them. We now have the remainder. Pretty cool that we'll have inventory as seen on American Pickers. And for her to know that those were something we'd love, well that's just the cherry on top.

I wish in my treasure-overloaded mind, I would've thought to take pictures of what we pulled, but my mind was mush the entire time. I blame it on the rust crack. I don't think I even slept much of that night while replaying everything we saw which was a problem since we had to get up at 3:30am to catch a flight the next morning. So until we go back to pick up our "picks", here a just a few items that I'm still day dreaming about since we pulled them:

• 3 mint green and metal trash cans
• A cool old map to be framed
• Set of mid-century wood & metal chairs
• Stools galore
• Awesome green folding chairs
• Tufted armchairs
• China
• Light fixtures
• 2 green industrial, barn lights
• Frames and mirrors
• End tables
• A railroad light
• Antique Jim Beam decanters
• Wooden coke crates
• More furniture....more everything...

And as we drove away, I was overwhelmed by emotion. I just cannot fathom someone giving us such an amazing start to our new business venture without wanting anything in return. What this "pick" did for us is beyond what we could ask or imagine and I simply don't have enough words to be able to thank my aunt Judy and uncle Maury. My words will always fall short, but hopefully they know my heart well enough to know that I take NONE of this for granted. And for the personal treasures that she entrusted to me that evening like a set of Maury's china and sterling silver candelabras, I'll treasure them. Those items, I will not loosen my grip on, and will hopefully one day pass them along to my children, along with the story of who they once belonged to. And that is a priceless gift.

So, I hope one day you'll come to our shop and share in our "pick". Maybe some of these items will bring you as much joy as they did when we unburied them from picks of the past. Because in the end, that's what everything we do at SV is about. There's just nothing better in my book.