AuntSistersPicks

The word sister has always meant “love” in our family. My sister and I grew up watching our mom help take care of her sister, who was intellectually challenged. Aunt Barbara almost always called our mom “Sister” and she often said to our mom, “I love you, Sister”.

We found the name “Aunt Sister” in a series of books that we read by a southern female author. This author wrote about two sisters in Alabama who seemed to fall into some pretty hilarious mysteries. One sister was referred to as “Mouse” and the other sister as “Sister”. In the course of the story it was mentioned that “Sister” was known as “Aunt Sister” to her nieces and nephews. We loved that name! Over the years, we would jokingly refer to each other as Aunt Sister or occasionally we used it as a threat to our growing kids that if they strayed from our side in a department store that we would have it announced over the PA system that “their Aunt Sister was waiting for them in the bra department”. It’s funny, but we never did have to follow through on that threat.

We began to use the name Aunt Sisters Picks when we tried our hands at decorating a couple of antique booths in the Springfield and Adams, TN areas. We also attended our first ever “festival”…in a cold warehouse in Westmoreland, TN, one February weekend at a mule auction. A friend talked us into it, then basically showed us how to decorate and display our booth. In one weekend we went from laying our items out in “yard sale” style…flat and side by side..to stacking our tables on top of each other, filling our cabinets with knick knacks, using our wooden ladders to display and more. Now, that is one of the things we love about going to festivals…setting up our “shop”.

About this same time we “found” ETSY and jumped in with both feet. We started with ugly Christmas sweaters and cracked ourselves up trying to be funny and draw attention to our new shop. January arrived and we struggled to change our voice from tongue in cheek to a more serious tone with our listing descriptions. We have now found a middle ground between playful and friendly lines with accurate descriptions of the quality, style, measurements and flaws of our items. From the beginning we were thrilled that someone would buy what we had picked out and be as happy as us or even more so with what we had found. We loved the positive reviews we received. When a customer wrote that we had found a much loved book from their childhood or a sheet that she had slept on at her Mee-Maw’s house, we felt a connection to them and it spurred us on to find more. We have recently put into words what we have learned from our customers: “It’s not about the stuff, it’s about the feeling.”

We have always strived to find the best quality vintage items and then offer them for sale at a fair price. We try to quickly answer convos and we ship out sold items as quickly as we can. We are honest and friendly and we do our best to convey this in all of our dealings with our customers. We live by the Golden Rule in our business and personal lives.

Our first “picks” and listings were all over the place from vintage clothing to knick knacks. We eventually moved away from vintage clothing and left that category up to one of our daughters who has a small ETSY shop, HalfSkyCovered. We also moved away from most dishes and glassware, although Aunt Sister Cindy does love pyrex and always buys it. We moved toward fabric linens—sheets, towels, curtains, and more and have found a niche there. The linens complement our larger eclectic mix of what we like and what is up and coming—suitcases, globes, maps, toys, furniture and books, books, books! We have always loved books and both of our houses are bursting with children books.

Since our start with ETSY our family has grown a lot. We have 5 children who have all married and now have 9 grandsugars, with one more due in July! Our thrift hunts usually extend to finding items for our kids and their spouses, our grandchildren, ourselves and our shop. That means we often leave the Goodwill outlet with 2 FULL SHOPPING CARTS!

We're still having fun with our shop, the hunt, the pickings, and the excitement and happy reviews we receive from our customers. We never know what we'll find and, well, isn't that what "the hunt" is all about?