While the Holiday’s for children are a time of excitement and anticipation, wishes and imagination, for adults amongst all the hustle and bustle and shopping frenzy it’s a time of nostalgic remembrances of holiday’s past when they were growing up. Celebrations at grandma’s house, the china, furniture and silverware, the smells, toys and curios in every room of the house. This holiday season, thanks to Jeanie Carter, owner of “Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe” in Kenai at the Merit Inn Strip Mall behind Wells Fargo Bank, you can enhance those nostalgic feelings at every turn. While opening her first shop just five months ago, Jeanie has already had to expand and is now in a larger and even more intimate setting for her growing clientele. Carter graduated from KCHS and is the daughter of a homestead family that collected and saved everything like so many of that generation, “When they passed I inherited so many things and I missed my parents so much I decided that I wanted to start a little shop and it was little. I opened with only a 600 sq. ft. store front and most of the inventory from what my parents had collected. Within three months we had to expand and not because I was out shopping but from my neighbors and members of the community that brought things in for me to buy. I don’t do consignment but I buy and sell. Every day I have between four and eight people who stop in and ask if I’m interested in buying this or that because they are downsizing and their kids may not be interested in the items and I always am,” Jeanie told the Dispatch.
The fruit of Carters labor fills a variety of rooms where at every turn you’ll find an item of interest that will flood your mind with memories, from milking machines to antique wedding dresses, art class to collectable china and don’t forget to look up when visiting Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, “Yes I have things hanging from the ceiling, over on one of the walls I have a window that came from my house that my dad built here in Kenai and when the folks that own it now remodeled they let me have the original windows. I even have my dad’s ladder hanging from the ceiling where I have my jeans and hand bags hanging. Doesn’t it look great? You don’t throw anything away, just bring it in and I’ll repair and refinish it and find an artistic, decorative use for it. It’s great fun and enjoy picking and choosing what to have in my shop. I thank the community for making the shop what it is and I hope people will come in during the holidays and enjoy looking around. You never know you might see something that will bring back a memory, have something you’d like to sell or find something you just have to take home with you ” said Jeanie. Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe is open Tuesday – Saturday 11:00am – 5:00pm or call 907-398-4391 for more information.
