Two garage sales going on inside Prairie Chic today!

We have two local people who have garage sale items up for sale inside Prairie Chic today, during Area Wide Garage Sale day. We are now open (yes, a bit earlier than our usual hours) and we will be open through our regular time of 6 p.m. So come in and see what we have to offer and what our local sales people have for sale while you explore other area garage sales in Herington and Lost Springs today!

We have our air conditioning on, so come on in and shop inside our climate-controlled store, open now until 6 p.m.

Special event rates available for Area Wide Garage Sale day!

Are you interested in selling your items INDOORS during this Saturday's Area Wide Garage Sale event? We are offering SPECIAL EVENT rental rates of $2 per square foot (until Friday) or $3 per square foot (on Saturday) to let you set up your own table and sell your items inside our store. It's a cash and carry system, so you take your own sales on site. Your space is measured on the square or rectangular size, so, sorry, there's no discount for round tables (no pi x r{squared} math computations, that is!). 

Special events are also planned for the Herington Vintage Days festival from Aug. 21-24; and the Herington Holiday Festival on Dec. 6.

To sign up for a special event show, or for more information, contact Stephanie Gilbert, store manager, at PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com or 785-258-8004 during store hours or 785-571-3955 after hours. 

Customers drive variety of vehicles to get to Prairie Chic

We've had all types of customers come in to shop at Prairie Chic, and they drive many types of vehicles to get to our store. We've had trucks, cars, mini vans, and even an antique original Model A Ford driven up to our store!
Shoppers in our store have come in from Hutchinson, Topeka, Council Grove, ... and even from as far away as Hope, Tampa, Woodbine, Burdick and White City.

Has it been awhile since you've been in to our store? We have several new items on consignment now, including a baby grand piano, a gas stove, a table, some yard art, a planter stand and a nightstand. Also, all of our booth vendors have added new items into their spaces as items have been sold.

 We will also have lots of traffic for the Area-Wide Garage Sales planned this Saturday! You can find out more about this on the Area Wide Garage Sale Facebook event page.

As always, for more about our store, see the More about the Store tab. If you have any other questions or prefer to call with your questions, please contact our store at (785) 258-8004 or the store manager, Stephanie Gilbert, at PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com or (785) 571-3955!

Handmade jewelry items added to store

We've just had a local vendor bring in some of her handmade jewelry items to sell in our store. They include earrings, necklaces and key rings for sale in many different types of styles and designs.

Our hours this holiday weekend are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, but we are closed on Monday. Come by and see some new items we have in the store and some items the booth vendors have brought to add to their spaces, too.

You can look at more pictures of the booth spaces we have inside our store in our Facebook album here.

 For more about our store, see the More about the Store tab. If you have any other questions or prefer to call with your questions, please contact our store at (785) 258-8004 or the store manager, Stephanie Gilbert, at PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com or (785) 571-3955!

New item: Vintage gas stove removed from historic local military lounge

Prairie Chic received a vintage gas stove for sale earlier this week. The man brought this item in is doing some work in the former pilot's lounge in downtown Herington. The location is reported to have been the former Pilot's Lounge, where military members from the Herington Air Base, or Herington Army Airfield, came to relax away from the military installation. The man did not know if the stove worked or not, as it was no longer hooked up to a natural gas supply. The stove is quality made and still in good condition. It is priced to sell today at $250.
Do you have an item that you're considering to bring in for us to help you sell on consignment? Our consignment policy applies to smaller items, which can be placed inside our glass cases, and to larger items, such as antique furniture pieces, quality used newer furniture pieces, art works, original larger handmade creations, etc. We sell these items on a 30% commission, but this can be negotiated. Our consignment policy for the larger items includes a first 10% markdown after the item has been in the store for 30 days, a second 10% markdown after 60 days, a third 10% markdown after 90 days. There is no markdown on art pieces or items inside the glass cases. These policies allow ur shoppers to see different items if it has been several months since they have visited our store. Since we're still working to get more pieces in our store, all items we receive by June 1 will not be marked down until July 1. We also offer lay-a-ways to better work with our shoppers'  budgets and still allow them to purchase our quality items.

Vintage Herington Ice and Cold Storage Co. bottle now on sale!

The Prairie Chic Handcrafts & Antiques store just received an antique Herington Ice and Cold Storage Company bottle this morning for our glass case! It's for sale now, priced at $30, delivered by a pair of retired railroaders from McFarland. They are now visiting our little town of Herington. They had already visited Herington cemetery plots of railroaders and headed from Prairie Chic to Father Padilla Memorial Park.

An example of an original artistic creation at the Prairie Chic store

Don't forget that we have vendor spaces available in a variety of shapes and sizes. Our booth spaces are 30" deep, 7' tall, and either 4', 6' or 8' wide. Our wall space is either 12" deep, on the south wall, or 48" deep on the east or west walls, and however wide you'd like to lease. We also take consignment items on a commission only basis, which is a great opportunity to help sell your larger vintage or quality used furniture items, or your handmade art pieces. We're looking for wood, glass, metal items created as original art pieces or repurposed into a new creation. Here's a lamp that store owner Mark Homer purchased during the car show held in town. It's a lamp made out of additional bicycle pieces,

For more about our store, see the More about the Store tab. If you have any other questions or prefer to call with your questions, please contact our store at (785) 258-8004 or the store manager, Stephanie Gilbert, at PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com or (785) 571-3955!

Mark your calendars: Herington Vintage Days are planned in August!

Our readers outside of town may not have seen this view recently in Herington. There are some people who are doing work down at the Central National Bank here in town and they park their tractor in front of the bank. 

Along those lines, Prairie Chic Handcrafts & Antiques store is offering our special event rates of $2 per square foot prior to the show or $3 per square foot on the day of the show during this event. Our offer includes you displaying your own items for sale on your table. If you have a circular table, it is measured on the square (sorry, no discount or "pi x r{squared}" math computations). These events are on a "cash and carry" basis, meaning you tend your own sales and no credit cards nor collection will be taken by our staff. For those who may be looking even further down the road on your calendar, we will also offer this offer during the Herington Holiday Festival on Dec. 6, 2014. 

The Herington Vintage Days event includes our visitors celebrating our local area as it has been and as it still is today. Vintage farm equipment will be displayed downtown and children's games will also be held as part of this event, so it is sure to draw visitors from around the region. For more about the upcoming Visit Herington event, please visit the Herington Vintage Days Facebook page.

Take a peek inside the store ....

Would you like to see what items we have available for sale in the store? Some of our items for sale are posted in this Facebook album here.

These items are for sale at Prairie Chic Handcrafts & Antiques store in Herington. There is no guarantee the items will still be for sale as they are available to our customers during our regular store hours.

Also, we are now actively recruiting vendors to sell vintage, handmade, organic, artistic or repurposed items in our store. For more about our store, see the More about the Store tab. If you have any other questions or prefer to call with your questions, please contact our store at (785) 258-8004 or the store manager, Stephanie Gilbert, at PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com or (785) 571-3955!

Store open today until 6 p.m.

Good morning, vendors and shoppers! We are open today until 6 p.m. if you are curious to come see what we have in our booths and on consignment, or if you are considering being a vendor here. We have shoppers come in and look our items over and have sold several items from each of our booth spaces, sometimes even mere hours after they have been added into the store!

We have some additional consignment pieces added on Saturday afternoon, so if you are interested in more information on the red velvet chair, the white desk or to see what else we now have, feel free to stop in!
Our regular store hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. You can call us at the store at 785-258-8004 or after hours, you can reach Stephanie on her cell phone at 785-571-3955.

What makes your Prairie Chic store unique?

Dr. Mark Homer and store manager Stephanie Gilbert (center) receive their First Dollar of Profit from Tri-County Area
Chamber Director Wendy Jones during their opening day on April 25. Also shown here (from left to right)  are chamber board members David Jones, Tammie Jinkerson Prosch, Roger Boelling and Ron Strickland. (Courtesy of Studio 81 Photography)

A potential vendor just sent us this question in an email: Since I am not acquainted with Herington, what makes your town, your location and your shop unique to be successful?

Store manager Stephanie Gilbert said: Herington is located just off of U.S. 56 and U.S. 77, and about an hour from Salina and Manhattan, and 90 minutes away from Wichita and Topeka. So we're really in a great location for the older antique pickers or retirees who are just out for a drive to go shopping, but not head too far away from home. As far as what makes our Prairie Chic Handcrafts & Antiques store unique, we have several other second hand stores in town, but none of them focus on unique or handmade items. We are looking for vintage, antiques, quality used items, unique repurposed items, artistic works, etc. We encourage people to become entrepreneurs as a second job, or if they are still in high school, or if they have other family commitments, like a stay at home mom, for example. We are advertising heavily online and I've sent news releases to every newspaper in the state via Kansas Press Association about our store, (I also work for our local newspaper and have worked for 12 years now in the newspaper business.) I'm also on the Visit Herington tourism committee, so we're working to bring visitors into our town, which obviously will help increase the traffic in our own store.

Store owner Mark Homer said: The synergistic fusion of collectables, oddities, art, and quality antiques is their uniqueness. We're inviting you to join our experiment in Kansas in a unique place, at the start up stage for a reasonable price and our undying gratitude as founders in our little 12,000 sq. ft. experiment in Herington. Denise and I already have great experience with this industry in Texas and want to share that success with residents through our Kansas location. We are looking for everything from local organic honey, Flint Hills art pieces, metal recycled art works, antique lace items, handmade quilts, and rustic farm architectural items. We're even looking for automobilia, including antique transportation items from unicycles, bicycles, motorcycle and more for the decorators, collectors, and serious art collectors we want to draw in to our store. We seek to be THE source for all items that are "prairie" and "chic" in this region.

If you need more information about the store, you can visit the More about the Store tab at the top, or contact the store at 785-258-8004 or store manager Stephanie Gilbert at 785-571-3955 or PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com!

The Homers found Herington when they bought the former United Methodist Church in town, which they have turned into St. Mark's Wedding Chapel and Event Center. That beautiful church is now available for you to book a wedding, a family reunion, a getaway weekend, a K-9 ceremony for your precious four-legged family (Mark's a small animal vet in San Antonio), a herbal teaching seminar, a scrapbooking retreat, or your own unique idea in this most unique space. We offer three guest rooms upstairs, in addition to the sanctuary and a reception area on the first floor reception area, and the 100+ capacity banquet and kitchen area in the basement. If you'd like to make an appointment to see the church, contact Stephanie Gilbert at 785-571-3955 or PrairieChicKansas@gmail.com today!