about the owner how they got started and the beautiful unique items they carry in their shops so come let's go  you guys got started and you tell me a little bit of paul and you were here we opened the store in the ninety's early ninety's and we had a concept of doing a small boutique that was unique items from around the world and being affordable store it's developed and evolved over the years from that and we've been here for over twenty five years and have really enjoyed the tell me how did you guys am we have one it ardmore pennsylvania i started working for them about thirteen years ago and then eventually i became partners so that's how i different types of we've been on college campuses and vending at different locations this was the first time that we developed a store for this type of service that's a really that's really great to see that as an entrepreneur are you started with you know something small because a lot of people see this you know a large facility and things and they never really realize what the struggle is right so we honor to struggle are we really want to highlight some of these wonderful things that you have in here i know you have some jewelry that you guys do a lot of to jory from so tell us why we are where it comes from what are some of the selections we get jewelry from all over the place we hand they go out of it ourselves there's sterling silver mixed metals whatever we feel that's unique and interesting so tell us a little bit more about the pottery so our very is mostly made here in the united states we have pottery that's made in western pennsylvania and then we carry other pottery that's me anywhere from canada out to california it's all the mill is like one hundred twenty we try to keep it very affordable yeah that's lovely because then kids you know with a smaller budget can actually get something from mom or dad or whatever so you know at least everybody feels like they can find something unique and special in the storm yeah and affordable and i know that you have different gift items so tell us a little bit about the gift items like the candles and  you know you have some glass ornaments as well we've developed relationships with many glass blowers we specialize in and made what it means for the holidays we also have gifts anything that really catches or are you we feel that is unique and hopefully affordable you know giving a wide variety of selection to the customers away some of them are made in the united states some of more made broad but just something out of the ordinary whatever that we see that we feel that somebody would enjoy the the most important thing is trying to evolve and pick up new things different conversations with people and have developed friends over the years just for people stopping in and liking what we're doing the dress is twenty six witherspoon street the phone number here is six oh no you're not into one zero six eight and the website's mentally trading dot com wonderful thank you both so much for having us and for explaining a little bit more about this little jam here in and i just wanted to get an idea of how the store started and you know what store you store of course it's actually a pretty nice story so it's the stores are owned by two  families and it was founded by the two women of the families so you have mary randolph carter from the carter part of the name and then mercedes car vero so these are two working women and mothers and they met actually in a wedding a mediterranean village so they both attended that wedding they got to know each other and they just started tasting all of this great food that they had there of course all of well and they got to talking about how they love cooking for their families and then they sort of came up with the idea and the store was founded in two thousand and seven oh lovely i know you have never seen so many only boils in my life in one place so give us a quick rundown of the types that you have and you know where they're from definitely so we have about over a dozen of our flavored olive oils over here and those we create the flavor profiles ourselves by infusing the base of the olive oils which is a spanish extra virgin  oil ok then our extra virgin olive oils that we carry come from various european countries we have mainly olive oils from spain then we have some italian i love oils and one greek olive oil as well and those  all be found right behind you in the various colored bottles and we partner with the various states there in those countries i don't know what are your top flavors i know you have a couple of top flavors one of which is my favorite of the flavored olive oils our top flavors would be our tuscan herb which is a blend of the different herbs that we carry as well as garlic and roasted i mean we have to have a white truffle olive oil which is really fabulous it's just pretty strong you have to be a truffle fan but people really love that one and then we also have a lot of favorites in the extra virgins i would have to say some of our italian ones are really popular and the spanish ones can have a little bit more spice to it so if you like that that's something to ball sonics would probably be our traditional you know if you've been a plain simple but our food bosonic is also really really popular and can be used on a lot of things like salads and cheese platters we also have some fun the oils and also mix we have a lot of gourmet foods including dips spreads jams cookies pasta is as you mentioned different flavored pasta and sauce and we have things where you can make your own meal at home we have different flavored pasta ok so we have different herbs it's that we've created ourselves and then the best thing to do with those is to just take a little dish put some olive oil in there plain olive oil the spice packet and do pure bred in there and have a really purist form of olive oil it is not been treated with any chemicals or produced with any chemicals or heated in any way so it means that the olives have been pressed cold pressed so no he added to change the chemical composition of the oil and it has been pressed by mechanical means mainly just a giant press on top of the olives and then any impurities from the olives such as all the branches dirt have also been pressed out of there and separated in the many steps  of the pressing so tell us a little bit about some of the health benefits sure so olive oil has a lot of mana unsaturated fatty acids which are the good sort of fats that you want in foods and also has  which can help regulate your blood cholesterol levels and it can also help with any heart problems and also help prevent heart disease but also other diseases so it's kind of just like a little armor around all of your  yes so when you buy one of our bottles it can you there be this larger size are smaller two hundred million or science and when you bring back an empty bottle we recycle it for you and then you get a dollar off per bottle that you bring back on your next bottle purchase just great and so you gourmet items mainly from italy spain and france also some usa products so some of our most popular ones are italian pesto those and there's a lack o that has been very popular as well we have a plain apple cider vinegar a here and one with honey so that's a good dinner that you can definitely use in salads and making dressings however it can also be used in drinks sort of to make a that's interesting so recently at an event i made a detox drink using the plain apple cider vinegar and we just mixed it with regular apple cider that you would try to store and sort of made a twist on a fall favorite drink and also something that's a little more healthier ok so tell us a little bit more about the maple syrup so this we have a line of maple syrup from vermont it's one hundred percent pure maple syrup and we have some fun flavors that are infused in the maple syrup so this one i have right here is bourbon and it really does taste like bourbon so lots of bourbon fans coming in and they always get this one we have a rum flavored one smoked and apple pie sort unique gift items i have a couple out here to just review a few of them so walk us through a couple of decided to hear chart so we have pre made give sense that we are very popular during the holidays one of those examples is great here so it's a combination of an olive oil a flavored olive oil and a flavor balsamic in a whale a dish at the bottom which you can also see right here and people can use those to make sounds but also to m dipping like a little dipper in the dish itself we also do lots of custom gifts sets so we sort of make a bunch up or we can make it to your desire whatever you'd like to be in the gift set an example of that is right here and r here so they're usually fim this one is sort of a chipotle they hopped in barbecue theme to get sat and this one right here is like a fun fall you have made the syrup of soup in there some jam and also some of our oil and bought some mix in there as well and it's not hot sauce so it is so we carry hanks hot sauce which is a company based in new jersey and they have a bunch of different flavors of hot sauce and here are four of the flavors right here and you can get a good sense of all of the four different flavors for like your hot socks lover or you could just buy one bottle of or many like and that's also a very popular give to people of the hot sauce rice and then you have the there and a rosemary olive oil so it's a nice combination that can be used for a salad or even a dish meal sort of like pork chops and all of our flamers come in those small bottles which we have as gifts like this our we also have a six pack sampler which is a great hostess gift for someone who loves to cook just give them a bunch of different flavors right and let them be creative with that right and then i know that you do have rosemary olive oil is on sale and so that changes every month and then i major holidays we have a buy three bottles get the fourth bottle for free sounds almost lovely so that's when you really get to stop and the next sale of that kind the b course so this store on relocated at princeton new jersey at palmer square our address is twenty seven palmer square west and our phone number is six zero nine three five six zero two one five and then you're on facebook and instagram as well right ye and interesting pottery items for your dips and it's just a beautiful start to come into you know get some ear holiday shopping or just regular shopping so shopping local here in princeton thank you so much highlight and give us a little introduction about how you got to this point and a little bit about we'll talk a little bit about store you know we started about seven years ago we opened up the store actually moved to princeton seven years ago we've been here in palm beach where for about six years we moved to new jersey christie was playing with our twins and we were looking for a community that supports the arts and doubts you know that there is a diverse community we can hear five languages spoken down the street lovely what we love about this town is like we mentioned that people do support the arts whether that's macarthur theater the arts council multiple museums here in town and what we do i've been building furniture for twenty years kristen had a passion for design we found was the offerings that princeton had when we first moved in were a bit uninspired and i felt like this community needed something a bit more to right whether it was making barnwood furniture bringing in princeton and palmer square and i know you have so many items to choose from so let's just talk a little bit about the sections so this particular section we're sitting in is all the furniture and you know interior design part of the store so talk a little bit about some of the foreigners shootings and what you offer in terms of services with furniture we work with the majority is here made in the u s customiz we have three interior designers on our staff that are wonderful so if you just need some advice in terms of size or broad or if you need someone to come to your home to take a look at your space we can help you in all aspects of design annoyed that was taken right off of a structure most likely pennsylvania we do pull down some jersey as well but we take the bar and word which has beautiful patina has been weathered for one hundred yeah hundred years and room table an ordinary room table i mean most people know that they'll spend around two thousand dollars for a dining room a six foot bar and wood table goes for thirteen fifty years wow that's not bad at all why it's so unique you know it's so unique and i know you have beautiful so you have a range of prices so you have from the high end to all the way to be affordable so if someone is just looking for a small present or something like that you have things here like talk a little bit about this collection here that we have well one of our holiday best sellers are our tea towels and we have the new jersey lovers these are all different  company it's all porcelain they do this in both gold and silver what we love is very affordable and you can mix and match you can build your serving piece which is wonderful right right today random verse three wedding gift  from all over the world and i get to go and see him before times here and i'd like to find the things that you're not seen elsewhere so this was certainly an unusual piece that i had to have for the store so christian tell us a little bit more about this pri prince is well he actually comes first or quite a bit and when he will be doing a book signing so definitely check out our facebook and instagram for the day it will be this fall and then the other popular i had is our black squirrel and we clubs yeah you know time is a gentleman in florida and he makes unique items out of golf clubs clocks bottle openers yeah every one is unique and different and is so affordable i was shocked how you know it's less than forty bucks to bring you know to have such a unique item and then of course we have these fun little coasters we have artists  husband and wife in canada that do these little timber blocks typewriter signs great little inspirational gifts that you can have on your desk or we also have a kid and baby section such a cool idea tell me a little bit more about that if you can grab your glasses over here but this is for children who wear glasses just putting it on their nightstand you can actually put it on their and she uses crushed glass and her pottery and actually pews is together in the county and salt and pepper shakers different  so dishes coaster but just really very unique yes very beautiful i love the way it catches the light you know they sparkle in yeah yeah and everything  makes by hand in her studio this i love this this ball the graduate i'm going to call it the gratitude ball but we have a gratitude wishing ball this is an artist in rhode island it's all hand blown glass and she makes really unique items with stories this comes with a little papers where you write your wish and what you just have a grateful for and then you put it on the ball and just wonderful little bases other gift items and again each come with a little story perfect perfect little gift yeah i know that you do some classes hair or demonstrations and things like that just give me a quick overview of you know well we have a whole handmade jewelry section and we always like to invite artists last year we had one of our artists come in and she actually brought her blowtorch for customers here at the store which is wonderful but we have had a local artist who is a retired police officer that makes really cool license plate stars and he chains and he's come to visit us the balls that we talked about earlier work each layer is laser cut and shows the depth of the water whether that's an ocean or whether that's a lake this is become our best selling gift line to the store we have it for all over the country as well as all over the world frankly there are some better for europe for the caribbean but we also have a lot for new jersey manhattan brooklyn so yeah those are i noticed that you also have  these price points very great from low to high and writing on the complexity so the clock is extremely affordable a fifty dollars ok the trees are eighty nine ninety nine just not bad for such a unique piece it's not and even some of these are like i'm looking at the cape may want it's one hundred seventy dollars for the amount of work that's involved in this it's difficult to even frame something for one hundred seventy dollars if you want something to your design services remember that the design services are free and you can have everything from a pillow to a so focused a maid come check them out wasn't that great we learned so much about the shop owners who want to thank them for having us and showing us all their beautiful items and sharing their unique stories we want to encourage you to