Saturday Spotlight: Ginene at Fox and Finch Antiques

Hi, everyone!   Kris from Junk Chic Cottage and I wanted to do a regular feature on our blogs, something unique that hasn't been done before.   So we came up with an idea to 'spotlight the real life behind the blogger' in a more personal way.

There is so much talent and inspiration in blogland, and we thought it would be fun to bring you a closer look at the person behind the blog.

Every week on Saturday we will spotlight a blogger and have them tell us a little bit about themselves and their blogs.  You will be able to see and read about each of the bloggers on both Kris's and my blog. 

      

Please help me welcome today's guest, the sweet blogger Ginene from Fox and Finch Antiques.  Ginene has an eye for finding and repurposing good junk, and she is living my dream!  

Please sit back and enjoy getting to know her better!

I am a Midwesterner. I like black dirt, big oak trees, and I like to see clear to the horizon. We called our father Pa, and he called his father Pa. They were Prussian Germans and came to Illinois when the Indian trails were still being used by Indians. Their first homes were small log cabins, built so fast that the bark was left on the logs. They weren’t poor, but came with other people from their town because they wanted land that wasn’t heavily taxed. In one letter home, the writer exclaimed righteously that one could even own a dog here without it being taxed. My mother is French-Canadian. Her family came to Canada in 1660. My grandmother and her sister, Hortense, came to the United States to work and I think my grandfather followed her here. That was too bad as my French-Canadian grandfather and most of his brothers, who showed up, too, often succumbed to dipsomania and made life a living misery for the women they married.

Both of my grandmothers deeply influenced who I eventually became, along with eight nuns at the Catholic school I attended. I graduated with a strong foundation in reading, writing, spelling and the Ten Commandments. I also learned that anything that is funny is ten times funnier during Mass when there is a row of straight-backed nuns kneeling in the pew behind yours. We had a lot of fun and I loved those nuns.

I think my family had what I would call traditional American middle-class values. There were two things expected of a person to be in good standing: money in the bank (or in cigar boxes in the pantry) and a clean house. The Depression of 1929 had long-lasting effects on both sides of my family. To owe anyone money, including a bank, was bad. They didn’t care about expensive cars or clothes or furniture. But, whatever they had, there was no excuse for it not being clean. Aunt Hortense used to wash every can and jar before she put in the garbage can. She said that the men who picked up the garbage shouldn’t have to deal with dirty garbage. She was very thoughtful. My family loves to work. When we get together, our idea of a good time usually includes the question, “What do you want to work on?”

One day in June of 2002, I was walking down the street in Richmond, Illinois, when I saw an elegant, but small, old building for sale. It had been a bank and was built in 1929. I looked at it once, put an offer in, and then put a down-payment on it. I moved into the top floor of the old building. I was working a 9:00-5:00 job as a dean’s administrative assistant at a local college during the day. One weekends, I ran an antique shop on the ground level of the building. I worked seven days a week for five years and then, suddenly, in 2008, the college restructured the department where I worked and I was manipulated out of my job. I guess I should have seen it coming but I’m not good at intrigue. It was a great job with endless benefits and paid the highest salary I had ever made.

As so often happens, a thing that I thought was just awful at the time, turned out to be one of the best things that could have ever happened. I had the shop and so I opened it full-time. This has been the best time of my life. I like everything about the business…the auctions, the customers, the research, the selling, the countryside, the town and the rhythm of the seasons. I have a 17 stair commute to work. Some years, I worry about how I’m going to pay the real estate taxes and some years I don’t have to worry about that. Every day, when I get up, I’m happy to start working. I love what I sell, which is, to me, the history of the American home. Helping people create and re-create their version of home with the quality of vintage American furniture and furnishings is rewarding. I think all the really important things that happen in our lives happen at home and decorating is like staging the set of life. I write a blog: FoxandFinchAntiques.wordpress.com where I talk about whatever I am working on, things I have found, and about living above the shop. There is barely a moment to spare! Thank you, Susan, for inviting me to visit your home and the homes of your readers today!

Ginene, thank you so much for sharing with us!  I think that it's SO cool that you live above your shop in an old historic building...Keith and I always dreamed of doing that!
Please visit Ginene at Fox and Finch Antiques, then head to Kris's blog to read about Kristy from Starfish Cottage.

Have a great day!