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Event scheduled for Nov. 11

The Foothills Crafts and Gift Shop Holiday Open House will return for its third year between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov 11.

“We will offer refreshments and we are going to have door prizes from the artists here in the shop,” Foothills member Cindy Rayburn said. “You will meet a lot of the artists then also because we are going to be working in two-hour shifts, so quite a few of those artists will be here that day.”

Rayburn said the hosting a holiday open house is a relatively new tradition for the craft and gift shop opened in a former Manchester grocery store in 1981.

“We started in November 2020,” she said. “We used to do the craft shows, we were out at the Conference Center for a while and then we went to the school for a couple of years.”

Rayburn said the craft shows were typically held around the second weekend in November, but they were derailed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“There were not many craft shows going on at that time, so to bring in funds for the shop we still had to keep going,” she said. “We decided that maybe an open house would be good and it worked out very well.”

The store features a large variety of artisan quality crafts, ranging from jewelry to artwork, handmade pens and ceramics as well as sewed and quilted items currently made by between 50-60 artisans and crafters.

“Any craft that you can imagine I think we have it covered actually,” Rayburn said.

Despite being open for more than 40 years, Rayburn said there are still lifelong Manchester residents that will come into the shop for the first time.

“They didn’t realize this shop was here and they come in and they are surprised,” Rayburn said.

While in years past members of Foothills Crafts would decorate the store for its holiday open house around Nov. 1, they have decided to move that date up a little bit for this year.

“We wouldn’t decorate the shop until Nov. 1, but if you go into some of these other places, they have Christmas stuff out already and we figured we have to keep up with the competition,” Rayburn said.

Operated by the Coffee County Crafters Association, the store is a nonprofit organization also working to give back to the community through a scholarship fund.

For more information about the Foothills Crafts Holiday Open House, call 931-728-9236 or visit the Foothills Crafts Facebook page.