Hidden Treasures Gift Shop offers hand-made gifts at low prices

You have to push the buzzer at the front door of Haggerty School to be let in and then you have to walk down and around the long school hallways to get to the Hidden Treasures Gift Shop.
But what you find at the gift shop is worth all the trouble. The shop fills a former schoolroom with mostly hand-made items that could make unique Christmas gifts.
Renee Hughes, volunteer gift shop manager and retired school teacher, said the seniors price their hand-made items reasonably so other seniors will be able to afford them.
The gift shop is part of the Van Buren Township Senior Center which has been displaced to a school as the township’s new community center is being constructed. Hughes said they are told the seniors will be in the new community center back on the township campus in early 2024.
In the meantime they are enjoying Haggerty School, a former elementary school building loaned to them by the Van Buren Public Schools.
Hughes said the seniors pay $5 a month for a shelf to hold what they have made to sell. One man takes photos, mats them, and frames them. Another makes colorful therapeutic rice pacs that can be heated in the microwave. Those are $10 each.
A 94-year-old lady keeps on sewing and has made a lot of Christmas decorations. She used to crochet nylon netting for people to use to scrub their dishes, but after a while that hurt her fingers, so she taught Hughes how to crochet the netting.
There are kitchen towels you can hang up to wipe your fingers on for $6 and towel boas for $12 each. The boa features two fingertip towels that are connected with a boa to hang around your neck and used as you cook.
Seniors have put together Christmas cards and packs of other cards that have been donated. There are 10 cards for a total of 50 cents. Or, you can buy cards for 10 cents each.
Hand-made greeting cards are $2.
There is a small hand-made lap robe for $10, with a larger size for $12.
A whole wall is devoted to hand-carved, wooden cars at $3 each. They were donated to the shop by the family of the man who carved them.
“People just don’t know we are here,” Hughes said of the gift shop. She said one senior told her she doesn’t want to put her hand-made items in the gift shop when it’s so far out in the rural area at Haggerty School. That senior wants to wait until the gift shop is back in the new community center.
The customers also have been in short supply.
Haggerty School is at 13770 Haggerty Rd. between Savage Road and E. Huron River Drive. The gift shop is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The seniors receive the money for their items that are sold and money they pay for the display shelves goes to help support the senior center, Hughes said.