Owners of Rainier gift shop provide added services for agents/developers
If you are a real estate agent or developer, there is a new gift store in Rainier that is ready to help you.
Pat Service and Donna Ralls, friends since they met at the Head Start Center, have just opened PD's Gifts at 113 First Street. PD's Gifts, like the name, is a sharing partnership for these two ladies. They both participate in holding down hours at the shop, ordering merchandise, crafting some of the handmade items for sale and paying the bills. "She writes the checks and I stuff the envelopes," said Donna.
Donna Ralls is originally from Portland, where she lived until 1970. She then moved out to Deer Island for her husband's work and to rear their children in a smaller environment. She was a Head Start teacher for 15 years until she retired in 1993.
Her friend, Pat Service, was born in Richmond, California, and spent 10 childhood years in Kansas before returning to her home state. Pat and her husband, Hank, who was from Berkeley, California, both had friends that lived in Portland. In 1973 they migrated north from the Bay Area and found a new home in Deer Island. Pat's work has been primarily for banks and insurance companies. She met Donna when her children attended the Head Start program in 1975, and they shared a love for crafts.
One day Pat bought a southwestern-style doll at a craft bazaar and the two ladies started working together to make more like it. At first they made their craft items at home, then they started renting space in other people's stores or in crafter's malls.
Expanding on their craft-item success, they opened PD's gifts in June, 1998.
What does all this have to do with real estate, you ask? One of their specialties is the decoration of model units for developers, or the presentation of thank you gifts to purchasers of real estate. Donna's son is a real estate developer and he employs his mom to add special touches to the kitchen or the bathroom of his new spec homes. In addition, she has prepared gift baskets for area real estate agents to take to their buyers.
The two select from items in their shop, hand make some items upon request, order things from friends also in the business, or seek specific items on request.
Items range in price from 95¢ to $225. Resin animals alone are priced from $3.95 up to $50. They stock scented candles, florals, wood products, bird houses, welcome signs and hand made jewelry. They enjoy making items out of individual parts, like a birdhouse set upon a stair spiral with a picket fence and greenery added... Any ideas of your own? LCB
PD's Gifts, PD's Creative Intentions
Principals: Pat Service & Donna Ralls
Address: 113 First Street East
P. O. Box 940 Rainier, OR 97048
Telephone: 503/556-1862
Hours: 10a - 5p, M - Sat
or by appointment
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