Long before there was a storefront on Ann Arbor Trail, there was a mother-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and an armful of handmade treasures carried from one living room to the next.
Where it began · The Home Sampler
It started in living rooms
Home Sweet Home began with handmade things — and the people who made them. Carol and her mother-in-law, Marian Uber, created The Home Sampler, a home-party business in the spirit of a Tupperware party: a host would invite her friends and relatives into her home, and earn credit and merchandise for everything that sold that evening.
Carol and Marian would arrive with armfuls of handmade goods — pieces from the basket weavers, potters, seamstresses, and painters they knew, local makers with real talent whose work rarely found its way beyond their own homes. Much of it was made to order, one customer and one special request at a time. It was a small, personal kind of commerce, built entirely on craftsmanship and word of mouth.
1980's–2002 · The Christmas Show
A house that filled to the rafters
Those gatherings grew into something all their own. Carol and Marian began hosting their own Christmas Show — opening Carol's home to the public for two and a half days in November. They designed and hand-addressed hundreds of beautiful invitations, mailed them out, and hundreds of customers answered, lining up around the block to get in.
Inside waited homemade wreaths and decorations, quilting, hand-painted ornaments, homemade food, and an ever-growing array of treasures — including the first antiques and merchandise Carol bought to resell.
Hundreds of hand-addressed invitations. Hundreds of guests, lined up around the block.The Christmas Show
Marian was there for that first year. Soon after, she fell ill and passed away — but the tradition she helped begin carried on. Carol kept the Christmas Show alive for sixteen years. It started with some thirty local artists and crafters contributing their work; over time, as Carol's own antiques and handmade pieces grew, the show increasingly reflected her own hand — though she was never without the help of friends and family along the way.
It grew so large that the city eventually tried to shut it down — too much traffic, too many people for a residential street.
2002 · Trenton, Michigan
A shop of her own
In 2002, Carol turned the Christmas Show into something year-round. She opened the very first Home Sweet Home in Trenton, Michigan, and ran it there for five years. The City of Trenton named her Business of the Year in 2006 — but a smaller downtown could only carry a shop so far, and Carol knew that to truly grow she would need a stronger shopping district.
2007 · Downtown Plymouth
The right location, rebuilt from the studs
Carol found her place in downtown Plymouth — one of southeast Michigan's most walkable shopping districts. The building's landlord, who owns several storefronts downtown, did his homework before saying yes: he even called the City of Trenton to verify the business and her record there.
There was just one problem. When Carol first saw the space, she told him she couldn't take it — the architecture and design simply weren't right for what Home Sweet Home was meant to be. So Carol and her husband, Robert May, changed the building; together they gutted the space entirely and rebuilt it from the inside out.
A gutted building, a $150,000 renovation, and a landlord who believed in her.Downtown Plymouth · 2007
The landlord invested $150,000 in the renovation — a generosity that made possible the custom 19th-century storefront you see today.
2016 & beyond · Recognition
A little shop that keeps being noticed
The recognition followed the work. In 2016 — the first and only time Carol ever entered — Home Sweet Home won Best Antiques in WDIV Click On Detroit's Best of Detroit. And in December 2019, the shop was chosen as part of Governor Gretchen Whitmer's initiative to spotlight Michigan's local businesses, bringing a film crew and a full entourage of press to Ann Arbor Trail — including NPR and Detroit's Channel 4 and Channel 7. The Governor walked the aisles and shopped the shelves herself.
Today
Still here, still changing
More than forty years after that first armful of handmade things, Home Sweet Home is still a place built on craftsmanship, character, and the thrill of finding something you didn't know you were looking for. Every room is restyled with the seasons; no two visits are ever quite the same.
We'd love for you to be part of the next chapter.