Livin the Dream owners Katie Wirth and Paula “P” Giannini play off each other like an old married couple, with a little extra sass and style.

“We start saying something to each other, and don’t even finish the sentence, and the other jumps in and says, ‘Oh, yeah!’” Giannini said.

The shop, located in the retail strip of 3147 Cranberry Highway in East Wareham, opened on Oct. 1, and sells various antiques, art, and handcrafted pieces, most of which currently comes from Wirth’s and Giannini’s families. The two are currently the only employees, but Wirth's daughter occasionally contributes pieces of work to the store.

Wirth and Giannini also create their own pieces of art to sell, including decorated windows and paintings. Both Giannini and Wirth have their own styles that come out in their artwork. Giannini said she favors bright colors and dragonflies, whereas Wirth has a more beachy style that focuses on mermaids and starfish.

Wirth said the two bikers have known each other for 25 years. They met when Wirth was still living in Whitman, running a nail salon, where Giannini was her customer. Though both moved away, and lost touch for a while, they reconnected after the death of Wirth’s 24-year-old son, Michael “Tony” Holmes following an automobile accident.

The two opened the shop almost on a whim, after seeing the space was open when they were hanging out one day.

“We both had said, ‘Oh, I would just like to have my own store, do this for a living,’” Giannini said. “[Wirth] goes, ‘Let’s just call this number, and see how much they want.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, right, like we can afford that.’ And we called, and figured we’d just look … and ended up getting this place.”

Though the two said they work well as business partners, Wirth frequently likes to rearrange the shop.

“I’ll go to look for a piece a customer wanted, and I’m like, ‘I know it was over there,’” Giannini said. “I’ll come in, and everything is different.”

“I just move things!” Wirth protested.

Wirth already had some experience running a shop, as she also runs an online storefront, which primarily sells furniture. But she found that running a physical business is much different. Among the issues the two encountered – including a wreck of a shop space that they had to clean up – Wirth said she wasn’t sure how to price things, at first. Giannini teasingly calls Wirth’s pricing woes, “The $8 Story.”

“She’d say, ‘Well, what do you think we should sell that for? You think $8’,” Giannini recalled. “Everything. Everything she wanted to sell for $8. … So, anything you see that’s $8, Katie put a price on.”

The shop will be holding an open house on Sunday, Nov. 8 from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.