Vintage store and gift shop hidden inside distinctive SLO County building. Take a look

The bright turquoise Rainbow Hut in Santa Margarita hides a beloved local shop nestled inside the historic building.

Holli Rae was never meant to have a physical shop location. While she has been the owner of a variety of small businesses, Rae did not plan to open The Giddy Up at 22380 El Camino Real.

Rae always collected vintage pieces for herself and would sell a few items for creative projects. After people began asking if she had a physical location, an idea popped into her head.

“So many people liked it that I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I could have a store,’ and then I just fell in love with the building,” Rae told The Tribune. “It was really like a random leap of faith. In like a week, I came up with the name, the concept, everything. It just kind of came flooding in.”

When the Rainbow Hut’s former business, Samantha Huston Saddles, closed last October, Huston asked Rae if she was interested in the space. She opened The Giddy Up three months later with $300 in her pocket.

“I feel like a bit of an imposter, because I’m not like an experienced retail person who’s had a store before, or knows how to put things together, but I just kind of do everything by feeling and intuition and instinct,” she said. “People seem to be loving it.”

The Giddy Up sells vintage clothing and accessories, home and lifestyle goods, unique gifts and knick-knacks like stickers, patches and an array of handmade items from over 20 local artists. Rae is adamant that the shop has “something for everybody.”

“I try to shop for a lot of different types of styles in mind and people in mind,” she said. “It’s kind of like a puzzle trying to figure it out, match-make certain things.”

Rae describes The Giddy Up’s ambiance as homey and comfortable, with plush chairs, colorful rugs and color-coded areas of home good items, even a large stop sign as decoration in the red section.

She told The Tribune she wants people to feel “giddy” — a throwback to the meaning behind the shop’s name — when they find something so unique they wouldn’t find it anywhere else.

“Everything that I carry in here should be an invitation to connect or bring people joy or make them giddy in some way, is my goal,” she said. “I have stuff hidden in every little nook and cranny, and it’s supposed to be a little bit like a treasure hunt, where maybe you’ll discover something you never knew you needed.”

The Giddy Up is coated in a bright turquoise paint with a large retro “Rainbow Hut” sign that is a rendition of the building’s original sign. The Rainbow Hut building has been through various iterations of businesses — first opening in the early 1940s as a restaurant and bar, then a veterinary clinic, a saddle shop and now The Giddy Up.

Rae said she wanted the building’s name to play a part in the inspiration of the color-curation of The Giddy Up — the shop looks like a rainbow — a red section, blue, yellow and all colors of a rainbow fill the space.

While The Giddy Up’s carefully curated vintage items and unique gifts do well in Santa Margarita, Rae said she often gets told that she should pack up shop and move to a more populated town to reach more people.

“I hear that message almost every week like, ‘You’d kill it here,’ and ‘You’d make so much money here,’” she said. “But it’s not really about that for me. It’s about building something in the town that I live, that I love, about creating a space that’s welcoming for people that maybe brings a little bit of joy and surprise into a life that could maybe be predictable for some people.”

Rae has hosted community events inside The Giddy Up, including Makers in Margarita event in which a live band plays outside her shop and local artists pop up on El Camino Real, bringing more traffic to the small businesses in the town.

While she plans to host more community gatherings and events, she is a one-woman show and is working on building out a team to bring the next phase of the shop to life.

“I am working on creating ... a space for Santa Margarita locals and SLO County locals to come enjoy themselves, have creative times and creative nights and experiences and ways to connect with people,” she said.

For more information

The Giddy Up at 22380 El Camino Real in Santa Margarita is open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about the shop, visit its website at giddyuphut.com.

This story was originally published October 4, 2025 at 11:19 AM.