Furnishing a Weekend Getaway!

With the market now flooded with bank-owned vacation homes and condos several of our clients have been reaping the benefits of the reduced prices! We, in turn, have been fortunate to complete these new havens with beautiful funishings! The pictures that follow are of a recent installation in Sunset Beach, NC....a coastal community north of Myrtle Beach. This view from the dining area of the condo is one of the Intercoastal Waterway heading South. The 1300 acre stretch of marshes and dunes of "Bird Island" (shown on the opposite side of the waterway) provide an important habitat and nesting areas for many endangered species. Local lore has it that sections of Bird Island have become a nude beach....something that is banned in the state of North Carolina. Accessable primarily by boat, you can easily see birds, deer, wild goats and some unusual human sightings!

....a view of the Intercoastal Waterway and Bird Island. The ocean can be seen in the far distance from this fourth floor condominium. According to Wikipedia there is, on Bird Island....slightly hidden among the dunes....a plain rural mailbox which contains an assortment of pens, pencils and notebooks. The outside of the box is marked "Kindred Spirit". Visitors apparently use the notebooks to record special thoughts and sometimes private prayers....allowing them to make public statements in complete anonymity!

Our clients found some beautiful hand-carved birds at a local artisan's shop!

If truth be told, these furnishings were originally planned in 2007.... designed, earmarked and consequently stored....for another Virginia condo that ended up going into foreclosure. It didn't take but one floorplan for us to realize that we could easily adapt everything for this new space. It was and is a happy ending for our beautiful furnishings!

When we first developed these plans back in 2007, navy and white things (believe it or not) were hard to find! We purchased William Sonoma bedspreads and had our workroom repurpose them into panels which take on real Ralph Lauren look! Combined with periwinkle blue, the result is an awesome nautical color scheme for a beach or lake-front home!

Vacation Homes.... Furnishing an Entire House

These are recent pictures from our job planning, designing, coordinating, ordering and installing a client's Virginia Beach house that overlooks the Chesapeake Bay. The view below is from the Master Bedroom balcony... the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in on the far right...
The completed Living Room...

View of the empty foyer with it's beautiful architectural staircase...

A unique table...two old lobster traps with a piece of glass as the top! Great look!

The pictures below are for "Emily's Bedroom". Emily wanted a black and white color scheme accented with some bright lime green. We used some of the great patterned ready-made sheer panels and had our work-room embellish them with some black & white check fabric! We think it's a great teen haven!

A great Charleston Forge Table with a fossil stone top! Cute accent for this bedroom!

Below are some pictures taken during the whole-house installation as it progressed during the two days we were there...

Our New SSI Design Group Picture!

Talent Abounds in Everyone!

L to R: Anne Bell Woods, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, Melinda Bell Dickey, Beth Bell

We got this wonderful email the other day from one of our senior staff designers, Melinda Bell Dickey, that her mother had sculpted this beautiful bust of General Andrew Lewis, a Civil War patriot. The bust was officially installed this week in the Virginia House of Delegates at the state capitol in Richmond, Virginia.

Mel wrote: "The bust is just stunning, especially in person, and the overwhelming significance of what this means is so very evident when you are standing in this historically relevant room. The bust will be in the old house chamber in a space that has been waiting for this bust since 1932! It is the very room where General Robert E. Lee took his commission....a room designed by Thomas Jefferson....and of course for a designer that is prettty amazing in and of itself"!

While Anne Bell Woods, the talented mother of Melinda, and indeed the creator of this amazing work of art is not someone with whom we have a personal relationship, I am pleased that she is someone connected in some fashion to SSI. And that amazement is not because we want to somehow tag onto her prestigious honor but serves as a reminder that anyone...virtually anyone...can achieve wonderous things if we follow our dreams, our instincts and our inspirations.

Congratulations go out to Anne and to proud Melinda! You inspire us to be all that we can be!

Haitian Relief Efforts

Sometimes what we as interior designers do seems so superfluous, especially when viewed relative to what has happened in Haiti this week. Working primarily within the borders of the USA, and in the more defined areas of North Carolina and Virginia we have often had those moments where a client will tell us that our talents have changed their lives for the better; that their house functions better for their families, and that their new rooms make them feel special in their own house.

But the Haitian earthquake leaves many of us who have the fortune of working with color, and with design, and with America’s affluent, feeling helpless. How do you separate what we do on a day-to-day basis with the primitive, impoverished pre-quake conditions of a country like Haiti? More importantly, how do you justify our regal lifestyles, our state-of-the-art medical care, our safe neighborhoods, and our comparatively docile lifestyle with the daily happenings in Haiti since the quake occurred?

Basically we don’t and we cannot. But we can help in every way we can…and right now that is with our donations and with our prayers because that is all that we can do from afar. SSI Design Group will donate 10% from our sales for furnishings and accessories and from our hourly fees for the next 30 days to the relief efforts in Haiti. Join us in the efforts to relieve the suffering… donate to your local Red Cross and offer up your prayers for the children and all of those caught in the despair in Haiti.

SSI 2009 Year-End Party

SSI recently celebrated our 2009 year with a wonderful dinner at Bravo's in Greensboro! While we were missing a couple of our favorite designers, all that attended had a great time! We honored Gina Alem and Melinda Dickey with their "Designer of the Year" designations for 2008 & 2009 respectively; and our design intern/assistant Jackie Alvarez for her creative graphic contributions for the Chic Chateau ticket, poster and program design.