Design Stalker!

It is getting easier to be a Design Stalker these days. Especially when the team of Veranda magazine and ADAC (Atlanta Decorative Arts Center) come together to present the celebrities of the design world at one of their events. The fabulous team of Brooke, an interior designer, and Steve Giannetti, a well known architect, were the inspirational team yesterday at an event in the beautiful showroom of Ainsworh & Noah at ADAC.

Winton Noah, Steve Giannetti, Brooke Giannetti, Hal Ainsworth

The Dynamic Duo were introduced by their good friend and editor of Veranda magazine, Lisa Newsom. Lisa met Brooke through her blog "Velvet and Linen." During a time that they spent in Santa Barbara, near where the Giannetti's live and run their full service design firm and shop, Giannetti Home, Lisa and Leslie Newsom Rascoe, call them and were invite out on their boat. They have been good friends ever since. Veranda featured the Gainnetti Home in the July-August issue this year.

                                             Lisa Newsom, Brooke Giannetti, Leslie Newsom Rascoe

THe Giannettis were at ADAC to talk with a group of southeast designers that were eager to hear about Velvet and Linen and their new book Patina Style. Their style is a blend of the old and the new, the beautiful and the functional. They design for real families and approach each job to tell the story of that family by their home and its design. They use muted, natural colors to create a calm retreat from the hectic daily life of these families.
They have also added a furniture line to the many hats they wear, along with being parents to three children and assorted animals!

They gave an exciting presentation that ended with a question and answer time. I was amazed at how freely they shared the stage and the presentation flowed effortlessly back and forth between the two. You could tell they were a couple that worked well together. One of the questions that was asked "was how do you manage your life working all day together and then being together in the evening?"

 Steve laughingly answered, alcohol!

Here are a few shots of their work and you can see more on the website:

www.GiannettiArchitects.com

And here I am with Brooke after she so graciously signed my copy of Patina Style!

Life isn't the things you own, but the experiences you have with them.

Brooke and Steve Giannetti

Interior Design is heading Outdoors!



There is nothing like Fall in the South! Summers sweltering tempertures are finally starting to subside and the time has arrived to move your entertaining outdoors.  Now is the time to think about creating those special outside places. Interior design is heading to the exterior.       

Bunny Williams

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

My Home Ideas

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James

Southern Living

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
~John Donne

My Home Ideas

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart. ~Hal Borland

Southern Living

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
~George Cooper, "October's Party"

Home Bunch

By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer's best of weather And autumn's best of cheer. Helen Hunt Jackson

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

Southern Savy Style

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. ~Samuel Butler

I hope these pictures will give you some inspiration to take your interior outside. Grab a glass of wine and go enjoy the beautiful colors mother nature has to offer while you are surrounded by the wonderful brisk air of Fall!

Interior Design of the 60's is showcased in the Help

If you grew up in the south during the sixties, the movie The Help, immediately transported you back in time.  Kathryn Stockett tells a very compelling story about an unlikely friendship between three women in Jackson, Mississippi. There were so many familiar things about that era that I recognized. My freshman year in high school was the first year the schools were integrated in my hometown. Having lived during that time, I can see why Skeeter, Abilene and Minnie's book set the town on its ear! I look back at that time and see how far we have all come. Stockett's story of the black women of Jackson in 1962 brings that time vividly back to life.

The set decorator Rena DeAngelo, takes the main characters of this story and shows each ones personality in their homes interiors. DeAngelo and Mark Ricker, the sets production designer, used fabric, wallpaper, furniture and accessories to bring these characters to life on the screen. 
 

One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Skeeter's mother says to her, Love and hate are two horns on the same goat! That is how I feel about the sixties and interior design! There are some good things and some oh so not good things!

One of the good things to remain is a traditional four poster bed with a beautiful canopy treatment.

One that needed to go was the TV tray!

Our house had these same heavy cornice window treatments in the living room and dining room when I was in high school. But I don't ever remember wearing a bow like that in my hair!

And we had louvered doors like this between the living room and dining  room.

Another style to keep is the settee that Skeeter and her mother are sitting on. I have one just like it in my house now. But it is covered in a leopard print!

I remember we had one of those lovely pole lamps and a paneled den. Also that low back sectional furniture was all the rage!

I don't remember the formica table and the check vinyl floor at my parents house. But this kitchen could have come straight out of my grandmother's home. Vinyl has gone through a number of upgrades since the sixties, but I don't think there was much that could be done for that dinette set!

I do believe this was the only wrought iron pattern they had during that time! I think every outdoor terrace or patio area had one! This day and time the choices in outdoor furniture are endless.

And last but not least is Hilly's pink bathroom. I had this same beautiful shade of pink in my bathroom growing up! It is now my grandson's bathroom and it is chocolate brown with white beadboard. I was so happy to see that pink GO!

Yes we have come a long way in so many different part of our lives and homes.

 But as in all things.....what goes around comes around! So it will be interesting to see what design comes back next!