Starr Miller Interior Design, Inc.

Lake Norman Woman Article - April 2010 - The Scoop on Home Makeovers!

Running behind on my blogs...so it is time to catch up!  Here was my article from April 2010.  HGTV the inside scoop. (Click on article for larger version...)

 

The WhirlWind that was October!

Dear Blog Readers,

My deepest and sincerest apologies for abandoning you in October.  This past month proved to be the busiest on record!

We went for a weekend to our favorite getaway, St. Simons Island, GA so Tom could take some golf lessons at Sea Island and I could see my Father.

Then we had the Member Guest Golf Event at our club where our sweet friends John and Kathy Arnold joined us for 4 fabulous days!

The following weekend brought all that is High Point market!  I will go on and on about that in another post, but it is important to acknowledge that it is an entire city of furniture showrooms and I had a wonderful time looking for the new and unusual!

The week of High Point I was also chairing a fabulous fashion show, Dangerous Curves Ahead for the North Mecklenburg Woman's Club, where we entertained 200 and raised money to send women back to school! 

Our sponsors were the best! Dillards, Standpoint Technologies, Do A Little Floral, Jockey International, MJ's Sugar Shack, LKNSavings.com,Fifth Third Bank, The Style Merchant and the Grill Doctor are just a few!

 
We had fabulous auction items, over 80 in total!

 
 
Amazing fashions and models..

 
 
Below is Gina Story, our MC and one of our Fashion Show Captains, Denise Linerode, another of our Fashion Show Captains and Denise Carter, our President and another Fashion Show Captain.

 
Here is Deborah Maher, our Auction Captain, Brian and Tony of Do A Little Floral and Dianne Kolenski, our Fashion Captain. 

 

Fun was had by all!  In the end we raised a glass and cheered a job well done.

When this picture was taken they sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" - can you stand it?

The next morning Tom and I were off to Alabama for the Alabama-Tennessee football game.

It was the 30th anniversary of our first date and the 20th anniversary of our wedding.  We won the game, whew - in the last second!  This is one tired girl you see below, but if we are going to chronicle this crazy month we might as well show the truth!

 
And since this is a design blog that I scatter with my personal musings...here is a DON"T!

Thank you to all of my clients for indulging this crazy month!  Many of you were along for some of the ride, others were the focus of High Point.  We are back in the office full time and can't wait to catch up on installations!!  Woo Hoo!

Julia Child, Me and a Hotdog

I know, I know this is supposed to be a design blog.  But when it comes down to it how we interpret beauty is simply based on a combination of the people we meet, the things we see, the experiences we have and how we were brought up.  Our interpretation of these things brings us to our own unique perspective.

My Mom was the quintessential 50’s/60’s homemaker. 

 

She believed that a woman’s place was in the home looking after her husband and children.  To that end she set about becoming THE BEST COOK in THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!  She studied the Galloping Gourmet, Julia Child and took 8 years of cooking classes from a rock star teacher in Atanta named Ursula.  When Mom passed away we could not take all of the fabulous handwritten cooking class notes as we truly had no room to house all of it!  We ate well in our family!

When I decided to go out into the working world and not do the homemaker thing I know I broke her heart.  And still today I can cook, but it is a complete mess and my husband runs for cover in fear of flames and spills.  But my working life did afford me some wonderful experiences. 

In 1991 I was a Group Manager at Macy’s Lenox Square in Atlanta.  My role was as the manager over The Cellar, The Home Store, Electronics, Children’s and Shoes.  Because we had the premier store in Atlantawe often had special events in our store. We hosted everyone from Brooke Shields to Joe Namath. In the Home Store we ran through a ton of chefs demonstrating their recipes from their cookbooks.  Most notably, Paul Prudhomme, Kevin Graham, Justin Wilson and THE JULIA CHILD!

They each had their own flair….

 Paul Prudhomme enjoyed his food more than anyone and thusly used a little electric chair to move around and cook. 

 Kevin Graham was all British and refined.  (photo from book jacket)

 Justin Wilson had asked that we have Merlot on hand for cooking.  We had to send one of our people out at the last minute to go get several more bottles as he drank the ones we had marked out of stock for him before the set up was complete.

But Julia Child, in all of her celebrity and tallness (goodness she was tall), was my very favorite!  In our cellar we had a café, deli, wine shop, candy shop and small gourmet store.  It took several fine men to make it all work. 

One of them was William, fun, happy and one of my most innovative managers.  He came to me one day and said that he thought we should have a hot dog stand so that people who were on the run could grab something even quicker than the deli.  I agreed and off he went.  Weeks later when the store manager and I were walking Julia Child around the store (she requested a look see) she was delighted to see the hotdog stand and asked if it would be alright if she had one of William’s hot dogs rather than the fancy deli tray we put together for visiting dignitaries.  So there we stood, Randy (the store manager), William, me and Julia Child having hotdogs. Julia Child, icon, regular gal and hotdog lover.

Can’t wait to see the movie!  Cheers Julia!