a september to remember

Hi friends!

I hope this post finds you well and in full FALL swing! Its like Halloween comes and goes, and bam its Christmas in zero to sixty seconds.

I was definitely in full court press this Fall! Let’s start with the show homes…yes two with an s (what kinda crazy person…). One here in town with my new business partner and dear friend Lindsey! Our new business officially launched in September ELLE + VREELAND DESIGN HOUSE and I’m stoked to be representing the family name in our new title! Be sure to check out our new website above ;-))))

After Dad passed I decided it would be a good time to retreat, rebrand and re-establish my goals. Some of my friends also told me several benefits of rebranding a business. Most importantly, a good rebrand can help in reinventing your business to better match its products or current situation. Additionally, rebranding your business can help any business to connect with a new or changed target market or help keep your business at can keep it on the top of your customers’ mind. So, if you are considering reinventing your business and want to learn more about rebranding, you can check out online resources like Marketing Insider Group.

Coming back to my story, I was very fortunate that when I started this biz, it took off, but I felt like I was always playing catch up, killing myself with long nights of small biz stuff. The perfect time to rebalance and have more time with my kids right? They are growing like weeds?!

Enter Lindsey, who also ran her own design biz, and was getting back into the swing of things after a heartbreaking house fire. I can’t even begin to imagine how devastating this would be. Luckily she had a Fire Guard who protected her and her belongings, but things could have been very different. Depending on the fire damage, you may have to rebuild your whole life, and this could severely impact a person. My friend went through the same thing once and said that the fire damage restoration process was the hardest to deal with, but luckily she had the help of a company similar to ServiceMaster Restoration by Zaba, (https://www.servicemasterbyzaba.com/fire-restoration/), to help her house look like it did before. I didn’t think that was possible, but it is, and I hope Lindsey did it too. She is one brave lady to have to deal with a house fire. When she came back, she decided after going on her first consult, after a year hiatus, that she didn’t want to go it alone. We started talking and here we are! Its been almost a year now and couldn’t be more pleased with the FUN we are having and a more balanced work/life load. AMEN.

We make our alpha dog design egos work in that we both have great client bases, so if it’s her referral, she’s the creative LEAD, has the final say, and vice versa. What a blessing to have someone to divide and conquer, bounce ideas off, and give each other strength! That’s one of the benefits of working together in this business, we know each other’s strengths well so we can ensure that the client is getting high quality every time. As this is a fairly new business, we’re still finding our place and trying to encourage more people to contact us. One of our other friends suggested that we should try and market our new business really. This should get more people visiting our website and learning about what we have to offer. Hopefully, by getting in touch with a company like Victorious (click to read about their services here), we can begin capturing a bigger audience all over the nation. That’s one of the main aims of the business, to help people far and wide. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that soon with some search engine optimization and other marketing techniques!

We recently did our best to knock it out of the park with our sweet, feminine bedroom at the Pinewood Forest Idea House and the ever-gracious Atlanta Magazine HOME.

Such a cool and beautiful neighborhood south of the city in Fayetteville, Georgia, across from the Pinewood Studios. We are extremely grateful for this opportunity to showcase our work together as a team, and had the best time with our designer friends!

And then there was DETROIT, a city with ALLLL the good vibes on the rise! Enter actor Hill Harper (God bless you Hill!!!) and the historic Fisher Mansion he purchased last year and you get a total dream come true for this #madeindetroit girl.

I STILL get goosebumps, and choked up, talking about how this came to be because I daydreamed this day would someday come, where I could return home and give my gifts to a great cause, and it actually happened?!?!

We were eating and drinking our way through High Point last Spring (I dreaded returning to the scene of the crime when I got word Dad passed – not gonna lie). But he decided to bless me instead and we ran into our friend Lori from Aspire Design Magazine She casually mentions the show house in Detroit, historic Boston-Edison, Fisher Mansion and the rest is history…

and probably one of the greatest things to happen to me in my career! THAT’S how special this project and city is to me.

I took inspiration from The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island with the floral canopy and ceiling porch blue paint and these green, gray and black pillows I spied while at High Point. Talk about being in the best place while finding out you are doing a show house in your home state?! It’s like the mecca of inspiration overload.

Dad did his apprenticeship at Fisher Body (he drove me by the apartment he stayed in near Mexican village while attending) so this family’s home holds a special place in the history and evolution of our family #americandream You can see all the beautiful spaces from the Fisher Mansion HERE.

The big opening gala timed out perfectly with our 18 year wedding anniversary so a lot to celebrate in a beautiful city with the most perfect Michigan September weather! We biked miles and miles around Detroit and it is happening team! Stayed in the new hip Siren Hotel and ate amazing food at The Apparatus Room with AMAZING friends. Good times!

Also this Fall, hubby turned FIFTY so we hauled the whole fam overseas to Paris to root on the American team in the Ryder Cup. Sadly they lost but we had a grand time nonetheless!!

When we returned home, I had a brown box in the mail…surprise, surprise, my first spread in a national magazine – on newsstands now! How sweet of them to send me a box of copies?! Thank you for including me in this beautiful issue!

And that my friends is a exhausting September to remember! Sober October shortly followed and I had a few bad days with the year anniversary of Dad’s passing, Mom’s passing and their wedding anniversary all within days of each other. UGH. Needless to say I wasn’t much for socializing (or showering) that weekend. But you know life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns team. Regardless of what people present to the public, we all have our problems, all the more reason to BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.

“If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.”

I hope you all are having a wonderful FALL and I’ll be back shortly with some inspiring pics! On the flight home I found some great ones from a beautiful showroom in High Point worthy of posting. And the college roomies are coming to town!!! YES! For the annual holiday party so all kinds of design updates to share around the crib here too…finally pulled the trigger on four of eight dining chairs – progress!

All the very best to you this season! Pumpkin spice and everything nice!

jennifer sunshine