Shout-out Small Business Week!

Did you know this week was National Small Business Week?

I honestly can't even begin to express how challenging it is to own and operate a small business. That is not a complaint, it is simply a fact. Every reward, every success, every victory is multiplied when you are a small business owner as we are given some gratification for all the sweat, heart, passion, sometimes tears, sometimes sleeplessness, personal investments and sacrifices that were required for every achievment.

I worked for small business for much of my life. Prior to opening Storibook Designs I managed multi-million dollar budgets and in retail, lead the small store and staff I managed to achieve over $7 million dollars in annual sales. Even with that, I am here to tell you, none of it compares to being the one - the sole person - responsible for everying - a small-business owner!

I've learned that the only thing that truly prepares you for being a small business owner is being a small business owner! And, of course, a willingness to take risks, an ability to perservere through losses and the resiliancy to know and accept that failure is as much a part of success as is victory.

To all my fellow small-business owners out there, I salute you! What it takes to keep things going is no small thing at all. Congratulations on living your dream, accumulating successes and keeping it going!

If you haven't supported a small business this week, I hope you will!

Dining by Design: Barry Dixon shares early influences

I had the honor of interviewing one of the world's most talented and admired interior designers of our day, Barry Darr Dixon! His portfolio - in addition to his amazing interiors - boasts books, fabric, rugs, furniture, an amazing new home collection through Arteriors - [take a peek at that design process in this video], and soon to include paint. He is among the “legends” in the design world that we look to for inspiration and study.

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Traditional Home, left photo: Matthew Benson

I literally had a smile on my face from the start of the interview to the very end - some two hours later! That is an awful lot to serve you in one sitting, so I've decided instead to slice it up into a few posts so that you have time to savour each segment as you would each course in a great meal. Where is the best place to start? Always, at the beginning; so I'll start with Barry's reflections, looking back on his early years.

“I grew up in a wonderful household, but a fairly formal one steeped in strict southern traditions – the way that you do things, the way that you set a table, the way napkins are folded. That was where I started and then I cross-pollinated with the dining experiences of living on every continent before I finished high school. There is a lot of cross-cultural pollination in our work and in our habits. Dining is one of those habits that you acquire through life; not only what you serve and what you put on the table but how it’s served and how you perceive those experiences along the way.”

Barry Dixon's upbringing, his travels and his impressive portfolio are far beyond where my years have taken me. I grew up in a small town; the biggest historical lesson happening there being one well-covered visit from President Jimmy Carter in 1977! Yet Barry has no air about him, no attitude and chatted with me as if we knew each other for years. As I reflected on our conversation, I thought a lot about the common descriptive always heard following Barry's name, "true Southern gentleman", and though true, I realized it is also too vague. Gentleman is only a label; a result of the character traits of gentleness, kindness and respect for others. Barry Dixon exudes all of these and treats everyone - and everything for that matter - with respect. It is from those admirable qualities that this, "southern gentleman" is born.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Barry Dixon was in the second grade when his father took a job that brought the family around the world. Tennessee and parts of Arkansas are the grounding places that he calls home though and he shared some childhood memories that have influenced the way he lives today. I love to hear the change in tone and inflection when I ask a question that clearly conjures up meaningful and special memories for someone. In Barry’s case, this was definitely when he spoke of his Grandmother Darr, his mother’s mother, and memories of spending time on his grandparents farm. His voice changed, with words coming faster and a bit louder; I could hear him reliving the experience as he narrated. I was telling Barry a bit about my upbringing – and well, the picnic table came up - and that triggered these sweet memories for him.

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The "Nettie Darr" table [front] is a design in honor of Barry Dixon's Grandmother

Garden Dining Area at Barry Dixon's Home via
Reminiscient in feeling of sitting under the shade of the pecan trees

"I remember being a kid and going to spend the summer weeks with my grandparents in the South. I think about my grandmother Darr, my mother’s mother, during the waning halcyon days of the “cotton is king”, southern sensibility era. Everyone farmed, whether a family had another business or not, they still farmed. My mother’s family was involved with cotton gins but they also farmed cotton bean, tweed, that sort of thing."


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An old coffee tin of Barry's Grandmother Darr, inspired one of his fabrics, Cacao Vine, for Vervain

"In those days, everything was about service and hospitality. Part of the charge of the matriarch of a large operation in the south then was meal preparation. Lunchtime would arrive and all the people that worked for you, both the fulltime people as well as the seasonal people, had to stop what they were doing and come in from the fields and be served what, from my grandmother’s perspective, was a gracious, wonderful lunch.

I remember there was a giant Pecan Grove on the side of the main house of my grandparents farm, there were orchards – it was a sustainable lifestyle, technically – with the animals, the cattle, the fresh eggs, fresh churned butter and all these wonderful things but it was a very Martha Stewart moment when lunchtime came around because she would - with the people that helped her – get right in there, with her sleeves rolled up. It didn’t matter how many people there were; if there were 10 people or 100 people coming in from the fields, she would have prepared it."

Pecan Grove via MS Design Maven

"The pecans were grown there as much for the pecans, as for the shade and the coolness they gave you. It was a wonderful cool area in that hot southern climate to feed your field hands and farm workers. And they would have three to five, six, seven tables lined up, all set with red and white checkered cloths, daisies and coffee pots on the table. There was no such thing as paper plates. Everything was real. Maybe everything didn’t match perfectly but it was set beautifully. Real porcelain, real glass, real everything!

There was fried chicken for 100 people, hand pan-fried and creamed potatoes served in blue willow out on those red and white checkered table cloths. There were green beans, cold salads and ambrosia with coconut and mandarin oranges. I can remember there would be an array of desserts and cobblers in long dishes and so people would know what type of cobbler it was – if somebody wanted strawberry rhubarb and someone else wanted plum or peach - my grandmother would cut little fruits and leaves on the lattice top of the three-layer cobblers so people would know before cutting into it. Homemade whipped cream, homemade ice cream, churned right there in the backyard when it was really hot.

I can still see what it looked like; I can still smell it. People nowadays would cater an event like this but not in those days. That was hospitality and that was important! You weren’t inside the house in a formal dining room but what a rich dining experience. The same thing you’d see on the cover of any gourmet magazine now; that is what they served farm hands back in the day.

On the other side of the family, I can remember bells underneath the tables that you stepped on and then service just appeared magically and all that. But on my mother’s side, it was just a different side of that same thing. They were both wonderful and beautiful and steeped in history . They were both hospitable and colored the way I live today, and I live between the two.

Formal guests that you don’t know so well love being treated with a familial essence and yet, you’re most informal, familiar guests – long-term friends and family – love a little bit of thought, formality and consideration put in to their dining experience. If it’s just getting up for coffee and yogurt and granola in the morning, I put everything out. I have flowers. I don’t serve anything in other than a serving dish or some little vessel that is special because they are worth it, they merit consideration; they are the ones you love."

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What did Barry carry forward from these experiences?  There is a quote that came to mind for him, "treat your family like guests and your guests like family", a hospitality his grandparents always extended. "Whether on a formal or informal level, I always try to think that way", and that is a philsophy I think he extends to others all the time; it is not exclusive to the dining experience. What early experiences have influenced the way you host, serve and share dining moments?

As I listened to Barry share these special and intimate details of his family life, I couldn’t help but wish we were sitting with a pile of his family photo albums in front of us but through his telling of his story and the pure joy in his voice, a clear picture was formed in my mind. I felt like I was sitting in the Pecan Grove having lunch there too. I hope this journal entry left you feeling the same!

I have so much more on the menu from my conversation with Barry Dixon, but let's savor this and I'll share more with you in the next post! Until then, who else is in the mood for apple cobbler or a slice of pecan pie?

Dining by Design with Courtney Price

Courtney Price is a Dallas designer and artist. Active in social media, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Courtney through twitter chats and conversations. Most recently, she was an invited guest host on my #customwrkrmchat, where she shared her much-more-exciting honor, as one of only a handfull of interior designers – 19 to be exact – invited by Brizo to enjoy 3-days of networking and front-row attendance at the Jason Wu showing during New York Fashion Week! 

Courtney Price with Judd Lord, Brizo
via Jayme Thornton Photography 

There are a few things about Courtney that struck me immediately: elegance, calm and wisdom. It was no surprise then, when I learned that Courtney infuses a wholistic approach in both her personal life and her design work. Courtney’s business tagline, “fine living expresses itself with subtlety and intuition,” represents this approach perfectly. Her personal commitment to wellness and nutrition fuel her days and are inevitably integrated into all she does. An accomplished artist and painter, with a background and passion for culinary arts, she infuses a sense of style and beauty to interior spaces that is truly unique and, particularly when it comes to dining and kitchen spaces, has a keen sense of how to marry aesthetics and function to allow for both, work and entertaining.

Sarah Sarna, a residential interior designer based in Manhattan, spent some time with Courtney at the Brizo event said to me,

“Courtney understands that the art of hosting is making guests feel comfortable. As an interior designer she has gorgeous taste, beauty, and a killer eye. In addition to these wonderful gifts, what makes her a standout in interior design and as a hostess in her home is her effortless focus on those she's with rather than on herself.”

That is exactly the type of person worth listening to when thinking about dining by design! So let me share some of Courtney's thoughts, as she shared with me:

Tell me about your experience as a cook and your passion for culinary arts?
I can hold my own in the kitchen. I helped teach the French-menu class at a culinary school, and attended classes at another culinary school more recently. My husband and I are always trying something new. We like to make nutritious food gourmet and beautiful, but of course we also have our comfort-food moments and our splurges. Whenever we have an exceptional meal out of town or at a great restaurant, I try to recreate it at home.

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What Courtney is pinning in her culinary delights [aka Yum] board is definitely worth a visit, as it illustrates her desire to create foods far more beautiful than the I'm-of-Irish-descent style of cooking that comes out of my kitchen. It really leaves me wishing I was a lot closer to Texas!

Do you have any “rules” for entertaining and meal planning that will help readers?
It doesn't matter how many courses you serve but what does matter is that guests don't get overfed. Thanksgiving-day misery is never forgotten, and no matter how good your food was, it will not be remembered over a belly ache. It is always best to leave the guests craving just one more bite.

Remember that how you start the evening, is as important as the main course. Great bite size starters with drinks set the tone for the rest of the evening and working with fresh seasonal foods is critical.

hors d'oeuvre prepared by Courtney

Share the planning & hosting responsibility! My husband is in charge of all drinks and wine choices. Thank goodness; he is great at it and allows us both to give to and serve our guests as host and hostess. 

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And finally, something someone suggested to me years ago – that I use religiously – is to maintain an entertaining book. I use it to log in guests and menus, which is useful to prevent serving the same meal twice and to keep notes about food allergies and aversions friends might have.

What makes a great dinner party?
Planning. Planning. Planning. It's all in the details from the drinks you serve, the cocktail food, the timing of the meal, the table setting and carefully chosen guests who will blend well. 

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Can you share with us one of the most memorable dinner affairs you’ve been to?
The element of surprise can be powerful in setting the tone of the evening. I have a friend who is THE most creative entertainer. Her invitation told guests to wear all black, which they did. Just inside the front door of her house were two baskets with many same-size items rolled up, tied in orange ribbons for females and green for males. Upon arrival, each guest was to take one and put it on. Want to know what they were? ........ His/her naked aprons, all different! People laughed all night long at each other. The memories from the evening are absolutely hilarious. This friend always has something fun up her sleeve like that, she is brilliant.

What type of entertaining do you prefer?
If I am doing the entertaining, small is my preference, 6-8 people is a good size group. I am all about comfort. Guests should be relaxed and have fun. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; all that is needed is a group that brings a love of food, a positive attitude and a great sense of humor.

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Conversation among guests is just as important as what you serve. You want to consider couples who enjoy each other and singles that are fun and upbeat. Guests don't all have to know each other in advance but I like to mix people who enjoy life, are positive and have a sense of humor.

I have observed that depending on the group, guests want to be involved. I had a fun group like this once, so I themed the evening as a summertime "white elephant" type party, where everyone brought a summer entertaining themed gift (capped off at a certain price point). The guests came with the cleverest gifts, all ready for a fun evening, and the gloves came off when everybody duked it out for the best gifts. People loved it. That concept can be done with any theme and can help break the ice if people do not all know each other.

If you could pick three people – however unlikely – you would love to have dinner with, who would they be?
Not that they need to be at the same table, but Ralph Lauren for his design inspiration, Barbara Barry for the same reason, Don Draper (the character) and maybe Sasha Baron Cohen, though he’d probably be better for a large group because who knows what character he would show up as. He would liven the party, for sure! 

Yeah, Courtney, I'm not sure how Sasha would work out considering he says of himself, "he would prefer to turn up to events as one of his characters, because he's an embarrassment when he arrives as himself." Hard to believe that arriving as Bruno could be better than his IRL persona! Could you imagine Bruno arriving for dinner in this sophisticated Barbara Barry space?

Barbara Barry

What do you consider the 3 “must-haves” a good host(ess) should never forget?
First, the root of all great party planning is considering each stage of the evening and each guest individually. Everyone should feel like the guest of honor. Second, careful organization and planning. It is important to have every detail possible ready in advance so you actually have time to spend enjoying your guests company. Finally, creativity for theme, food and table setting.

Larry Laslo

When you arrive at a dinner party, what is the first thing that you take note of?
The first thing I notice when I arrive for a party or dinner is the smell of a delicious dinner being cooked for me. What an honor that somebody has gone to the trouble to plan, shop, prepare and serve another. 

Growing up, dinner was a nightly formal affair for the entire family. We had formal food, formal table and had to dress for dinner, dog at MY feet. :) 

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Dinner in today's world is more casual. Everything is. Times have changed and home trends have changed, phasing out the formal living rooms and formal dining rooms to create mixed use spaces such as library/dining rooms and open kitchens. These changes create different ways of eating together and entertaining that are refreshingly casual. I enjoy seeing how my friends incorporate this change in dining when invited to their homes.

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Can you share some tips for table-setting, from your perspective as designer, guest and hostess? As for the table setting, it depends on the theme or the dinner menu, and I have no rules, it just depends on what you have. A table set in advance tells the guests that they matter, guests always notice. If you have nice silver, china or crystal, for goodness sake, USE IT! That "special day" may never come, every day is special. Use what you have and enjoy making it inviting.

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A table does not have to be set expensively to be welcoming. If you don't have formal settings, no sweat, a thoughtfully planned table is the key. The energy one puts into it will always be felt.

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Flowers should be low enough [or high enough in some cases] that guests can converse across the table and in my opinion, I don't care whether seating alternates boy/girl - I want seating to promote best conversation.

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“People, Place or Palate”: which is required to make a great dinner party?
All of the above! Choose your guests carefully and plan it well enough to be able to spend time with them! Food should have the balance of being equally beautiful and delicious. Those who you share a meal with should positively fuel you as well.

I could not agree more, Courtney! Thank you for your insight and inspiration. I have always considered myself a good cook, however, you have just put me in my place! I think I just may have to take my culinary skills up a notch or two. We will continue to keep an eye on your website and Pinterest albums for ongoing inspiration. It is quickly noted that the dining room and entertaining ideas pinned as inspiration on your boards mirror all you shared with us today.

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In a nutshell, what works well for current-day dining areas, according to Courtney Price Design? Dining spaces with round tables -great for intimate dinners with friends, areas where drama is created through strong contrast of  color, such as black and white, and/or the merging of masculine and feminine details; and casual spaces with elegance created from an eclectic mix of furniture, art and accessories.

How does your dining space rate when you look at it after reading this? Is it time to step out a bit in style and create some more interest? As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments!

Thanks for sharing a seat at the table!

Bon Appetit! ~ Sarah


It's Official: I've Got Too Much on My Plate!

Why do we do this to ourselves these days? So many of us are guilty of this; too few are expert at avoiding the issue. You know it. Too. Much.On.My.Plate! You have probably experience it yourself!

Business: appointments, fabrication, social media, content creation, communications, paperwork.... need I go on?

Personal: eat, sleep, meaningless conversations, fitness, fun.... why does it feel impossible to fit this all in?

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So I admit it. I'm juggling and struggling, working on balance. In the meantime, while I'm off balance, I hope you'll cut me some slack!

I've got some great Dining by Design features coming your way and so much more; I just need three assistants, about 7.25 hours to everyday and a way to figure out how to get my kettlebell swings in while I sleep. Since I don't foresee any of that magically happening in the near future I must revert back to my earlier request.... slack, please!

How about you? Is there too much on your plate too? How do you fit it all in these days?

NEW BLOG: Everything You've heard about me is probably true.....

It was June 21, 2009. That was not the first time I thought it, but it was the first time I told my niece that I thought she should start a blog. It went something like this:

Me: “you have to check out this site! Every time I read it, I think, ‘Caitlin could totally do this’. She's hysterical - like you - brutally honest and obviously quite bright…..you get to be on stage in a way, just safely behind a computer”

Her: “If I do start my own page I'll dedicate it to my family for giving me enough dysfunction to support a lifetime of material... mwuahahh oh life. Thanks for making me laugh!”

Well, it’s 2012. She’s been busy so it took a while to truly consider an old Aunts advice, but guess what, folks? She’s finally done it. Damn funny and a fabulous writer - three years later, so what! It’s definitely been worth the wait!!



I introduce to you, my niece, Caitlin’s new BRAND NEW BLOG. Please read both posts; the first is hysterical and the second, well, incredibly heartfelt and, at least for me, an emotional joy to read. I promise you will enjoy them both.

Congrats, Cait; I love it and you!! You will rock the blog world, this I know!!