Cashiers is my Happy Place - The 2013 Designers Showhouse

Ever since childhood, when Mama and Daddy would pile us into the Suburban and start our northerly trek to Cashiers from Middle Georgia, I have relished the very thought of heading to those sacred hills.

A feeling washes over me in Cashiers - a calmness bathed in hay-fern scented air and cool summer nights. Cashiers is like summer camp for grownups! The same childhood anticipation and delight - somewhat akin to Christmas morning - still surges my soul the night before I leave for the mountains.

For the past four summers, I have had the utmost pleasure and so much fun really of being a part of the Cashiers Historical Society's Designers Showhouse - the pinnacle of my summer and a highlight of my year. This last summer, the thrill was monumental, for I was selected as the designer for the main living room! Y'all, this room, née, I say great hall from a lodge more so, was truly the peak experience to show some design prowess.

The space was nearly a thousand square feet and required vast amounts of furniture. Thankfully, I own a small shop, but more thankfully I have friends in the design business to loan me fabulous finds to fill up the space. Filling up though is not the goal- proper placement and designing a lifestyle was to be the ultimate achievement.

My amazingly talented friend Kathleen Rivers served as Showhouse Chair and immediately presented me with my first challenge- paint! The room had little wall space but a vast, sloping ceiling and leftover bits of odds and end paneling that, that, along with the shag carpet mind you, enveloped you into a time capsule of midcentury style - but not the chic midcentury style one desires!

I went to my go-to colors of Benjamin Moore's Linen White for the walls and Ice Cap for the ceiling - which took some convincing but delivered a thrilling result. The mountain views at this home are nothing short of breathtaking - almost more Montana than North Carolina - and I needed to recreate that sky and light into the living room. My said colors proved the pudding! For the floor, wall-to-wall sisal blanketed and further anchored the nature-inspired palette.

 

Since this space is a living room, I decided to create such a room - a room for living! Dining, sitting, visiting and entertaining all had to fit within the space for a true living room.

Anchoring the room was a French beret table my wonderful friend Sally loaned me from her eponymous shop, Dovetail Antiques, in Cashiers. The table was literally one of the heaviest and most challenging pieces (they had to walk it down a sloping knoll and then up stairs and across a deck) my buddies from McCorquedale Transfer even installed for me, but I knew it was the table. Plus, Ollie, the stuffed otter who was to be the table's centerpiece, was going to look so handsome atop this sensational table and epicenter of the tableau in turn. My friend Jason Moattar loaned me the tribal, diamond-patterned rug that kept the dinging space anchored with an earthiness and casualness that the Cashiers' style affords – tradition with a twist!

Three seating areas then served as a triumvirate of grouping for which to relax, converse, enjoy a fire from the dueling fireplaces or simply take in the scenery. The two fireplace seating areas were duets of leather wing chairs from Holland and Company complete with an Irish pine coffee table for one grouping and a simple, heavy woven white upholstered ottoman for the other. Thus these accouterments gave each spot a place for display, propping up your feet or even a casual dinner. My dear and super-talented friend, Carrie Beskin, loaned me two limed French wine tables that I used for side tables - I'm a sucker for limed wood and Carrie was so kind to loan me hers. Blue and white lamps given a contemporary twist with acrylic bases and flowers and family photos dotted the tables too and, thus, brought personal touches to the room.

 

My buddy Beau Holland lent me a gracious stack of stag horns to crest the soaring walls along with a pair of handsome leather club chairs that I paired with a white sofa, limed pine and zinc tables, a driftwood and glass coffee table and a Black Forest carving (a family piece my sisters and cousins will have to fight me for‼!). Wispy, gauzy white linen hung simply from bamboo rods on the five sets of French doors leading to the deck and awesome views beyond. The deck was simple in its decor with antique hickory rockers, garden stools in shades of aqua, jade and celadon and some iron turkeys nestled into faux bois planters of fern and hosta. My always gracious and fellow gardener Judy at the Village Gardener in Cashiers outfitted the awe-inspired hanging baskets that suspended and catapulted into the mountain forest with summer plantings that fair so well in the mountains.

 

Shelves stacked with books new and old, a Bavarian fish set and some vintage art further gave the room purpose as a place to study, read and boast a collection. A short wall in height and width still got the grand treatment with a Jacobean chest and fabulous pine bullseye mirror from Beau Holland and some of my favorite things too - my French needlepoint bird chairs, my vintage Audubon prints, a splash of blue and white and my favorite green Italian bowl filled to the brim with North Carolina apples! A pair of French iron candlesticks turned lamps shed the light on this subject matter. This wall and its symmetry and balance were a fun counterpoint to the white sofa and dark leather chairs on the opposite wall. High and low in colors and weights and even textures are so fulfilling to layer upon a room and house. A pop of turquoise in the Clarence House dragonfly pillows on the needlepoint demonstrates such a layering credo. 

Speaking of pillows, brown plaids and checks along with blue ikats and stripes all found their way into my scheme. Blue and brown and white with whispers of green became the calling card of the room (along with quirky taxidermy of course) and thus reflected the nature just outside. And since the land at this home is a phenomenal horse riding retreat, large equestrian canvases by the uber talented Meredith Keith, from Birmingham accented the antique timber mantles and were guarded by white temple jars that with another pair too became a part of the room's design.

With Cashiers acting as my happy place since childhood, putting together a great room of favorite things made it even more so of a happy place as a "grown up." I hope y'all enjoy these photos of reflection and remembrance of such a joyful experience for me. I was in terrific company with the other designers, and I can assuredly say that this Showhouse was a happy place for all!

 

 photography by Emily Followill

(before pics)

Every Heart Beats True for the Red, White and Blue! Especially in Cashiers!

 

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Cashiers is my happy place. I am relaxed, at home and COOL there. Let me try to differentiate – I am temperature wise “cool” there. I will always be at the wrong table in the lunchroom of life I feel. Oh well – at least there is Cashiers to make me feel cool and refreshed from a Southern summer’s brutal heat. Ain’t no one cute in Dixieland dripping sweat. 

Cashiers Designer Show House 2011… Making an Entrance with ‘Maters

Last year, I had the privilege of decorating the Front Terrace for the Cashiers Show House. To say I had fun is an understatement! Cashiers and Highlands are “happy places” for this Farmer, and I relish any chance to gear up and go on up the mountain! 

For this year’s Show House, I have the Lower Back Porch – and with a new book on porches, well, I was quite ecstatic for this space to be mine. I cannot share all those images just yet but just you wait! This year’s house and designer roster is a knockout list of folks and I am honored to be a part! Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles magazine will of course feature the house again, so get ready for some show house fun soon! 

For my entry, I took inspiration from an unlikely source – heirloom tomatoes! I love their colors – marigold yellow, burnished bronze, sepia hued reds and sienna backed greens. As ya’ll may know, I am a complete sucker for gingham, buffalo checks, plaids and the sort, thus my statement pillows in marigold buffalo check were delightful and jaunty and just right the ‘maters. Striped seat cushions in the same tints as the tomatoes topped Mainly Basket wicker sofas and dining chairs, and my trusty zinc top table, too, helped to set up the dining and seating arrangements.

Wing back chairs made from salvaged lumber also got a dose of buffalo plaid too!

 

Being a sucker too for hydrangeas, I filled the planters of this log cabin wonderland with Tardiva, Limelight and Annabelle varieties and loaded up terra cotta pots with ferns, hostas, and Key Lime huechera. Keeping the mustard yellow, tomato inspired accent in check (pun intended with choice diction), groups of deep yellow French confit jars were on display on my iron and glass coffee and side tables – made from old railing and iron pieces.

 

Now, I did have a few friends that stood guard over my space – keeping a watchful eye over the woodland, mountain terrain – Mr. and Mrs. John Deer and their twin counterparts. A fun part of my travels is finding treasures all across Dixie. I found two pair of deer – a buck and a doe – at Scott’s. Their provenance had been a little town in Alabama where I was about to go on book tour! What a coincidence – the dear deer were meant to be mine. They are now gazing out onto the woods on my family land in Perry, but they told me they wanted to zip back up to Cashiers someday!

 

Show houses are hard work, expensive, time consuming and logistically challenging – but I love every second of them! This year’s show house is of no exception and ya’ll are going to be pleased as punch with this year’s house!

Come on up to the mountains! 

Faux Bois a la Cashiers, NC

So, guess what? I had the amazing opportunity to decorate the Cashiers Designer Show House front entry! Big time designers from Atlanta, Highlands, and Cashiers were on the roster, and this Farmer had the chance to be a part.



For a mountain home entryway, what better could there be than faux bois? What is faux bois, you ask? Well, French for “false wood,” this fashion of furniture and decorative elements has been used for years to mimic the look of wood with concrete or plaster.




Benches, settees, chairs, tables, and planters have been constructed in this fabulous fashion for hundreds of years, and the chance to implement such a design scheme in Cashiers was all too apropos! Planters from Argentina, benches and chairs from a terrific company, and vintage pots from an antique spot in Atlanta – my faux bois fete accomplis was complete.


A collection of turtle shells donning the wall and an antique wire planter greet the home’s visitors at the front door, with ‘Little Lamb’ hydrangeas peaking over Lamb’s Ear and moss. Sticks covered in lichens and moss with Joe Pye Weed dart out of a fantastic French vinegar lavabo and add a touch of the mountain drama to the entry. Pots brimming with lemon basil and ‘Key Lime’ huechera welcome visitors as well, yet the sentries of the entry are my French cast concrete beagles, Pierre and Bernadette.




Straight from France and onto the Cashiers Show House front entry, the lovely patina creatures greet all those who enter the lovely home. They sit and stay so well! Come see Pierre and Bernadette and the rest of the designer show house – any chance to come to Cashiers is a good time for sure! See you in the mountains!

http://www.cashiershistoricalsociety.org/showhouse.php