One Room Challenge

This is the last week of the One Room Challenge before the big reveal next week. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a guest participant for this bi-annual event. I could never have done this without my cheerleaders and sponsors, Seasonal Living and Beyondfloors.net with Bati Orient Tile.

What I did this week

This was a week of finishing up and pulling together all of the hard work that I did the last 7 weeks. I received my new Cube Planters and
Inda Copenhagen Ceramic Cordless Outdoor LED Floor lamp from Seasonal Living and got it all ready for pictures for next week’s reveal. I am finished with all I had planned for this makeover. Wowza I can spend all night outside with my INDA Copenhagen floor lamp with its beautiful ambient LED light!

For my designer friends, I want you to know that my ceramics arrived so well packaged that it would have taken a lot of hard work to damage them in transit!

What else would I like to do?

The only thing that I would like to change is the red brick on the outside of the house. I know I can’t paint but I can certainly ask if we could Lime Wash our house. Like I said before we live in Stepford-on-Steroids and would have to get permission from the Home Owners Association.

Ultimately I would like to plant more of the back yard, but I have learned that I can never do it all at once and it has to be done in stages.

who do I want to thank for this wonderful experience?

I thanks Linda Weinstein from One Room Challenge and Better Homes and Gardens as general sponsors. There are 20 featured guest blogs and 300 plus guest blogs here

I have two groups of sponsors I need to thank equally. Laura and Johnny Flora from Beyondfloors.net along with Bati Orient who sponsored my tiles and Gary Pettitt CEO of Seasonal Living who sponsored the INDA outdoor LED floor lamp and the two beautiful orange ceramic Cube Planters .

This week I am going to focus on Seasonal Living..

Seasonal Living

I met Gary Pettitt, CEO of Seasonal Living at High Point Market last year. I already owned one of Seasonal Living’s Helter Skelter vases. It was purchased from a local store which could not get it through their door because it was too big (lucky me!) I was not really that familiar with their product line but I was genuinely in love with it when I saw it! I love color!

Gary was born in Africa and has also lived in Europe, The Americas and Asia. You could say our African connection made us instant friends. As a South African born designer, I will always carry Africa in my heart.

Seasonal Living impresses me for several reasons. Gary is very focused towards providing hand-crafted products where possible. Hand craftsmanship skills are being lost as we become more global. Seasonal Living loves to support rural and small family businesses.

Seasonal Living uses a ceramics producer which is a small 3rd generation family business in Thailand appointed to the Thai Royal Family . Their concrete factory in Vietnam is European owned and supports a large group of rural Vietnamese families

Both the Ingot copper collection (made in Northwest Mexico) and Etna volcanic stone products (made by a 2nd generation small family business in Italy) are all hand made by local artists and ceramicists.  

Seasonal Living has always had a global mindset towards design and sourcing.  The company sources products from all over the world including the USA. Gary Pettitt believes that their world is richer with really diverse mix of cultures and nationalities.  They employ African Americans, Asians, Europeans, Hispanic, Pacific Islanders etc.  They believe in a fair wage policy.

Per Gary Pettitt “I cannot imagine a world without the incredible diversity and rich  tapestry of cultures and different ways of thinking.  I would not want to work or live in a homogeneous world”.

Truly a boutique company with a global heart.

Sustainability

Seasonal Living is not only a company that cares for its employees and workers, but this is also a company committed to sustainability.

Here are a few examples:

There is no cadmium or lead in the ceramic glazes.

The Perpetual concrete line is sustainably produced without synthetic ingredients. The raw materials used are portland cement, crushed granite, the natural fiber plant, ramie, and clean, spring fed water.

They use recycled teak in their products. The teak is sourced from all over Indonesia.

They use low VOC adhesives

FSC certified eucalyptus is used in some of their products

They are waterwise in production, reusing water and thus limiting environmental pollution

Seasonal Living provides an eclectic mix of colors and products and is most definitely one of my new favorite companies.

Here is a link to Seasonal Living’s beautiful magazine produced by Savour Partnership, owned by my friend and cheerleader Leslie Carothers and her partner Sam Henderson.

More pictures of my back yard and porch

Would you like to buy some of these beautiful products?

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