Time to Celebrate!

I got to celebrate my fourth of July holiday in Flaming Gorge with boating and camping. It was such a great trip filled with lots of sun, good food, new experiences, and great people! Here are some pics of my trip:

Glitz & Glamour

Today involved three lighting reps coming from the company called MM&A, which stands for Marian McComb & Associates. They specialize in Swarovski Lighting, Schonbek, Basic Source, Holtkoetter, and Zenith International. The products that they showed were exquisite and incredible. They are all very high end lighting companies. Bengt also had the opportunity to be featured in an ad for small businesses with Zions Bank. They had done some filming of him before on my first day of my internship and this was part 2 of the process. Once the video is produced and made it will be sent out to a huge amount of people. He was asked some questions about his business and they took photo's of the showroom. We did a little, well maybe a lot of cleaning to make it photo ready. It was a great opportunity for his company and I'm excited to see what type of response he will receive. Here are some images of things that stood out to me from the lighting rep's:

Diamonds are woven into carpet.... Crazy & Wow!

Schonbek Chandelier- What a beauty!

Looking for great style & great quality?
Just combine swarovski  diamonds & schonbek lighting
and you got it with a huge price tag. 

Try Again

Today involved presenting the new furniture selections to the client. Overall, I had more winners than losers this time around. She was unsure of her style in the beginning but I am able to point out things and automatically know what things she will like and dislike. We have a good range of client's, all with very diverse styles. I like being able to see the differences of styles but also seeing the beauty of each style too.  Our most recent client really likes the style of these companies:

www.allmodern.com

www.eurostylelighting.com

inmod.com

"Town"

Today I continued working on furniture selections for a client and searching out more modern and contemporary pieces that she would enjoy. In the morning, I got to meet with a rep. from "Town", it is in the Denver Design District in Colorado. She was a fabric rep. and came with great samples. I was even able to ask some "intelligent questions" about the fabric. Thanks Darrin! I am beginning to know Bengt's style and hopefully picked out samples that he would like. We are currently working on a project that needed a big, bold stripe and guess who delivered? "Town" did. I looked at their website and found out some more manufacturers that they carry. Here is a link to their website & some images of the fabrics that she displayed:
http://www.denverdesign.com/productsandmanufacturers/showrooms/showroom.php?id=43

ROMO Fabrics

Bold stripe with a subtle herringbone pattern. This picture doesn't give it justice 

After the meeting with the rep. I was able to keep working on new selections for another client and got to also make some more material selections with another client as well. A good day's work one might say....

Presentation

Today I got to do my first official client meeting and I was in charge of it. Bengt had a meeting and wouldn't be able to attend the meeting with the client. So, he asked if I would be okay to go over the selection of furniture pieces and present to her the design that we had come up with. Oh boy! I was pretty excited to see what her opinion of the design was and how she liked it.  I was also able to do some research to help me design a space for her autistic son too. It was interesting and fun to gain some knowledge to best meet the needs of her son and still design a stylish space. 
                   Below are some of the furniture selections for her house that is under construction:

Selections for the Master Bedroom

Selections for Family Room

Selections for Study

Well the presentation got started and her first response was that she didn't like the style. She mostly liked one of the two furniture pieces and was unhappy with the other options. This presentation allowed me to see what her style was and to press onward. This process also was a time for her to also figure out her own style and then allow us to better suit her needs and accomplish what we could help her with. In a way, we discovered along with her what style she liked. In the presentation, she got excited to see what I had put together for her son and was happy with some of the ideas and solutions that I gave her. Overall, I learned a lot and look forward to the challenge of finding pieces to fit her style and needs.

Regency Royale

Today I was able to visit the Regency Royale showroom after work and enjoyed myself a lot. The main manager stopped by at Bengt's and invited me to come see the showroom. It sounded like a good opportunity so I went. They have so many different options and were able to give me a little tour through some of their main products line. The people that work there are super helpful and knowledgeable.

                             Check out their website for more info: www.regencyroyale.com

Regency Royale Showroom

Different Options for Rug Patterns

They had lots of fun textured wall coverings that I would want to
use someday on  a project. This is a printed cork wall covering. 

YAY! & OH NO!

This weekend involved traveling to Cache Valley to remedy my car less situation. This post will involve two main parts yay and oh no! The YAY involves what you see below these words. I got a good deal on the beauty of a car. Love it and it so much more reliable than my last car. I don't have to fill the engine with oil because it leaked out the night before. 

oh yeah baby!!!

But it seems with my streak of bad luck throughout this internship I wasn't supposed to drive my new car home. The drive home involved a rock about the size of a baseball hitting my rear passenger tire & shredding it to pieces.  This is the Oh No part of this post! When this happened this was also the first time ever driving this car on the freeway. So once again, I go home car less but grateful to my great Mom for all of her help during this time. 

NOT GOOD  :'[

Itchy

On top of car trouble my body has been having an allergic reaction to some unknown thing around me. It causes my eyes to swell up and I itch like crazy on my body. I felt really bad but took Thursday off and worked on things from home for Bengt today since I'm itchy and car less at the presence time. I finished up the revised drawings of the kitchen for Bengt and sent them in to him. I introduced the idea of using a drop box account at work and Bengt loved the concept. He was constantly saying the first day, "oh I just dropped it into Dropbox or it is in the drop box account." He is a fun person to work with and makes me feel really comfortable to make suggestions or comments when I feel that I should. Hopefully the next time I write, my weird allergic reaction will be a thing of the past. 

Thanks Steve for the introduction to the greatness of Dropbox!

Coffered Ceilings

I am currently working on a project with some incredible architecture. I am working on the great room that ranks above many great rooms that I have entered. It has two grand entrances with columns and arches to grab your attention. I get to design the fireplace wall and come up with different options for the client to view.       I also get to design the coffers on the ceiling. I found some really fun and creative ideas for a coffered ceiling. Below are some images I found from my study abroad experience of last summer to get my brain moving of some fun ceiling pattern ideas...

Here is also a link on youtube that I found to help explain about the process of building a coffered ceiling. I will give out a warning that it is a little cheesy and long but kind of informative. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIypJv5lMPs

Goodbye to a Good Friend

A story to begin my crazy Monday morning...
I was on my way to my sister's house in Clinton on Sunday and merging onto the freeway when my car decides to decelerate instead of accelerate when I push on the gas pedal. Scary! I weighed my options while my car also was shaking pretty hard at close to 40 mph. Luckily, I was able to pull to the side and put on my emergency lights. I went over my options and came to the conclusion to start my car again and see what happened. It started and the engine began to shake again so I went back to where I started. Now on Monday, I took the car in to a local transmission shop and got an estimate and technician to look at it. His diagnosis wasn't what I was hoping for. He said I would need a complete overhaul and it would cost close to 1700.00. Ouch!!! With my current income status at $0.00 an hour this was some scary news to hear. But life still keeps moving whether or not you would rather be standing still or in the fetal position on the floor. Haha :) So after I was able to get the car looked at and I went into work, Bengt is so great and helpful with this whole situation. Got there later and the day flew by with many things to work out in my mind. I am so grateful for the many people that assisted me through this crazy day and whatever would be ahead of me.  

Don't let this picture fool you.... a bad transmission is hiding under that shiny hood.   

Soon I will have to say goodbye to this friend/car. We survived most of high school & college together. 

First Week Done

Well it is finally Friday.... I worked on the kitchen layout some more in Revit and picked out some fabric and lighting options for another client. It is crazy that my first week has already flown by. This opportunity makes me excited for when school will be over and I will be able to have a job like this to go to every day. This is why you go to school, so that you can live your dream every day and not just go to work every day. Now for the weekend... Yay!!!