LaZBoy Design Event in High Point

Imagine this for a minute.

Someone gives you the opportunity to go to a furniture store and design your very own sofa (a pretend sofa for a pretend room).  You get to pick out the frame, the fabric, upgrades, like feather/down pillows, welting, pillows, cording, nail heads.  Then that sofa is shipped to a design studio in NC and you’re told to pick a paint color for the room.  Oh, the pressure!  Then, when you get up there you are going to design the whole room from top to bottom, by running through the LaZBoy showroom and picking out all the other pieces, like accent chairs, side tables, rugs, pillows, artwork, mirrors, lamps, and accessories.  All in just 2 hours!  And you get to dream up your very own room design, whatever your mind can imagine and create!

Does that sound like fun to you?  Well, it certainly did to me, so I took on the challenge when I was given the invitation to attend LaZBoy’s design event with 10 other bloggers (one husband/wife team).  It turned out to be tons of fun and a great design experience too, so I can’t wait to share it all with you.

I’ll start today with the actual event itself, but will share the whole room reveal next week, as well as all the other 9 rooms that were designed.  LaZBoy is about to kick off a very fun design contest with all of the rooms that we did and it will start on November 11th on their Facebook page and ends December 20th, so stay tuned for all of that.  Our rooms will be up for voting and the winner will get a fun collaboration with LaZBoy in the future.  Even if I don’t win, it was such a great experience with this company and I’m so glad I was included.  Another blessing to add to my list of so many things to be grateful for this year!

I am really excited to work with LaZBoy because I do, in fact, have a LaZBoy recliner in my house right now. I bought the striped fabric recliner in my den at the local LaZBoy in Birmingham in 2006.  And my dad reminded me when I got home and told them all about the event, that he owns not one, but TWO LaZBoy recliners.  Yep, his favorite puffy blue overstuffed recliners in both his house here and their mountain house in NC, are both by LaZBoy, so he is a big fan of the brand.  I was so happy to hear that!  My parents get so happy for me with all the things that blogging has brought me and I love sharing it with them too.

So, I want to mention that if you think LaZBoy is all about big puffy blue recliners, then you are SO in for a surprise! Their brand has come a long ways and they are far from old fashioned recliners, they have fresh designs and are very much on trend, as you will see when you get to the final reveals in all the rooms.  I had no problem designing a room around all of their pieces, accessories included.  They have it all!  I’m very happy to begin a partnership with this company and hope to continue working with them in the future.  Their furniture is American made and great quality.

I’ll recap how everything went down and then next week, I’ll show the design day.  It was so much fun.  I’m still so grateful for the opportunities that have come my way and believe me, I do not take them for granted.

This event was especially fun because some of my fave blog friends were there too:  (left to right)  Brittany, me, Emily, Ashley, and Beth.  I knew everyone but 3 of the bloggers who came and it was fun getting to meet them too.

A special treat was running into longtime blog friend, Jen’s mom. Her mom and sister-in-law were part of the catering team and served us so well.  It was great to meet this sweet lady, whose daughter is special to me and was one of my very first blog friends that I met in real life.  After some great appetizers, the curtains parted and we entered this room for dinner.  Yes, WOW!!

It was beautiful! I’m sure dinner was timed perfectly to watch the sunset through these large windows in this loft environment.  Dinners like this are pretty special.

The tables were set with gorgeous flowers and candles on a runner made with fabric from LaZboy.  All just stunning and breath-taking.

Couldn’t get enough of the flowers.

Beautiful displays all the way down the table.

What a treat to mingle with everyone and talk to the LaZBoy folks.  The furniture market was going on during this time and they had brought in some of the top designers from LaZBoy stores all over the country. These designers were there to  help us with our rooms, giving us advice and pointers to make our rooms beautiful.  I shared a designer, Tia, with Beckie.  We’ll get to that part later.

More of the beautiful floral arrangements.

The group setting listening to the presentation.

Mark Bacon, President of LaZBoy was there to greet us and give us more info on the company’s history. They are an American made furniture company who has been around for more than 80 years.  The name LaZBoy has always meant quality to me and it was really fun to see all the new furniture  pieces in the showroom.  Sorry for the grainy pics, had to make do with low light.

The sunset was spectacular and made the dinner even more special.

Presentation and information, I loved the videos he showed of some of the employees at LaZBoy.  It’s obvious that everyone loves the company they work for and were so happy to be there with us sharing.

Next after dinner, we headed out to the LaZBoy showroom in High Point, to check out all the furniture for ourselves.  This is where the dash part came in! We had 2 hours to scour the showroom, grabbing tables, side chairs, and accessories and rugs for our rooms. So yes, there would be a little fighting over things.  I would get to an area and find something I loved, to see someone else had already tagged their name on it. Darn it!  We did end up trading LOTS of stuff back and forth though once we got to the design studio and started putting our rooms together, so it all worked out in the end.   The other bloggers there are:  Ashley and Jamin, Nicole, Marie-Ev, Kelli, KariAnne and Beckie.

We were welcomed by celebrity, Kelly Edwards of HGTV fame. She’s been on several TV shows, including Design on a Dime and still works with HGTV in some capacity from LA.  She was so down to earth and nice and she gave us all a copy of her new design book. So after a few instructions, we were off to the races!

Design dash indeed!  Boots off, cart in hand with a couple of helpers along the way, I filled my cart and started my pile of goodies.

Just seeing all the things on the floor was inspiring.

Mark Bacon watched us all scurry around doing our thing. All the folks with LaZBoy are so down to earth and nice.

The showroom has lots of beautiful pieces to check out.

I spotted this rug that I knew would work in my space, so I grabbed it up.

There are all sorts of styles available now at LaZBoy, so there’s something for everyone.

In case you didn’t know, Brooke Shields is their national spokes person.

At the end of two hours, I had my accessories put away. The larger pieces were tagged and shipped over too.  I hoped that I had enough to complete my room and scurrying around like that picking things here and there was a little difficult, so there were a few moments of “did I get everything I need and will those chairs work with my sofa?”.  And I only picked one rug, so if it didn’t work, I’d be in big trouble.  I would find out the next day for sure!

We landed at the studio, Kreber’s in High Point,  the next morning and finally got to see our spaces in person.  Mine had built-in bookcases, 2 sets of French doors and rustic floors, so I was pretty happy about that.  I was feeling pretty good about my decisions, but we had a whole day of working on the room, which was a good thing. Overall, I felt pretty confident about my decisions and felt that things would come together.

I’ll be back next week with the whole design process and room reveal, so stay tuned for more!  It was such an exciting experience and I made a few notes to myself about my own spaces and how I’d like to change them up.

Here’s a sneak peek of the room coming together.  Getting all the chairs and tables in place first, then it was time to add all the details and jewelry to the room.  We were all assigned fantastic LaZBoy designers and mine was sweet Tia. She helped both Beckie and I.  After we got the main furniture in place, I got busy and started placing everything and it really all came together exactly as I had hoped and I can’t wait to show you the complete room next week!  I could totally live in that room.

All 10 spaces were completely different looks and mine was the most Traditional of them all, but I am very happy with the way it turned out. It reminds me of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, so a mix of things.  I can’t wait to show you all the rooms too!

There will also be a FUN surprise next week for all of YOU too, a giveaway, so stay tuned for more!

Thanks for tagging along with me, it’s so much fun to share with all of you out there.

Note:  LaZboy paid all expenses for me to come to the Design Dash event in High Point. 

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