Tour of the Grand America Hotel

Piper, Olga, Crys, Heidi, Bevan, Catherine, Beth, Michele, Mario

Recently we took a tour of the Grand America 5 diamond hotel. I personally forget how nice some of Salt Lake's finest establishments are. This was a great tour. We only saw a little of the "back of house" do to the business of the holiday season. We got to see all of the ballrooms, a couple of the other meeting rooms, the spa and swimming pool, we saw some of the guest rooms including one of the presidential suites that Billy Joel had stayed in, and more. (We saw Billy Joel's signature in the guest book.) We got to see some rooms that are not normally shared with the public and wow the restroom! It was awesome to have non-club members join us for the tour. We'd love to have them join us as club members for the future. The furnishing and materials for this beautiful hotel were mostly imported from Europe. The owner of the hotel was highly involved with the design. A very worthwhile tour!

The Grand Ballroom

Beautiful Wool Flooring

Unique blown glass chandelier

Chandelier with rare crystals

in the women's restroom

Amazing real large gingerbread house

Another ball room

One of the amazing trees we saw!

in the women'ts restroom

Governor's Mansion Tour

We had an enjoyable tour of the Governors Mansion on Dec. 8, 2011.

There was a lot of information on the history of the mansion. The architectural detail in that home is amazing!!! I am planning to return in a less busy season. It was wonderful going at this time and seeing the Christmas decorations. One fun tree had a top hat instead of a star!

We sure missed everyone!

Beth, Catherine, Michele, Alicia and Mario in back.

Deseret News Home Show

This is late in coming and I'm so sorry! It's been a busy month!

On October 7th and 8th the SLCC Interior Design Club went to the home show. True to expo fashion there were many booths and a lot of people. It was cool to see some of the great ideas for closet organization and also the many other elements of interior design that were represented.

The best part was listening to John Gidding from HGTV speak. He shared with us many things including his personal design strategy for his shows.

• sketch what you have. It helps you know what you are working with as well as provided a way for before and afters.
• measure yourself
• only give options that you like or you will be stuck with working on things you don't
• write down questions, without the answers, as they come
• start answering them
• carry a notebook, you never know when the answer will come, written and sketch answers
• keep your sketches to look back at your work

There was so much more that he shared with us. Maybe not all of his designing ideas work for you but you can take ideas from him and implement them into your own design process.

Mario V, John Gidding, Alicia H, Leslie D, Piper M, Heidi C, Michele L

De$ign for Donation$ Kickoff

We had a successful meeting for our new fund raiser! Participants are really excited to learn from the experience. The funds from the fundraiser will be put toward a club trip. We are taking suggestions on where we could go (ex: World market in Las  Vegas, Dwell on Design in LA). The more time you put into Design for Donations, the more the club will pay for you to go!!!

We are also sad to see Andrea leave the officers. :( With every sad ending comes a happy beginning. Welcome Mario to the team!

Sustain Expo

We went to the Sustain Expo on September 16th. We were surprised at how small it was but we learned some valuable information.

Did you know that there are light switches that don't need wires or batteries? So cool, they save so much energy! Cool info on geothermal heating and cooling as well as some pretty cool other solutions involving heating and cooling. We saw amazing windows and the new central vacuum's that are pretty nifty! These were just a few of the things we saw and experienced.

Fall Opening Social

We were very excited to kick of our new semester with an opening social on September 9th. We enjoyed meeting some new members! Welcome!!! We are excited to see our attendance grow and look forward as it continues to grow!

The West Jordan Water Conservation Park were great hosts. They provided us a center piece that was grown into a wreath. Cynthia is a landscape designer and told us quite a bit about conserving water and the importance of using water conservation in our designs.

We were delighted by a surprise tour of the new building. This new building wasn't quite open so we had to wear hard hats. :) It was cool for us to see this building because it will be the first public building to be Platinum LEED certified in Utah.

 They have these shelf things over the windows that allow indirect light to come in.

We were also told about this wall that helps with climate control.

Summer Service Project

For our Summer Semester Service Project a few students went to the Luxury Home Tour and volunteered. They said the homes were gorgeous. They enjoyed being able to assist the tour in keeping the expensive homes safe during the tour. What a neat opportunity.