Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Lisa & Lori at it Again...



Lori here, this time Singing the Praises of my multi-talented sister and coauthor, Lisa. As many of you know, Lisa is a premier designer at Peabody Interiors and has recently been recognized for the excellence of her work in the room pictured above!


Having worked on our novel, Hazel Moon, with her I can see her gift for color and texture and visual patterns in the tapestry of beauty and form exhibited in this award-winning room showcased in M Magazine!




Above find Lisa and her Peabody Design Team!

Here's the rest of the story:

Everyday Glamour

Emerald room evokes an enchanting feel

BY STEPHANIE S. BEECHER  |  PHOTOGRAPHY BY DOUG EDMUNDS

When Pamela Coleman and her husband moved into their 20th-century Classic Georgian Fox Point home, the living room wasn’t exactly inviting. With red walls, inadequate seating and insufficient lighting, it had all the stuffy feelings of an antiquated parlor. Far from reflective of Coleman’s warm personality, the room went virtually unused for years.

“It had beautiful bones, but it was outdated,” adds Coleman. “It was in need of love.”
Coleman turned to Peabody’s Interiors in Brown Deer to bring the living room back to life. Interior designer Lisa Minneti says she immediately saw the room’s potential.

“It had a black marble fireplace and great windows that looked out to the patio and to the lake, so we wanted to incorporate something that would look good with outdoors too,” Minneti explains. “We wanted it to be a glamorous place where she could entertain.”
Still, Coleman was unsure of what look she was going for.

“I didn’t want anything contemporary that wouldn’t fit the style and era — I wanted traditional with a modern flair,” Coleman says.

While thumbing through a magazine at a salon one day, she found her inspiration in an article about jewel tones. Her eye was immediately drawn to a photo of emerald velvet. Later, she punched in “emerald rooms” online and found photos on home design blogs and began to craft a vision for the room. Minneti was thrilled to build the room around the hue.

“I screamed then I called her when I found it,” Minneti says upon discovering the Italian velvet fabric sample. “It was the most beautiful green I had ever seen.”

Using the emerald swatch as the room’s launching pad, Minneti and Coleman worked to devise a unique color palette for the space, settling on charcoal gray walls and a lavish gold-painted ceiling. A black-and-white graphic floor rug added to the room’s luxe personality.

“Dramatic but simple,” Minneti says. “This room has been all about the details.”
Because of the room’s narrow design, Minneti says seating was a challenge — but it soon became a highlight of the renovation. Drawing on Coleman’s love of luxurious hotel lobbies, the two designed a beautiful, custom-made 7-foot settee. “That piece of furniture is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Coleman says. “It’s comfortable, seats a lot of people, and is very versatile.”

Admittedly, the settee was a splurge, and the room continues to be a combination of custom touches and spendthrift finds. For example, throughout the yearlong renovation, Coleman purchased much of her growing Blanc de Chine and vintage satin glass collections on eBay. She also chose to reupholster her furniture, repaint her cocktail tables, and refinish the area’s original wood floors.

Coleman says her mixed approach was taken from the book “Living a Beautiful Life,” which encourages its readers to “turn a daily routine into a lifetime of beauty, serenity and efficiency.” She’d read it as a newlywed.

“The book changed the way I looked at pieces I’ve bought over the years,” says Coleman. “I have children, a dog. My family is living in this place.”

The end result is an enchanting, eclectic, yet functional living space Coleman’s whole family can enjoy.

“It’s a welcoming, inviting space — I think it’s a room people like to spend time in,” Coleman says. “It is glamorous, but it’s cozy. It’s everyday glamour.”

*************************************

On May 21, Lori, as Lady Luna, sang and conducted a Celtic marriage ceremony at a Celtic-themed wedding!






Now, Lisa here...Singing the Praises of my multi-talented sister and coauthor, Lori, who was one of the stars on display at a recent Doo Wop Daddy concert at Serb Hall in Milwaukee over the weekend!

Lori was featured as an MC and singer and along with David E. Kirby, who sang several songs as an Elvis Tribute Artist, and without a doubt, both stole the show for sure!








And this pic below, Lori as Apollonia in honor of the passing of Prince.


https://www.facebook.com/lisaandloriminneti 

Friday, April 8, 2016

Coauthor Lori the Actress at it Again...




Well, my multi-talented coauthor, my twin sister, Lori, was at it again last night lighting up the stage at the Memories Dinner Theater in Port Washington with gusto delivering her special brand of acting during a review performance of Buying the Moose, a relationship comedy by playwright Michael Wilmont. (Lori's on the right below)





I know she's my sister, but seriously Lori has a remarkable talent that makes each word she speaks on stage a dramatic delight for the audience, complete with physical gestures and facial inflections bringing the lines of the play to life! Also a wonderful singer, it's as if she delivers the words with the same panache as she would the lyrics of a song...with exceptional emotional impact.






The play, Buying the Moose, was written and staged especially for the Memories Dinner Theater. Here's a summary from the Memories website:


This hilarious, tennis-match-like play brings to life the truth that wives often wonder why men do what they do, while their husbands wonder how to get away with doing what they did!




Upon arriving home from a business trip, Betty discovers her husband, Rob, awkwardly "canoodling" an inflatable doll, which is donning one of Betty's dresses. After Betty assumes the worst, and Rob's attempt at an explanation only exasperates the situation, Rob ends up "out in the cold". In dealing with the aftermath of his blunder, Rob resorts to bending the ear of, and sharing a case of beer with, his brother, Greg. Meanwhile, Betty, and Cheryl (Greg's wife) ponder Betty's shocking discovery while sharing a tub of ice cream and a glass or two...or three...of wine.




Eventually, Greg and Cheryl are pulled into the chaos and the stakes get even higher as beer, wine, accidental voice mails, a mixed up mess of "he said/she saids" and exposed secrets, tangle the proverbial web, to create a fast-paced and hilarious rumpus! As one husband's well-intentioned blunder, spins out of control, the audience is kept bouncing back and forth between the men sitting on Rob's front porch and the women on Cheryl's, resulting in a side-splitting, fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable theatrical experience! (Please Note: Contains mild sexual references)



For tickets or more information on other shows contact the Memories Dinner Theater!

More pics from the Review Performance of Buying the Moose courtesy of Marc Dulberger!!
































Saturday, April 2, 2016

The Hazel Moon Writing Process...






Lori and I have been writing for years, and I do belong to a writer's group, but I wasn't sure any other writers used our exact method, which involves keeping handwritten notebooks including scraps of paper with ideas that come to us, arrows showing how what line should go with what other line down the page...things like that.



Here we are looking through material we'd gathered for the sequel to Hazel Moon, Hawthorn Moon. We've completed Chapter 1 and we're working on Chapter 2. Using a similar process, Lori has written a number scripts for plays and seen them produced, plays she also acted in professionally.



Here I am looking over a crate full of all the notebooks and notes it took for us to write all the chapters of Hazel Moon over an 8-year period.










For Hazel Moon the notebooks were used to compile the copy from start to finish during which the story and chapters and characters came together, often being inspired by our personal experiences. At a certain point, though, the words and fictional characters come alive and we can see the story in our imaginations as if it were a film.



During a writing session we'll often find ourselves slipping into our characters, complete with voice changes and facial expressions to go with the scenes we're editing...talk about getting lost in the moment!







We'd learned of another writer, Kate Morton, who uses a similar process so when we saw her book trailer we didn't feel so Out There!




With Hazel Moon in the can, while working on the sequel, Hawthorn Moon, we[re slipping right back into our old methods...in fact just the other day I bought some new notebooks knowing we'd be needing them!




Happy Writing to all you Scribblers Out There!!!