Live Like You & Marmalade Interiors
  • Knock Out Abuse

  • 9Nov

    10 Comments

    The extraordinary world of event design!

    Posted in: Knock Out Abuse

    Event design. It blows my mind.

    In one night alone an event designer turns a hotel room in to a whole new experience. Those of you who are new to reading this blog, my other passion is helping victims of domestic violence. 19 years ago I co-founded with my friend Cheryl Masri Knock Out Abuse Against Women and we hold an annual event that raises $ 600,000 in one night to local area shelters. It’s become the most popular girls night out event in DC. And this could not happen without our super talented event designer- Andre Wells. As an interior designer you think you have a lot of work to do to finish a home in a few months, and even spending a year designing your home you can feel stressed out. Just imagine the pressure when you have one day to make a giant ball room look like the Moulin Rouge…

    Talk about pressure!

    Andre makes sure every single details purveys the feeling of the theme.  And he does such an amazing job!

    The result was stunning! Black walls, and amazing arrangements.

    And my favorite part…

    Moulin Rouge inspired dancers from SAX’s restaurant and lounge in DC.

    Image via events by Andre Wells

    Andre and his team have a couple of months to plan it out. However they plan and design an event almost every single night of the year!!

    The day of the event, things start to arrive. Hundreds of people are scurrying about making it happen.

    Items get built my local talented people and then installed.

    In a matter of hours you feel like you are at the Moulin Rouge.

    Walking in to a ballroom like this, it’s really hard to not get swept up in the moment which is the whole point of event design. To make everyone forget about their lives for a night and enjoy the moment!

    And of course the nothing was complete without the male models who added to the decor!!  I know…it’s reversed sexism at it’s best. A group of nice men donate their time to escort the women in to the room, and another group are models are dressed to suit the theme.

    Andre Wells and Cheryl Masri.

    Amazing Andrea Roane from Channel 9 hosted again. This year perhaps because everyone had been cooped up with hurricane Sandy without power the room was rowdier than perhaps ever….

    Every detail was amazing.

    This is Cheryl and me addressing the super loud crowd!

    Our lovely speaker Carre’ Otis came to share her story with domestic violence. I’m reading her book right now, Beauty Disrupted, highly recommend it. It’s a riveting read. Things in people’s lives are not always what they seem.

    Anyway thanks for letting me share this.

    Have a great weekend!

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  • 8Nov

    9 Comments

    Close to my heart….

    Posted in: Glamorous Interiors, Knock Out Abuse

    This week is special for me since our annual Knock Out event is this Thursday.

    18 years ago(!) this week my friend Cheryl Masri and I had a strong desire to do something to help women. At the time I had two friends who found themselves in severely abusive relationships.  One friend was thrown out of a car after being beaten so hard her husband broke his arm beating her, another one was locked in a closet after being beaten with a chair.  They were stories of violence I never thought imaginable. So Cheryl and I set out on a quest to rally women to help fund shelters for victims of domestic violence, women with no place to go when their lives were in danger. We wanted create an organization that gave women a place to join together in support of other women.

    18 years later it’s a thriving non profit organization, and I’m so grateful to all the women and corporations who lend their support year after year. You are truly angels!!! Now (if you haven’t stopped reading yet because this is not about design…sorry) I want to share why we do this, and why LiveLikeYou donates 5% of all sales from GLAMOUR GIRL to Knock Out.

    Here are some disturbing facts about domestic violence…

    4 women a day are murdered in this country by their husband or boyfriend

    1/3 of all emergency room visit by women are due to intimate partner violence

    The number # 1 killer of an unborn child is the father of the child

    Crazy statistics like this makes it impossible not to continue to donate time and effort.

    Artist Shepard Fairey kindly donated this art as our new logo last year.

    Every year we ask an amazing woman to be our chairwoman for our big event.

    Cheryl, Jaci and me.

    This year’s chair is the wonderful Jaci Reid who has worked tirelessly for the cause.  Three years ago she suffered a stroke, lied passed out for two days in her apartment, before someone found her. She was given a 3% chance of survival and was paralyzed and unable to speak.  With her incredible efforts, hard work and determination she is back to normal and enjoying her life. She has taken that incredible spirit and given it to Knock Out for the last few months.

    Thank you JACI!!

    This is a LiveLikeYou ad in the program on Thursday….it never hurts to be glamorous while supporting a cause….

    5% of sales of all the Hollywood regency style items in the personality GLAMOUR GIRL on LiveLikeYou will be donated to Knock Out.

    GLAMOUR GIRL ENTRY - (Erica Eriksdotter)

    Here are just a few of the GLAM items that we donate 5% of sales from to Knock Out.

    BLACK LOUIS CHAIR

    LUCY GOLD CABINET

    CIRCE BENCH

    ARTICHOKE LAMPS

    Thank You for letting me share about this. The event goes off this Thursday and I have a house filled with girlfriends who are flying in from all over the country to stay with us.

    Anyone in the DC area…. maybe I’ll see you there?

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  • 18Nov

    2 Comments

    Another year another Knock Out

    Posted in: Knock Out Abuse

    It’s been a CRAZY BUSY week. Knock Out Abuse finally wrapped. Last Thursday was another sold out event at The Ritz Carlton in DC. 750 women came, as always in great spirits, to support women and children who are victims of domestic violence. Every year I dread the work that goes in to it, yet every year we have a blast, and I’m so happy we pull it off and are able to raise close to half a million dollars in one night.  I’m not posting all the party pictures…instead I want to share some images of the style of the event, which had a retro vibe RED/Mad Men vibe this year. Andre Wells our genius event designer, is always in charge of creating the dreamy atmosphere.

    Phil Dixon at Aspect Media and his team designed all the Knock Out video graphics inspired by Mad Men. I love this one!

    The evening’s honore was Agnes Nixon founder of All my children. She is truly an inspiration to women anywhere. The key note speaker was Leslie Morgan Steiner author of “Crazy Love”. If you haven’t read her book about her marriage gone bad-pick it up. Read it, and you’ll want to give it to your girl friends and your daughters.

    Andre draped the whole room in red with peacock feathers in some center pieces.

    The tables were red, the glasses were red…everything was red or zebra. Our new Knock Out Abuse logo that went on the cover of our programs, was designed by famous (Obama) artist Shepard Fairey which our great event chairwoman Sarah Guinan Nixon got him to do for us.

    Part of the ball room before the women arrived.

    The screens for the video were zebra print, unfortunately you can’t see that on this image.

    There were zebra sofas and cocktail tables for the after party.

    Beautiful peacock feather arrangements framed the stage.

    All the images above are by photographer Davide De Pas.

    At the end of the night there is a great Live Auction where you can bid on one of a kind experiences and items for women. Lauren Hutton came and auctioned off makeovers for 8 women. You could also get a tour by Susan Lucci on All my children and a have character named after you, a dream trip to Ireland, be a reporter on Comcast all day….


    This image and next: Jodie Fisher

    A popular item was bidding to have dinner with Redskin Player Clinton Portis. You could also bid on the fancy watch my dear friend Barb “modeled” for the night.

    I KNOW THIS BLOG IS ABOUT DESIGN SO FORGIVE ME…..but I can’t resist to share this….

    The last item you could bid on was to have a catered dinner at a DC firehouse with all the firemen!!  This item was a crowd pleaser…Particularly as they started taking their shirts off to get the women to raise their bids!  It always cracks me up to see hundreds of women laughing and howling!!

    Hey it’s for a good cause right??

    P.S.

    Thank You So much Holly Thomas for the article on Marmalade Interiors in the Washington Post! I was very happy to share some do-at-home design tips. You can read it online here.

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