las vegas, baby

Lions and tigers and couches, oh my.
Las Vegas World Market, International furniture show. Feb 2008

In hoofing thru a small portion of the 4.2 million square miles of showrooms (in my fancy "You by crocs" boots), I found some great additions for my store and my design repertoire.

I attended a captivating lecture hosted by Kelli Ellis of HGTV and TLC about ways to create a more comfortable shopping environment for your customers. She spoke solidly about the new trend of "do it yourselfers" and the educated customer. She gave me great insight on how to better serve and support both my clients and customers. Kelli reminded me that shoppers come in well prepared and armed with information on the products they want to purchase. "It just make me need to be a better store owner", I thought to myself.

Kelli can currently be seen as the new Season 2 designer on Discovery Home Channel/TLC's Clean Sweep. Creating beautifully designed rooms in the reality TV format, "Two Rooms, Two Days, and $2000", Kelli makes it look so easy. Kelli can also be seen as the featured designer on HGTV's Takeover My Makeover fixing themed rooms gone wrong!

I spoke with Kelli and she had this to say about me and my company:

"I am so happy and proud to give Invironments Design two huge thumbs up! Jodi has done a fantastic job of combining eco-friendly products with classic, beautiful design. I look to Jodi for ideas and inspiration for the latest and greatest green goodies! " , Kelli Ellis, HGTV and TLC Designer

Go to Kelli's website (kelliellis.com) to get more information on "TheKellikit".
A great tool to assist with your home design needs.
The ultimate solution for space planning, color balance, furniture
arranging and room layout that puts you in control.

Below are a few new lines I fell in love with:

Knu:http://getknu.com Sustainable, contemporary green furniture
With 6 distinctive eco-friendly veneers available, you have the choices you need to create a modern contemporary home or office workspace.




Knú Desk $1849




















Knú Entertainment Center $349.00




















Knú Side Table #1 $579.00 - $675.00




















Invironments also welcomes Soho Concept (sohoconcept.com) and Sunpan Imports (sunpanimports.com) Two affordable priced lines to our showroom and website sales.













We also visited the brand new EQ3 store. The new flagship EQ3 store in LV made me even more proud to carry such a great hip line. EQ3 President Peter Tielmann states that the EQ3 consumers ( are most often) interested in modern design, with price points that fall somewhere between the lower-priced IKEA and the higher Design Within Reach. We could not pass up Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat to see the new baby dolphin. We were surprised to see lions and tigers too. They were super close, with just a wire 40" high fence between us and the king of the jungle. Exhilarating.

Talk to you soon,

Jodi Feinhor-Dennis

two new furniture lines

There are two new sustainable, high quality furniture lines we just started carrying called InModern and Eco Tots. Both are a brand of the Simple Furniture Company, which produces environmentally friendly real wood modern furniture. The InModern line is made from 100% renewable FSC certified smart wood and is 100% formaldehyde free. There’s a wide range of products from coffee tables and desks to entertainment centers and chairs and they all assemble and disassemble easily. In fact, no tools are necessary. The style is very unique and I brought InModern into my store because of its green properties and palatable look.

Eco Tots is a children’s line that is also part of the same, fully green furniture company. Their line of products includes easels, baby tables and chairs. The kids’ furniture is very appealing and user friendly. Just the other day, a little girl planted herself on one of the Eco Tots red stools, at the tiny red table in our showroom, and quietly ate her snack while her parents shopped! Both InModern and Eco Tots have been featured in Parent Magazine and on the Today Show.

Here in my store we are always on the lookout for modern furniture and accessories that are interesting yet functional, and if they give back to the environment, that’s even better. Affordable furniture, for the most part, used to be made out of materials that contain toxic gasses and preservatives. Formaldehyde is a preservative that’s been linked to causing cancer and has been found in many wood laminates. Laminates used to be a fine idea, but now that designers have developed a way to use raw wood that doesn’t contain formaldehyde, that’s the way to go. So if you’re using formaldehyde free wood, you’re doing the right thing!

We love having brands like InModern and Eco Tots in our store and they’ve been well received by our clients, so we’re always searching for these kinds of products. The aesthetics aren’t the only thing appealing about the product for me though. The furniture is incredibly well priced and gets delivered really quickly, which means a lot to me as a small company carrying the brand. We’re always striving to bring new choices to our walk-in and website customers and look for appealing products that will help you complete your living environment.

Latest trends

Changes in the design world can be slow and in most cases, trends are here for years before they finally surface and catch on. Pairing blues and browns, for instance, took some time before it went mainstream and it’s recently been updated with the tranquil feel of blue and gray. Designers are also updating architectural details like molding or crown by painting them the same color (instead of highlighting them) for a contemporary feel. And we’re seeing several new color trends on the design scene right now - a lot of green, eco friendly fabrics, wild graphic patterns and several self color palettes with muted blues, taupes and grays that are very soft and easy to live in. All in all these trends are very sophisticated and palatable and we’re not seeing colors change from one extreme to the other like they did in the 80’s.

By the same token, the eco trend has hit the ground and gone mainstream faster than anything I’ve ever seen. It started with building materials, but now innovations for turning your home green inside as well as out are really coming around. There’s eco friendly paint, energy efficient lighting and a wide range of green furniture. We’re also starting to see more use with rocks, grass, twigs and other organic, natural materials across the board. Angela Adams, who’s very well recognized for her home furnishings collections, has a fantastic new carpet line that’s made from recycled materials and manufactured in strict adherence to child labor laws. Her patterns also feature the graphic, bold colors we’re seeing a lot of this year.

We’re really excited about discovering interior design companies that are eco conscious and love to support their products when we can. Recently we’ve embarked on a remodel with one of our clients to make their home 100% green using recycled carpet padding, 100% New Zealand wool carpet, eco friendly paint, energy efficient pictures and we’ll be installing dual flush toilets that also promise to leave a lighter footprint on the environment. But eco makeovers are costly, and if it’s not something that fits your budget, there are a number of simple and inexpensive modifications you can make throughout your home. For instance, replacing one light bulb with compact fluorescents takes thousands of cars off the highway. I’ve committed to using energy efficient lighting and have also become much more aware of the lights I leave on in the house. It’s also very easy to watch your water consumption and not leave water running longer than necessary. In addition, I write notes on the back of used envelopes or other bits of paper lying around, instead of using a new pad of paper. Little changes like these are resourceful, easy to implement and help you do your part in respecting the environment.