Well hello there,
I was inspired to start this
blog for many reasons. Let me explain...
Design has always been a huge
part of my life. I have been surrounded by it for as long as I can remember.
I remember as a school girl in
the 4th grade getting in trouble in class because I was drawing out
floor plans of my so called “dream home” in the back of my old fashioned
composition notebook with a black sharpie marker. I had rooms designated for
the dumbest things. Rooms called the “Fluff Room” filled with the giant stuffed
animals you can win at the county fair covered from floor to ceiling. Complete
with a 12 foot long trampoline with endless foam pits, funnel cakes, and
Shirley temple soda. There was a room called the “Splash Room” with 7 foot deep
pools with millions of diving boards, slides, and the gigantic mushroom that
sprayed water off the top that dripped down on the side. There were rooms
called “The Doll Room” full of dolls, “The Pretty Room” full of makeup, “The Jungle
Room” full of the kind of animals you only see in The Jungle Book movie classic.
You catch my drift. Sometimes I think my 10-year-old imagination was better
then than it is now. Lets just go back in time, right?
When I was 13 I thought I was
literally the coolest kid on the block. I would take used cardboard boxes, flip
them over, throw a blanket on top of it, and use it as a bedside table. I would
put scarves or pillowcases over my bedside lamp to make the light glow pink. I
would sit on the front step of my house with a blank piece of paper and sketch
out the neighbor’s house as best I could and would give it to them as a gift.
Pencil smudges, eraser marks, and all its beauty. This happened multiple times.
Each time a litttttle better than the time before. (Told you I was cool.)
I would beg and beg my parents
to let me nail my super dumb Hilary Duff calendar pictures on the wall, or beg
them to let me rearrange my bedroom. (It never worked) I would do stuff like
sneaking away from my mom whenever we went to Target. I would disappear and she
would find me an hour later searching through the home improvement aisles
touching everything in sight. My childhood bedroom had little midget doors that
lead into random attic spaces. I would make them my little clubhouse and lay
out quilts and pillows and bring in extra lamps that my mom had. Laundry
baskets flipped on their side to act as a TV stands with storage beneath it. Again-
you get it. I was a child design prodigy.
As I approached my high school
years, other people started to become super influential in my
design-encompassed-life.
Growing up in Franklin
Tennessee, my Dad always had a knack for turning old things to new. He was
always searching craigslist for the one of a kind piece that he can take into
his wood shop, sand down, re-stain, and turn into a beautiful piece of
furniture. My parents were always about the entertaining. People would come
over and die over his latest completed project. He spent a lot of time
designing wristwatches for the most recent and debatable presidential
campaigns. I remember him sketching out his newest concept on a napkin at
Denny’s, which later was framed and put in his home office because of the
success that it brought him. It was always something I admired.
My grandmother. Grandma
Gussie. Man- that woman has impeccable taste. You should see her past homes,
yachts, luxury condos and beach houses. Let me be the first to say. The woman
knows what she’s doing. I knew my dad got it from someone. She has designed
some of the most beautiful interiors. Her homes have been published in
seriously respected magazines and websites. Seriously- amazing. I have really
grown to admire and appreciate her design aesthetic and eye.
My mother. Momma Cram. Now
Momma Cram knows a lot. You know when people say that moms know everything?
Believe them. It’s true. My mom is the party-planning QUEEN. She is unreal. She
has always been the ringleader of my church activity-decorating committees. She
throws the dopest bridal showers, graduation parties, engagement parties- you
name it. It kind of a joke, actually. Everyone comes to her for advice. Advice
on how to do something under a budget. She’s really good at that. Budgeting for
parties. Yeah- that gene skipped a generation. Oops.
Now…back to my reasons.
My senior year of High School
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I loved art. And
I knew I loved creating it. I always excelled in my art and music classes. Not
so much math and science (yikes). My art teachers growing up would always tell
me how talented I was and that I better pursue that talent outside of my
teenage, adolescent years because I had that so-called “raw” talent. I won
multiple awards in the school art show with people telling me how good I was.
I guess I never really
understood that there was a way to do what I loved as a real life career. It
took me going on a simple college visit to Utah State University to really see
that it was possible. I went on a tour of campus and they took me into the
interior design office and studios. It was love at first sight. The place was a
dream. The fabrics, the paint on the walls, the carpet tiles, the magazine
collections, the drafting boards, the paper models, the foam core covering the
ground, the smell of rendering markers, the sketch books. Everything about it.
I wanted it. I needed it.
I craved it. And I was going
to find out how to have it.
3 years later and here I am
today. 3 years down and one more to go in one of the hardest and most competitive
programs at Utah State. I was a part of the 19% of students that applied their
freshman year. I survived 2 cuts. I completed my dream internship at one of the
most respected and well-known interior designers in the world- Kelly Wearstler
in Los Angeles, CA. I was able to meet and in a way “work” for one of
Architectural Digest’s top 100 most influential designers, Benjamin
Noriega-Ortiz and present my design to him in front of all my classmates and
professor. I worked for one of my favorite residential firms in Salt Lake City,
Alice Lane. Everyday I was going into work and leaving work with the biggest
smile on my face because I was utterly obsessed with their work.
I see these people I have
worked with change lives. I see them make people’s dreams a reality. I see them
take something that has been cooking up in their head and make it something you
can actually feel, smell, see, and appreciate. Something that not many people
can pull off. It took me meeting and working with someone like Kelly, Gussie,
my Dad, Benjamin, my Mom, and the team at AL to see this for myself. There is
no right or wrong in design. And that is why I love it.
I had this idea in my head
ever since I was little. I wanted to design things that didn’t exist. A dream.
I want to make other people’s so-called “dream” come true. I want to build
peoples “Fluff Room” and “Splash Room”. I want kids to have bedrooms covered in
pictures of Hilary Duff. *This is What Dreams Are Made Of* I want them to learn
that a cardboard box does more than just store old photographs and cassettes. I
want to create beautiful kitchens that moms can teach their daughters how to
cook and make sugar cookies for Santa. I want to create a backyard playground
where a father teaches his son how to play baseball. I want to design a closet
for that shopaholic that has way too many pairs of shoes she doesn’t know what
to do with them. (Girl after my own heart). I want to tear apart that airstream
that is sitting in the backyard collecting rust and make it into a guest
cottage for the occasional houseguest.
I guess at the end of the day
I just want people to be surrounded by beauty. I want people to live in
beautiful places and appreciate it. I want them to love what they come home to at
the end of the long day.
This is what I love. This is
who I am.
Xo,
Sam Cram I Am
