OutOnThaPorch....

About 20 students from the Hoover High Interior Design Class visited our studio on Tuesday. Teacher Teddie Butcher, organized the event. We met her when we spoke at the Alabama Association of Family & Consumer Sciences. Hopefully they learned something in addition to how fabulous Caterina is!!!!

Hugs and kisses to Anna (Leigh's daughter) for uploading all the wonderful pictures that our customers have sent in. Be sure to check out our picture gallery with the all the new photos. Sorry we got a little behind, but keep sending in all those wonderful pictures!

One big step in getting our new patterns ready for marketing is doing the photography. We have set up our own photography studio in our loft and take the pictures ourselves. Leigh has taught herself photography and Caterina does the staging. You know we are a bootstrap company! Caterina painting our window for photography All was going well last week until the dogs knocked over our camera and broke a $400 lens!! So we had to go to Lowe's and buy some construction fencing to keep them out. Dogs on the outside looking in. Cricket watches as Leigh snaps a picture.

We sometimes get customers asking where we get the names for our patterns and, of course, there is a story behind each one. So here we will give a little background on the names of our patterns. Cuff-Top Valance: This was our very first pattern created in 1996. This design was based on a valance that Leigh had designed for a client's bay window and had entered in the Window Fashions Design Contest. She won 2nd place in the specialty window category. At first, we named our valance patterns with descriptive terms. Pull-Up Valance & Lace-Up Valance: More descriptive terms...BORING. So from then on, we decided to give the rest of our patterns real names. Emily Valance: This pattern was named after a dear high school friend of Leigh's that died of breast cancer in her mid-30's. In addition, Emily's mother was Leigh's home-economics teacher and played a part in Leigh's learning to sew. Haley Valance and Kasey Valance: These two were named after Caterina'...

To keep everyone healthy at Pate-Meadows, we have a fitness trainer come to our loft twice a week and offer an hour-long group workout for our employees. In addition we have two elliptical machines and a Nautilis Smith Weight Machine for our employees to use. Our trainer, Ron McNeely, has been coming for over a year now and we don't know what we would do without him. Caterina makes her usual fashion statement!

If you ever call Pate-Meadows to place an order, you will most likely be pleasantly greeted by our assistant, Tracy. Tracy has been working for us for about 3 years and we don't know what we ever did without her. She keeps us reminded of everything we need to be doing and where we should be. She is always willing to go beyond the call of duty to make Pate-Meadows run like a well-oiled machine. She puts up with all our mess AND she loves our pups, too!! I don't know what we did before she came to be a very important part of Pate-Meadows .