Sean & Catherine Lowe - Bachelor 17 - Discussion

Megan Smalley, the girl that owns Scarlet send Gold has been a very good friend of my daughters since they were 10. She is a 27 year old girl who started her business in September, only started doing it full time in January and runs it out of her apartment. Her goal was to put on the very best party she could with good food, drinks and products to take home. She could not do this without charging for tickets. According to her mom (who is a friend) pretty much every dime of the ticket will go to pay for the party for 300.

As an aside, I have a lot of her products, including the placemats which are of very good quality as is everything else she does. Her stationary is fabulous and I am a snob about stationary. She uses a really good quality paper. I get comments on my iPhone case everywhere I go.

motheroffive wrote:Megan Smalley, the girl that owns Scarlet send Gold has been a very good friend of my daughters since they were 10. She is a 27 year old girl who started her business in September, only started doing it full time in January and runs it out of her apartment. Her goal was to put on the very best party she could with good food, drinks and products to take home. She could not do this without charging for tickets. According to her mom (who is a friend) pretty much every dime of the ticket will go to pay for the party for 300.

As an aside, I have a lot of her products, including the placemats which are of very good quality as is everything else she does. Her stationary is fabulous and I am a snob about stationary. She uses a really good quality paper. I get comments on my iPhone case everywhere I go.

I think that's great! Good for Megan and I hope she has a great success with her business. It's something to be proud of. That doesn't mean I think charging so much money for a launch party ticket is a great idea, or that I would spend so much on paper placemats no matter how high quality the paper is (and I did mention that it is high quality). But I am old and cautious about money. Maybe at that age I would have thrown away my spare cash on such luxuries as well. Good stationary is beautiful and has a lasting value in that it touches another person who may treasure it. I might spring for some of that if I liked it enough. I guess we all have our own value systems.

I'm sorry that you have to see these criticisms.....if people were talking critically about my kid's or kid's friend's business, it would be painful to experience.

Wow! What a small world!

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Love houses and house hunting. I'm pretty sure that Catherine's huge closet is the add-on at the back of the house. The slanted roof and the window seem to match. I'm pretty sure the other half of the addition is the bathroom. The fence out of the bathroom window seems to match.So I think they still have 3 BR.

mtnlvr55 wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


Love houses and house hunting. I'm pretty sure that Catherine's huge closet is the add-on at the back of the house. The slanted roof and the window seem to match. I'm pretty sure the other half of the addition is the bathroom. The fence out of the bathroom window seems to match.So I think they still have 3 BR.

Good eye! Looks like you are right that the addition is the closet and master bath. But I don't know if that is a new addition or the closet was the tiny third bedroom. There was a photo of the third bedroom in the old real estate listing but I don't know how to find it again to compare. The original house also had two baths. The wide angle lens used in all the newer photos makes it harder see the actual scale of the rooms, as it distorts the perspective. In any case, it will be a lovely home for them as it is now.

glazedover wrote:

mtnlvr55 wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


Love houses and house hunting. I'm pretty sure that Catherine's huge closet is the add-on at the back of the house. The slanted roof and the window seem to match. I'm pretty sure the other half of the addition is the bathroom. The fence out of the bathroom window seems to match.So I think they still have 3 BR.

Good eye! Looks like you are right that the addition is the closet and master bath. But I don't know if that is a new addition or the closet was the tiny third bedroom. There was a photo of the third bedroom in the old real estate listing but I don't know how to find it again to compare. The original house also had two baths. The wide angle lens used in all the newer photos makes it harder see the actual scale of the rooms, as it distorts the perspective. In any case, it will be a lovely home for them as it is now.

The assessor's data indicates no additional square footage after the update. It's hard to distiguish bedrooms when a home is photographed unfurnished, but the master bath existed --- it was just not as attractive.

Old photos of the Master Bath and the Smaller Bedroom:

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It's possible that's an addition for a closet but it looks to me more like a bedroom/partial conversion. If it were a new closet I wouldn't expect it to have so much open space. Either way it will be a nice closet for them and not take away a bedroom permanently.

albean99 wrote:It's possible that's an addition for a closet but it looks to me more like a bedroom/partial conversion. If it were a new closet I wouldn't expect it to have so much open space. Either way it will be a nice closet for them and not take away a bedroom permanently.

The tax records indicate the square footage remained the same, before and after, so there was no addition. Moreover, the home was listed and sold as a 3 bedroom PLUS having an enormous closet, so, most likely, the closet use to be a closet or a closet-slash-something-else that it isn't anymore.

I enjoy this kind of stuff because I'm sort of in the business and this is the part of it I like most. Although it's hard to identify different spaces when a home is photographed unfurnished, I'd say we did a pretty good job.   

They could have chosen to live in one of the "burbs" for half the money and had a new or relatively new home. Guess living in the closer-in area was worth doubling their investment--to them. Maybe the resale value will make up for the high price. (I know it's not a high price for you who live on the east and west coasts.)

beader wrote:They could have chosen to live in one of the "burbs" for half the money and had a new or relatively new home.  Guess living in the closer-in area was worth doubling their investment--to them.  Maybe the resale value will make up for the high price.  (I know it's not a high price for you who live on the east and west coasts.)

You do get more for your money in the burbs but a lot of younger couples choose to live in Dallas. There's plenty of time later if they want to do that when they have kids and are looking at schools.

Hmmm. I spent a little time on the Scarlet and Gold site today, looking at Catherine's line and some other items. The "look" carried over into the other items so I "investigated" (meaning I actually read the story of Catherine's involvement carefully and then went back to look at the blurbs for her individual cards, etc.). I was surprised to find that Catherine did not do any of the graphics for her line, but collaborated with S&G's designers who did all the art work. I guess she supplied the wording, maybe, and/or set the tone, maybe. It says she is the creative director for the line, which may be an accurate description, but I was disappointed to see that the actual design work is not hers. And now I wonder exactly what she did contribute and whether or not they are mostly just using her name and story to promote a product line (which would be clever of them and fine by me as a business decision).

^ That makes sense. Their graphics seemed pretty in line with the rest of their products, so I'm not too surprised. They needed a name to garner more attention as a relatively new business. Cat probably came up with the wording.