Suzi and Sarah 1-218-260-4139
What We Do
We’re soul-searching designers who thrive on fun. We use entertainment to teach. Our dynamic is so infectious we create a party wherever we go.
The other night we were in an elevator at a fancy accounting firm and a serious guy got into the elevator with us.
We were already having a party in the elevator.
By the end of the ride, the guy had a big grin on his face.
We think of ourselves as role models with a twist: Don’t do what we do, do what you do. We give people permission to do – and be – whatever they want.
We use style as a portal for authenticity. Self-improvement can be scary. Design and fun provide a way in. Design is intensely personal. The more you explore your own style the bigger and more personal and more life-changing it can be. Everyone has a personal style, but if you left yours behind, if you last saw it when you were a kid, or if you don’t know where to start looking, we can help. Call it design resuscitation with a gleeful spin.
If you’re willing to try something new, if you’re open to positive and exciting change in your life, if you want the process to be fun and playful and rewarding, join the party!
And please come as you are.
To contact us sarah@joyjunket.com suzi@joyjunket.com
Our History Together
We choose friendship over work. Because of that, both our friendship and our work keep getting better.
We believe in each other, and we believe in honesty. Over time, we’ve realized that we can get through the highs and lows. We don’t take anything personally and our focus is on having fun. We can take creative risks because our work together is based on our friendship’s strong foundation of acceptance and support.
Suzi started doing design work in the late 1990s after working for years as a social worker with youth. After moving to Duluth, she set about fulfilling her dream of doing interior design. “I learned as I went along, and Sarah was always a great cheerleader.” We’ve recently started doing that design work together.
In about 2006, we each embarked on journeys of personal discovery and for the first time really thought about what we want in our lives. We started talking about how we could work together and what we would do, and we began to explore.
Over time, after running an antiques business and store together, taking trips together, and continuing to be positively affected by our ongoing adventures in self-exploration, we decided to focus on inspiring people to live authentically, with style and interior design as the portal.
We’re more than interior designers. We help people put their conscious decision-making process to work by paying attention to what they like. Although people are sometimes intimidated by what we do as interior designers, there’s no mystery involved. In fact, we have a transparent design process – we share all our information with our clients so they can see behind the scenes and more easily make their own decisions about what they like and what they want. What happens is that people tune in and turn on. They light up.
What we’ve discovered is that authenticity lights people up – ourselves included.
Our Style Journeys
Sarah
When I was starting to rediscover my creative side, I discovered Tracy Porter’s first retail catalog and they triggered a feeling of freedom to be more myself. I was a doctor trying to fit in – or so I thought – and Tracy Porter’s designs are about dressing in a wild and completely creative way. That felt much more like the real me.
As for interior design, I lived in Scotland for a year and came to love the English aesthetic of wild bohemian mixtures and layers, where nothing has to match. I’m drawn to that style, where the eccentricity is it’s charm.
I’ve also been influenced by Peter Walsh, who wrote Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?. His ideas about how our stuff relates to what’s going on in our lives makes sense to me.
Suzi
I grew up on a farm, with elements of a raw, real-life nature around me all the time, but I tended to resist those elements when it came to embracing my own style. Then one day I came across a magazine article about Laurie Luehmann’s store in Minneapolis, which is called Luehmann. She describes her style as “Charles Darwin meets Ralph Lauren.” Walking into that tiny store, with its dark-green-painted cement walls and odd collection of natural curiosities – like skulls and insect jewelry – gave me permission to be myself. I realized that I don’t have to make people understand me. I can design for myself.
I would love to be that kind of person for someone else, someone who shows the way, who causes someone else to have the revelation that their authenticity is possible.
Giving Back
Giving back is an important part of what we do. Through donating our time and energy to events and projects for causes we want to support, we take an active role in making things better.
One of the funest examples of giving back was when we invited the staff of the Women’s Shelter over for a party to show them how to do their own interior designing without having to spend a lot. We love combining cost-effectiveness with other elements that may require a splurge, and making it all work together. We all had a great time.
Helping people create nurturing spaces, both inner and outer, is important. We want to help.
Doing What We Do Together
Together we’re all about forward motion in the pursuit of authentic joy. Sarah pushes us onward. Suzi pushes quality and optimism. We both go bananas over design, creative ideas, personal discovery, and inspiring people to be themselves.
Whenever we get within three feet of each other,
we begin to share a brain.
Suzi: Sarah’s always going full-throttle. Everything she does is times a thousand.
Sarah: That’s it. I feel like a racehorse at the gate: Let’s go. Meanwhile, Suzi wants to do a really good job with everything and has a positive attitude. She’ll say, “We’ll get through this. Nothing is insurmountable.”
Suzi: When we’re together I can let go of my perfectionism and use a trial and error way of moving forward that works for us. We were both missing something before we got together.
Sarah: I’m a medical doctor, a pathologist, and an ENFJ personality type (we both are). I worked for years in a lab with introverts, in an environment where precision is paramount. Pathology is not about rushing out of the starting gate. It’s such a relief to explore and create with Suzi, to do the best job we can, to and change things if they don’t go as planned – to learn and adapt as we go. That’s not how pathology works.
Suzi: That said, people do closely watch us when we do interior design for them. Working with an interior designer can be very scary because we’re messing with their personal living spaces. I’ve learned to be reassuring, to tell them “It’ll all be okay.” And it is.
Sarah: We each do what we like best when we do interior design work together. For example, Suzi is floor plan girl.
Suzi: I like the detailed work of measuring a room down to the half-inch. I’m great with anything to do with proportion and scale. A lot of that is just experience. Sarah likes finding resources on the computer. I’d rather pick from Sarah’s findings than do the digging myself.
Sarah: Suzi’s also a paint savant.
Suzi: And Sarah’s really good at anything to do with decisions that move us ahead. She’s the forward-motion maven.
Sarah: We both get so much from working together and being friends. We do self-improvement projects together like vision boards and affirmation tags, and have the fun of exploring together. Remember what we’re trying to do on the most basic level: have a great life. To do that we have to constantly be aware of things like our egos, and to turn the light back on ourselves.
Suzi: Since making things simple is something I’m always questing for, whenever I set out to help people, I want them to be able to incorporate changes – whether interior decorating changes or growth from self-awareness – easily into their lives. I want to share with people what’s worked for me, and make it simple. I want to share by saying, “If this worked for me, it might work for you, too.”
Sarah: That’s the beauty of working together. We test things and talk them over and use the best in us both to make things accessible and fun for others. Sharing with each other makes us want to share with others.
Suzi Vandersteen
Sarah Seidelmann
