Stephanie Sabbe

Managing My Design Firm Like an SEC Football Coach

Stephanie Sabbe — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:20:03 GMT

We are wonderfully busy right now in the studio, and I don’t know if it is a sign of a strong economy or the harvest of fifteen years of the slow grind of building a company. I made the mistake of thinking it was the latter in 2020 as we fielded dozens of new client inquiries a month. Thinking I had finally made it, whatever “made it” was, I grew my staff. I moved my office from my home into a commercial building in Belle Meade. And I sat and waited to become the established, successful designer I had always dreamed of becoming. This was what I always wanted, I thought, until I found myself crying quietly inside one of our private offices and texting Jessica, one of my most beloved humans to ever work with me, asking her to please turn up the office radio so that no one could hear me cry.

I Can Make Anything Pretty

Stephanie Sabbe — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:21:50 GMT

When I was a little girl, I was shipped off to West Virginia in the summers to stay with my Grandma Georgie. A lifelong smoker, I thought my grandma was 100 years old during those handful of magical summers when, in fact, she was maybe just ten years older than I am now. I french braided her hair, an achievement that surprised us both, as she kept it in a super tight perm that clung tightly to her head. Who knew she even had that much hair!? She taught me how to sew. Not on Sunday, though. Which is so hilariously dogmatic in retrospect from a woman who did not make us get up and go to church on Sundays and, to my knowledge, never read the Bible. (Perhaps the Bible comment makes me the dogmatic one.) But Grandma Georgie was a Southern Baptist in her heart, and sewing on Sunday was a sin, and she was not about to let her granddaughter go to hell on behalf of a craft project. One summer she altered my mom’s old prom dress to fit 8-year-old me. I remember grabbing the front of my hair, shaping it into a high crescent with my little hands, and spraying it until it was solid with a bottle of Aqua Net. I stood in front of the full-length mirror that was leaned against the wall in my aunt’s old bedroom and thought, “You are the hottest thing to ever walk this hollar.”

The Story of Duke

Stephanie Sabbe — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:01:40 GMT

Three years ago next month, I hosted my friend Elizabeth Passarella in my shop to celebrate the release of her second book, It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway. I had just opened Heirloom Artifacts the previous December, and this would be our first author event. I rented chairs from a local wedding vendor and positioned them into rows in the parking lot in front of the shop entry. As people visiting the adjacent businesses passed by, more than one remarked, “Looks like you’re hosting a revival.” “Maybe I am!” Little did I know, my little revival was waiting for me on my coffee table at home.

For several reasons, I have never written about March 27, 2023. Most of the time, it does feel like my story to tell. That day, three years ago, there was a school shooting in Nashville, and it devastated our community in a way that only those who have been through the same experience could ever fathom. The group texts, the continuous streaming news feeds, the names of those confirmed to be alive, and then the names of those confirmed to be dead. The world as we knew it would never be the same. Three adults and three children walked into a school building that morning and never walked out. Six families lost a loved one, and an entire community mourned.

Storing Up Treasures in My Heart

Stephanie Sabbe — Sun, 24 May 2026 01:33:43 GMT

Tap. Tap. This thing still on?

Apologies for the radio silence. When I get overwhelmed in life, I go dark. I hide. I shut down. Granted, I still want to be invited to everything, but I want to go to nothing. I want to lay in my bed at an obscenely early hour for a forty-four-year-old woman with a good book and think, “Bet that party’s not nearly as fun without me.” The key to this is staying off social media lest you come across photos of said party looking way more fun than you’re having with your book. But summer, oh my goodness, summer. I have deleted social media from my phone every summer since my rising tenth grader graduated kindergarten, and it was the best idea I’ve ever had.

In the beginning, it was driven by a sentimental thought of being more present with my kids. “Stare at them and not your phone,” I told myself, always a bit weepy at the end of another school year. But what started as a plea to slow down the clock has turned into adult me getting to partake in a full-fledged 80s-kid summer. You see, when I was a child, we all went dark for the summer. Our moms didn’t go to insane efforts to make sure you kept in touch with your classmates. You played with whoever lived within walking distance of your house, and for me, that was no one I hung out with during the school year. You didn’t know what the heck all those kids you had just spent five days a week with for the past nine months were doing, and you really didn’t care. I had Price is Right in the morning and Ricky Lake in the evening, some running around in the woods mixed with an impressive diet of individually wrapped processed cheese and oatmeal cream pies in between, and that was where I learned the rhythm of a reset. One is not meant to be the same person twelve months out of the year. I think everyone needs a minimum of two months a year where they go dark. Way darker than sitting out a mom’s night out. Two months dark where, whatever you’re doing, no one’s watching. Because here is the thing, from someone who has done it now for ten years, at 44 years old I still get that “back to school” feeling. That “look at me and my new Keds” excitement when August inevitably rolls back around.

Because let’s be honest, adulthood can feel like the same day on repeat until you die sometimes. I remember the first summer after I graduated college, the low-key depression of realizing that I would not, in fact, ever get a “summer break” again. No string bikinis and Marlboro Lights with nothing to worry about except making it to our four p.m. restaurant shifts without third degree sunburns. Summers were fun. Summers were exciting . You studied hard and then poof, you got three months of something different. A change of pace. An ultimate reset. And every year, whether it was second grade or sophomore year of college, I entered August a changed woman. A new me. And as I have mentioned previously with my love of New Year’s Day, I love a fresh start.

And so, a couple of days ago, I signed off Instagram until August, and today I experienced my first long, slow day in a very long time. Long gone for me are the never-ending days of entertaining toddlers until bedtime. Through all the hustle and bustle of raising teenagers, what I often find myself craving is some sense of hibernation. To hole up and live in privacy, quietly and contently with the ones who mean the most. To spend our days doing everything and nothing with no one watching to know the difference.

One of my very favorite verses of the Bible is Luke 2:19. The scene is after an angel has appeared to Mary to tell her that she is pregnant with Jesus. And the verse says Mary “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” In my heart. That’s where I store up all my summer treasure, in my heart.

Get a Harder Life, Georgie

Stephanie Sabbe — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:19:36 GMT

My kids are very fascinated with Substack. Born capitalists, they’re honestly fascinated with anything that makes money. Donate lemonade stand money to a local charity? Not the Sabbe kids.

My middle son has spent weeks trying to convince me to loan him money to start a vending machine business. “I’m going to write a speech and read it to you,” he’s said repeatedly, to which I reply, “I don’t want a speech. I want a business plan.” I have a strong feeling his efforts may end there. He’s not passionate about vending machines, and if I teach my children anything about chasing a profession, it’s to chase a passion, not a bank account.

But back to Substack. From the backseat of the car yesterday, my oldest declared to his younger sister, “Get a harder life, Georgie. Then you can make money on Substack.” It was a bit of a gut check for me. I found myself wondering, am I bastardizing the harder aspects of my life to gain a readership? I quickly decided no. That didn’t feel right. I truly enjoy telling stories, and the only stories I have to tell are the ones I’ve lived.

But then, without thinking, I replied to his comment with, “You’re right. People would probably rather I write about design.”

That conversation led me to take a deeper dive into why I, although very confident in the way I approach design, have never felt led to share design advice. It’s not just here. I’ve all but stopped replying to magazine editors who reach out asking for “three hot trends for laundry rooms in 2026” type blurbs. Which is crazy, because people hire publicists just to get included in those roundup articles. But when those emails hit my inbox, I have found that I immediately recoil.

I believe my field to be a beautiful craft, an art form of sorts, but an art form with longevity. An art form that does not follow trends or the opinions of others. An art form that does not teach you to hate what you love, but instead to love what you have.

Not another trauma story, I promise, but my great-grandmother, Mae, lived in a mobile home. She had knickknacks everywhere, plates on the walls, and a mirage of mismatched sofas alongside a pair of velvet-esque recliners. Her house would never adorn the pages of a design magazine, but my Grandma Mae was so very house-proud.

My grandma Georgie, like me, took forever to finish her home, or I’m honestly not even sure it was ever finished. Widowed in her early thirties, her renovations often involved the help of one of her adult sons. Once, there was a feud in the holler where she lived that very much slowed down her renovation goals. You can Google “holler” if you’re unfamiliar.

There was a dispute over land that pitted my grandmother’s children against her sister Grace’s children, all of them literal next-door neighbors. My uncle, a Navy veteran who often helped my grandmother renovate and maintain her house, was receiving disability checks from the government following a back injury. During this conflict over land, my aunt’s daughter Angel, a lesbian with a salt-and-pepper mullet who I am positive could win a fistfight with most any man, began filming my uncle with a camcorder while he helped my grandmother around her house. I believe he was assisting with roof repairs at the time.

Angel threatened to mail the videos to the government so my uncle would lose his disability benefits if he didn’t agree to sign over the land to her side of the family. I could not make any of this up if I tried.

Point being, my Grandma Georgie, just like my Grandma Mae, was house-proud.

With plastic carpet runners on the floors and the occasional bedsheet over the sofa, my grandmothers cherished their homes, and I cherished the memories made inside them. When I sit down every day to do my job, I think of them.

And so, no, I am not going to spend my time telling people that “gray is out.” I am not, and never want to be, in the business of stealing your joy, which is what so many design articles inadvertently do.

I will always remember around 2010, when chevron took over the home décor scene, and then less than a year later every headline declared, “Chevron is out.” In my head, I pictured a middle-aged woman married to a Midwest farmer who had just convinced him to let her spend a little money to spruce up their living room. And what had she purchased? A pair of chevron pillows, of course.

God, I thought, don’t let her read these articles.

A decade later, I did the exact same thing when I declared on Instagram that vinyl siding was gross. How many thousands of people were perfectly happy with the exterior of their homes until I pointed out my disdain for manufactered metal cladding?

Even pointing out what I consider the “right way” to detail things like built-in millwork or interior door and window casing seems unkind. How many eyes will be ruined to their own newly renovated homes that they once reveered as perfect before reading my words.

The joy this platform brings me is immeasurable. The fact that people subscribe to read what I write is unfathomable. But I write all of this to ask, knowing the why behind what I do not write, what would you like me to write more of?

We Belong

Stephanie Sabbe — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:39:26 GMT

President Obama once gave a talk that has made its way around social media where he in part said, “so many brilliant minds, especially those from historically excluded backgrounds, stay on the sidelines. Not because they lack ability. But because they’ve been taught they don’t belong.” He concludes the speech with simply, “you belong,” and every single time I listen to that talk, my eyes fill with tears.

Quantum Leap

Stephanie Sabbe — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 03:07:06 GMT

On occasion, as I wrap up a really great book, I get overwhelmed and a little sad, thinking about all the really great books I will never have time to read. I get the same sense of panic when traveling. What if I lived here? What would my life be like? And then, a bit more far-fetched, I often get envious when observing other races and cultures. I want to experience that. I want to speak another language, have a different skin color, and participate in a different rhythm of life. What I think it all comes down to is me understanding that life is short and I desperately crave to see, feel, and experience as much as I possibly can before it is over.

I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother as a child, and one of our favorite television shows to watch together was Quantum Leap. The premise of this show was that the main character, a middle-aged man, woke up each episode as a completely different person; once as a pregnant woman, once as a child with Down Syndrome. The list went on and on. And then, during the episode, he was tasked with solving a major problem specific to that person’s life.

To Hear the Beat of a Broken Heart

Stephanie Sabbe — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:07:20 GMT

In my junior year of high school, I had a teacher named Mr. Roberts. Mr. Roberts taught Ecology. He corralled us into helping strangers sort recycling in the Kroger parking lot on weekends and into waking up at the crack of dawn to look at random things in the sky through his giant telescope. I honestly cannot remember what, but I recall it was something interesting. Mr. Roberts was a huge fan of Charles Darwin and every year did his best to get a classroom of kids who, living in the Southern United States in the 90s, basically all identified as either Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, to give the Big Bang Theory a fighting chance. After a full semester of instruction, he once had us put our heads down and close our eyes and said, “Raise your hand if you believe in evolution.” A short pause, and then he said, “ok, now raise your hand if you believe God created humans as we know them today.” I peeked—zero votes for evolution. “Poor Mr. Roberts”, I thought. He taught us about the historical criminalization of marijuana and how much of it stems back to racism and xenophobia. And one of the most amazing parts of Mr. Roberts’ classes was his Friday Forums. Each Friday, he would present a new topic to us. We were asked to discuss this topic amongst ourselves, respectfully. Which, somehow, we always did. At the time, I was 15 years old, and I have not experienced anything like it since.

The Anti-How-To Article

Stephanie Sabbe — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 17:40:44 GMT

I applied to the University of Tennessee during my senior year in high school, on a lunch break. Although I am sure this is not fully accurate, I do not recall getting any help from an adult. I don’t remember who put a stamp on the envelope. I do remember my guidance counselor telling me that she didn’t think my grades were good enough to get into UT’s School of Architecture, which houses its Interior Design Department. I checked the box anyway, and months later, I received an acceptance letter to the University. When I got home from school, my mom read it to me. She was excited, not in an obvious way, always. But I could tell. Deflecting as usual, I recall replying something like “whatever, I don’t think it’s very hard to get into UT.” It was the only college I applied to, but I had known since I was six years old that it was the only college I wanted to attend. I am an extremely decisive person. As my mom read the acceptance letter aloud, she did note with a bit of hesitation in her voice, “You do not seem to have gotten into the School of Architecture…I didn’t know you wanted to be an architect?” “Whatever, I don’t,” I replied. Seventeen-year-old me was going to go to college, and she would just figure it out when she got there. I’m a planner, but I am also a person who has shown up at the airport without a ticket. I have dreams, but I have never really gotten too wrapped up in the details, and for whatever reason, my way has pretty much worked out so far.

It Makes Her Look Old

Stephanie Sabbe — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 03:14:22 GMT

I love a good story behind the story, the things you would never know from a photo. There is a trend going around social media right now to share what your life looked like in 2016, and last night I realized I was featured in House Beautiful magazine as one of their Next Wave designers in 2016. Among other photos I included a page from that feature in my most recent Instagram post. This is the untold story of that photo.

This Year Me

Stephanie Sabbe — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 14:44:37 GMT

New-Years-me is hands down the best version of me you will ever get. December 30th me is always done. She’s the Britney Spears with a shaved head, wielding a golf umbrella version of me. Laundry everywhere, house a mess. Eating whatever is laying on the counter that counts as food. Eyebrows growing out of her middle eye lids. Emails unanswered. Texts by the hundreds. December me gives up. She waves the white flag, and she doesn’t feel one bit ashamed. She made it 365 days, and on top of that survived the annual onslaught of more stuff being dumped into her house in the form of holiday gifts. She wants to immediately arm bar the whole pile into the trash because she has no handle on the unbearable amount of stuff that already resides under her roof. She’s drowning in it, it owns her. How wildly cruel to add more.

But every year, at the stroke of midnight on January 1st, she somehow becomes a new person, at least in her head. Yes, she could not find time to do laundry two days ago (and yes, the laundry is still there), but now she is looking online at adult education classes. Maybe a painting class? That sounds fun. And although she ate nothing short of 15 no-bake cookies on the evening of December 31st, as of January 1st she no longer eats refined sugar. She is going to do everything right this year; answer all of the emails, feed a real breakfast to all of the children, contain all sarcastic replies when her husband asks her questions like “what did you do today.” She’s going to shave her legs at least every third day and not be the very last person to arrive at school pick up. She might even read the whole bible. Historically, she has never chronologically made it past Deuteronomy, but that is old-her. New-her is disciplined. She is not deterred by 44 years of knowing old-her. Did she pour the remaining crumbles of a bag of salt and vinegar chips into her mouth last week? Yes, but hush. We don’t even know that person anymore.

New-her has 6 books sitting on her nightstand, ready to roll, so she’s not drawn into the endless nighttime scrolling old-her used to occasionally find herself in. New-her went to Barry’s Bootcamp yesterday and smelled all the Sol Dejenario wafting from the bodies of girls half her age because Barry’s is hard, smelling Sol Dejanario is hard, but new-year-her can do hard things, even though one week ago she decided to bail on all remaining holiday parties because “it felt too hard.” New-her will get a six pack this year (I know, ha!), but seriously, a six pack. Even though she’s fairly sure her ab muscles are no longer attached to the whole of her body, she is going on a twenty year wedding anniversary trip this summer, and she will wear a bikini, and there will be visible ab muscles.

But mostly, she’s going to be chill. (Note: she’s never been described as being chill in her entire life.) But she’s going to remind herself often that life is short and worrying about stupid stuff is stupid. Even though old her tried to wake her up in the middle of the night last night (that biatch, it’s only been one day) to worry about an install she has next Thursday. Scram, get out of here, old-her. She’s going to look at the tremendous amount of work she has scheduled for the year as a blessing. That mindset will actually be easy after a slow 2025, she thinks. But she’s going to hold it all loosely. When she is ghosted or over ruled or misunderstood, she’s going to tell herself, “It’s ok. It’s not about you.” Because old her used to lay in bed awake when an architect would call to tell her to stay in her lane or a client suddenly stopped replying to emails all together. But not new-her. This-year-her is going to lean into the good work, the fulfilling relationships, and not waste energy fighting with the other.

And probably most exciting and least delusional, this year her is going to renovate her attic into two bedrooms and a shared bath for her girls because last year her saved her money (she’s not all bad). Although change breaks her heart, and having two girls in one room and two boys in the other and listening to their quiet whispers as they fall asleep at night is her literal parenting-dream come true, all four share the tiniest bathroom in the world. She knows when the girls become teenagers it will be madness. She’s already scared for her husbands at the thought of three periods in sync. Also, she has an indescribable desire to maximize her home’s potential in the event she needs to suddenly sell it. New and old her are always planning for the worst.

And last but not least, new-her is going to finally start working on a project she and her buddy Joseph Bradshaw discussed last year. A project called The History of Home, where together they interview and document the homes and lives of elderly home owners living in historic properties that appear ripe for demolition once their time there is done. Last-year-her laughed at the non-existent spare time this project would entail, but this year her, who cares about calendars, she has time. This year her will have time, so much time. Isn’t this-year-her just the best!?

Happy New Year, and the biggest of thank yous to the people who have purchased a subscription. I never in a million years thought people would pay to read what I write. Of all of my unachievable goals in 2026, developing this column into a paid-subscription-worthy publication is at the absolute top of my list.

A Year In Review: Part 3

Stephanie Sabbe — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:41:57 GMT

I stayed in a sad, robotic state for two weeks. Looking back, it feels a little dramatic. I have many friends, along with my own mother, who have endured harrowing cancer journeys. This was not that. Yet my doctor’s sad-faced reassurance, “it’s not classified as a cancer anymore,” brought no relief. They scheduled a bone marrow biopsy to gauge whether the disease had progressed to myelofibrosis. “I know I will have it,” I told my husband repeatedly. “Anything rare, anything statistically low, I am always the one.” My pregnancy with my daughter Cora, a case of misdiagnosed fetal DNA, flashed through my mind. “Your daughter has Down syndrome,” they told me. Then she did not. The odds of a false diagnosis were even more rare than the diagnosis itself. Now this.

A Year in Review : Part Two

Stephanie Sabbe — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 15:44:46 GMT

A week or so before the official launch of my book on March 25th, Nashville was hit with heavy storms. The rain fell with such force that, for the first time in ten years of living in the house, we woke the kids, blew up a couple of air mattresses and decided it safest to sleep on the floor of our unfinished basement. Three twin mattresses lay side by side, along with my middle son, who opted for the concrete floor over the possibility of touching his older brother. My book launch party was scheduled for the next morning.

Our basement waited for daybreak before it started flooding. Our one-hundred-year-old home sits just inches above the natural water table. The nearby golf course looked like a raging river that morning as I attempted to navigate a route to my office around all of the road closures. We decided it best to reschedule the party.

A Year In Review : Part One

Stephanie Sabbe — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 15:34:58 GMT

The dark cloud of uncertainty seemed there to stay in January. “People are always a bit more cautious about spending around elections.” Caution then turned to panic, a constantly churned daily cycle of new hysteria. Trade wars. Tariffs. Bids arrived thirty percent higher than the year before. Projects, large projects, projects meant to keep my entire team busy for the year, came to a screeching halt. Poverty mentality being my default, I assumed it was all over. A twenty two year career had come to an end. Worry convinced me I was burned out. Joy seemingly absent from a career pursued since I was seven years old.

In The End We All Die

Stephanie Sabbe — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:39:58 GMT

“There is always something there to remind me” played on an antiquated boombox, eerily echoing off the damp, stone-clad basement walls. I turned the corner. A vintage dental chair marked “sold” sat before a retro built-in bar complete with a ruby red cast iron sink. Equally red shag carpet trimmed the baseboard. A dainty, embroidered valance hung above the single below-grade window. So much thought. So much detail. As people shoved, dumped, and tore through boxes, I wanted to yell, “Stop! You’re being too careless, too dismissive. People lived here. Why is my heart the only one breaking?”

Unpopular opinion: I hate estate sales.

I do. I’ve realized. I hate them. I adore buying antiques in shops, the more derelict the better. But I find no joy in plundering the remnants of another person’s life in situ. As if the rapture came and took them away, leaving only me with a crowd of elderly strangers scouring through encyclopedias and vintage kitchenware, hoping to find what? Who really knows. Surely nothing any of us truly need.

“Why are there so many elderly people here?”

I have spent much of my adulthood helping people create the places they call home. We talk often about life during that process—life for every season. The soon-to-be arrival of a new baby. The approaching limitations of a body well into its second half. We design for life. We work for the living. To walk into a home full of the evidence of life without the living themselves makes me weepy. The figurines someone obviously collected and cherished over decades sit abandoned in the china cabinet. I imagine Christmas morning. “Surprise! Another figurine.” Just what she wanted. Closets full of neckties. So many ties, now marked hastily at two dollars each. Ashtrays. Calculators. Giant tube televisions. All useless relics. Reminders that culture, time, technology—nothing stands still. The well-worn indentations in the furniture, so distinct you could almost guess the size of their bodies. Bodies no longer there.

The house. Oh, the house. Creaky wooden floors. Leaded windows. Yellow laminate countertops. Wall to wall carpet with well protected hardwoods below. The old, skinny kind. The kind no one sells anymore. A finish-renovation away from perfection. “I am probably the only one who sees it,” I lament to myself. I live in a town that rarely sees potential. A town that seldom cherishes the first hundred years of a home born in an era when playrooms above three-car garages appeared on no one’s architectural wish list. A home made of full-depth stone, brick, lath, plaster—materials and building methods almost as extinct as the amber-glass ashtrays and gigantic tube televisions.

Estate sales are an unapologetic reminder: everyone dies. And in a way, estate sales are a funeral for a home—a last viewing before entering into a different reality, taking on a different life. But the body is not tidied in a casket; instead, its guts are dumped out for everyone to see. It’s wild and it hardly feels as if anyone is there to pay respects. Unreturned Blockbuster videos mere feet from wedding crystal and china. Uncivilized. Borderline disgraceful. It’s not the way a house that hosted so much life was meant to be last seen, and the whole experience unnerves me.

“He had two old porches,” someone announces from another room. “You know he must have been a cool guy.”

“Did anyone declare that about her figurines?” I rebuke, only to myself. “She most definitely hung that embroidered valance in the basement.” She seemed pretty cool as well.

Goodbye, house—as someone once knew you, as someone once loved you. May your journey in your next life be one as well rounded, one as thoroughly full of life as your last. May there be remnants left that explain your legacy. A daily reminder that time is precious and stands still for no one.

How NOT to Save Money on a Project

Stephanie Sabbe — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 15:30:07 GMT

I have practiced interior design under my own moniker for fifteen years. I took the traditional route: a college degree followed by years of indentured servitude at a handful of architecture firms. Once I attempted to sleep off a debilitating migraine under an abandoned desk on an upper mezzanine; my boss yelled, “Where is Stephanie!? Stephanieeeee!?” A tear slipped from the corner of my eye. I silently begged anyone I told about my headache to please let him know I was not going home; I just needed a minute. Instead I yelled “I’m sorry! I’m here” My left eye completely void of function. I never reached upper management or senior-level designer positions at the firms where I spent my twenties. They taught me how to design, how to draw, how to work until my body might give out, then how to fill it with caffeine and keep working. Going to design school, then working for a large corporate architecture firm felt like striving for admittance into a secret society. Often asking my peers, “Why are we doing this again!?” The experience felt equal parts thrilling and degrading and at the end I resembled a dog who lived in the shelter for just a bit too long. I needed a sign to say I might bite. I encountered a young, beautiful woman at a dinner party who shared that she was also an interior designer. “Self-taught,” she said. Amazing, I thought. Look how beautiful you are. I imagine she spent her twenties sleeping in a bed.

Forty-Four and a Facelift

Stephanie Sabbe — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:31:24 GMT

I am forty-four today. When I woke up, I thought, “You are the same age as your mother when you graduated from college. Ughh.”

My mother was twenty-two when she had me. Surrounded by teen moms forced into marrying their teen boyfriends due to unexpected pregnancy, my mom was always proud to have married my dad first, then conceived me more than a year later. “Twenty-two was old for my friends,” she would often say. My mom was single five years later. Shortly before leaving her for a younger woman in his AA group, my dad brought home two pet parakeets, gifts for me and my younger brother, Brennan. We named them Superman and Lemonhead. To this day, I do not know how my mother did not actually murder my father. Who throws in two squawking birds before leaving their family? My mom hated those birds as much as she hated our dad, as seen by the endless photos I now own where he has been meticulously cut out.

The Dennis and Stephanie Show

Stephanie Sabbe — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 15:07:03 GMT

As I have mentioned, give or take, two thousand times, I wrote a book that was published earlier this year called Interiors of a Storyteller. Following the release, I went on a self-funded book tour. To most people, book writing sounds glamorous. It is a lot of things, but glamorous is really not one of them. At least not for me. The publisher I worked with did no form of PR and so I hired my Nashville friend, Allison Duke, to help spread the word. Magazines and local news stations do not call you and say, “Hey there! We heard you wrote a book, and we would like to help you get the word out.” You have to bug them yourself. Historically, I never shy away from self-promotion (it’s free!). But this time I did not have it in me to tap dance my book, which I had spent the better part of twelve months pouring my heart into, around town myself. Too personal. The “no’s” would no doubt hurt worse than all of the other “no’s” I have received in life. And so I hired Allison. Allison mainly tackled press-related media. I, for the most part, handled the book tour schedule.

Good News! I Was Just Depressed

Stephanie Sabbe — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:32:26 GMT

Last January I was on the trip of a lifetime in London with a group of very dear friends, all designers. We went to flea markets, fancy dinners. We drank tea and absorbed historic architecture like I had yet to experience in life. And all I could think during the entire trip was — I hate this job.

My Best Advice for Dorm Decor

Stephanie Sabbe — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 23:20:23 GMT

I was a sophomore at the University of Tennessee when I started dating my husband, Bryan. He was a year older and lived in an off-campus house with two of his high school friends. They had a ping pong table in the garage, a trampoline in the backyard, and a huge homemade water bong in the living room. Bryan, never the pot smoker, has always been besties with the wild ones. We were on a date once, and Bryan’s roommate Paul called him after putting his hand through a single pane window that had been painted shut after locking himself out. Paul had to do a ton of therapy and, to my knowledge, still does not have full function of his pinky finger. (Sidenote: pinky promises, which I requested thereafter often, enrage him.) Did they call 911? No. They called Bryan. Every rowdy crowd needs a Bryan.