in the twenty first century and to connect you to local resources and today we're talking to someone that is very local in new jersey but does amazing amazing work a fellow interior designer liz ballo is that correct yes let is and president and c e o of lynn's linens incorporated a nonprofit organization that supports women who are going through all kinds of cancer treatment  is that correct correct so welcome melissa ballo and thank you for having me welcome welcome thank you and please tell us about lynn's limbs tell us how this organization got started ok lynn's linens is actually named for my sister linda and linda had twenty years ago was initially diagnosed with breast cancer and bought a battle and was doing well and then about ten years afterwards had a recurrence and then i guess it was about seven years ago there was another recurrence and the the rather the second recurrence was more difficult because she knew she was going to be going back into chemotherapy and it was just a very difficult time for having been through it already if she knew i was coming exactly exactly it was a very difficult time and because i'm an interior designer i was trying to think what can i do for her and it was it's in my nature my most natural thing was to create a space for her so when she had been at the doctor's having some some pre work done i had gone into her home and it was all planned well in advance but i did a or redo of her bedroom and my thoughts were that i wanted her to be able to come back and have a bedroom that wasn't a sick room because i knew she was going to be spending more time in bed but instead was more of a sanctuary something that felt more spa like and she came home that night and i was sitting downstairs and i hadn't told her and i said yeah we're going to go out to dinner and i just let her go up stairs on her own and she opened up the door to her bedroom and saw this and i remember sitting down in her living room and hearing her response and saying it can't be done and then chills it can't begin and end in this bedroom you know and so i said we have to bring this to other women because of this meant so much to my sister then other women out there need this just as much and so we i began luckily i have a i have an extremely supportive family and we got together and said ok how do we do this and my my one brother is an attorney and i said how do we form a quote nice shot at a nonprofit and through the hard work and years ago seven years ago we were we were granted our status and we have been operating in new jersey ever since right right well that's wonderful seven years is a long time to keep going and i'm sure you've served so eighteen ok who's currently in treatment for malignant cancer and it has to be in her primary residence right so we really do that that assessment first and i do that via a phone call now who determines what the needs are white right the the needs are basically i i'm the one that makes the determination and the reason that i do this is because when i go out to a person's house  i really see so much more than what you could ever see on paper there and it's not always the person that on paper looks like they have this you know have this this need that's crying out to be mad you know sometimes it's a person who doesn't have a strong support system in place sometimes it's a person who you know you've got a to pay check working family who have just been working and just just getting just getting where we're not in the tri state area right now and that mainly has to do with the logistics of doing it right out of the legal white right there just takes two of just having having a team that is able to because everyone who works with is a volunteer right so that's part of it having having our support group in place who can actually help us with this and most of your work is done  by the shore area or it's all over new jersey know we're all over new jersey ok we travel from one end of the state to the bottom in every place in between ok ground zero so that's a great thing i hear that you call your clients program sisters yes i guess that's because when you go into someone's home especially in the bedroom as you said it's you can walk into someone's home and you immediately know who they are like you you know someone's home really speaks volumes absolute to who the people are that live there absolutely and that is what soul skate living is all about have we really want to have the conversation on how important it is your environment is to your own personal well being to your health to your site it's all of it absolute and as a fellow interior designer you you agree you get it yes so and you actually could see that vision for your sister yes and then see an even bigger vision for more sisters absolute tell me about your program sisters well the you're right we do our feeling is it was named for my sister in and women are sisters and men are brothers and you know basically it's the human family we're all part of right so that's that's why we do call our program sisters sisters but beyond just that it's the connection with our sisters doesn't begin and end in their room it's it's an ongoing connection i you know we we talk we check in with our sisters sometimes it's doing something like knowing for example i'll just give you an example of something i knew during hurricane irene that one of our program sisters which is basically alone she has no family she has no support system and they had closed down the highways and i called her to make sure that she was ok because i knew where she wasn't within the treatment cycle and i just asked her if she was doing ok and she said yes that she had had you know certain things they are but she said i really don't have i don't have extra batteries and she said i'm really afraid because all of my outdoor furniture is there and i'm afraid it's all going to go flying when the winds hit and we were fortunate because again our our volunteers are all part of our family and i was able to call one of the volunteers that who happens to live close to her told her told this family the volunteer family about the situation and they went over to her house and they got all of the the furniture the same thing yes it's it's all about healing in action healing especially when you're in that kind of of a state your healing needs to occur on those three levels your mind your body and your spirit they have to be in this together and then our local also has a circle around and that circle stands for sanctuary and that's what we call our rooms as we do our rooms for our sisters they're called healing senchenko series yes which they are i think all bedrooms are sanctuary ice and i think that when i work with a client when we are designing a master bedroom it's very intimate when you you really get to know them and you are in their private space and you are really creating a sanctuary i have that as a possibility is because of the fact very often bedrooms are not going to be the ideal one for someone to have a sanctuary i went into into a sister's home and  she her bedroom was very small it was very dark and she said to me she said that that bedroom it's where i really just go to sleep she said i really don't want to spend the time in there and the thing that was very dear to her because it's all about what is healing for you what is healing for that system and she told me that healing for her was watching the birds outside ok so for her what we did was we chose her it was a family room ok and it had a beautiful view of the outside with the bird feeders and that's where she spent so that's where she wanted to heal and so that room became a beautiful sanctuary for her to be able to sit and had the other touch as we made sure there were all birds on our books on birds and different with the u s designers you know how to well tell me tell me about the process when you interview your program sisters ok how do you know what to design for them how do you know what it is that they want it's very interesting it's really through just meeting them talking with them and asking some specific quote is there an interview process there is interview process nothing to formal though right right it's really the interview process is to get to know and also to make sure that that person really gets us understands the value of partnership yes the sisterhood correctly and it has to work both ways yes and what happens with this is you know you want someone who who truly does understand that this is a gift from the heart that people are giving to you and that their heart is open to that type of again and to receive when i asked her about that she said she said nantucket and i said oh i said well what is it about nantucket that you you go to in your mind when you need to a scape what's going on  with with this this challenge with this disease and she said that was the last place she was before she found out she was diagnosed so to her she went back to nantucket write the  kid she room you know right it's about being evocative right of that feeling that a sister wants to achieve another sister asked us she told me that her her her happy happy place was looking at beautiful sunsets and she thought about beautiful sunsets when she was sitting in in the oncology and fusion ward and so when we did her bedroom we made it evocative of sunsets and it was just creating she had a ceiling that had a little bit of a tray in it and putting a deep deep almost like a deep amethyst color in there right putting a small chandelier that when you put it on shot out colors we actually took a beautiful photograph of the sunset and pull those colors directly from there for her right well well we can go on and on and on with such beautiful stories and you're absolutely right that  designers we really have to get to know the soul of our clients in order to be able to design a space specifically for them so we're both definitely talking the same language but tell me about fundraising like how do you get fund raising and support us and support us not just monetary relate but support us with actions one of the one of my my first supporters when when we got involved in this was is a company called designers resource yeah which is dark just not just in words but he also helped us monetary really through products another organization that has been wonderful supporting me is the window coverings association of america w c a ca fabulous they were wonderful  when we first started this this organization and that is how you and i met absolutely through our light and when i first started this i didn't know i had no idea how this was all going to happen and i just kind of figured that you know if you build it they will come if you have business thinking one step forward in my you'll figure it out you'll figure out the next step and that's that's right that's exactly and so you know i was fortunate with with doing that  williams they are a wonderful company they support us not just through deeply discounting pain sometimes donating the pain but also their employees actually come out come out and pay and they do painting several times that i you know there are certain times that they have that ability to do that they were we did our fortieth sanctuary they i contacted them and said we were doing our fortieth century forty one and they actually put their group together and they came out and they painted that lohman and it was it was wonderful i mean having that kind of energy and so there's another wonderful company called j n s designer flooring and they are located in morristown just wonderful wonderful company avalon flooring is another company that gives us the they don't need product i should actually double check and make sure i'm not leaving and they went out shoreline and  to donate and to to be in touch with you and have so it will definitely give them all of that information but when i think one of the things we can do before we run out of too much out of our time is to really show some pictures yes of some of our products was there's another project that's before and that's the after you know itself was so amazing because it's the same room how much of a budget do we have our show another before there's another after why looks like a million bucks it's amazing right our budgets are very very tight we cannot spend out of pocket more than twenty five hundred dollars per room that's it and what it's important is that you know we know how to get how how to stretch that budget and make it happen that's all with a donation yes i know when you gave me the two thousand dollar budget right i was going around and asking right my resources to help me out exactly so that is how we make it happen because two thousand dollars doesn't get you too far now but it does if you have the supporters of absalom aeration absolutely and the other thing that we should mention is that when you're looking at these rooms these rooms are done over a two and a half day time period oh yes let's let's talk about when clinton's transformation yes three day process yes it's just it's intense it is it's very intense it's very intense intense what happens is that the the really the process starts as soon as the as i meet with the individual and we say yes we're going to be doing this room and what i'm doing when i'm going out there to meet as well is to see if the logistics do we have a place that we can use as a staging area can we assemble furniture do we have a place to store how many lots to think about right how many volunteers could we could we put together in this it all has to be done absolutely day right so you know from having been there that the work actually starts the minute we have we have our meeting because that's when the design process st and everything has to be put together and in place right because when day one starts you know we are we are under under the gun and things need to be done and the one thing as designers that we know that can always count on there will be some new form of i'll go in china happen count on it and just you know understand that i feel like as designers we have this very special talent and it's called our ability to toil t o i f i think on your feet that's what we do yes i call myself a huge problem solver yes yes yes because the problems will come and you've got to be on your feet and solve them quickly a people to be it's all about the resources have people there yes on your team that can say we can take care of this and that planning to the knowing that we have a because we are working in a two and a half days time frame that we know that really ninety nine point nine percent must be done on day two because that morning of day three is just cleaning out the room is right and i was all ears there is any kind of anything that did go wrong right it's that or we have a couple of hours like that wrong so it's really just say it's intense and says i will tell you about my experience a little bit the planning was fun i mean we you know as designers we have to go with the client look at the space and then plan and then buy a product and get it all ready and and all of that is fun and was great but then boom when we got in the room we had to paint we had wallpaper we had new carpeting put in and all of that took a good part of the first day right and then the second day we decided to do custom window treatments so that to that i had to go up and so it was a big it was a crunch it was fast it was life but talk about the saturday afternoon when your program sister comes in tell us about that because as a designer i don't get that wow experience all the time that doesn't happen to us because what's happening is when as designers they're kind of seeing things in the process and the process right but we have a unique situation because once our program sister turns over and that's what i was talking about to about getting us the turning over trust to us as well yes and so once that is done i after our initial meeting there's one meeting that i call our teaser meeting that i have with our sister and that gives them a little tease of what's to come what's the but then after that they don't say don't see anything they have correct our sisters right now we have a wonderful arrangement with mary's place by the sea which is a bed and breakfast in ocean grove and that's just for we're going through treatment for cancer  and our our sisters are able to go there for the two nights they stay for the two nights while we're working on the room because we don't want them involved in the you know the hectic processes is just you know they don't need that stress they do not need the designers could handle the stress but so while they're away everything is happening so they haven't seen anything until what we call our dedication day and you know a dedication day is is really unique because each sanctuary is it's actually named so we christen the room so each room has a has a name and it's based on what that the sister has told us so we've had rooms that have been called a day at the beach we've had we've had a day called we've had a room called talk it and so we named them we've the room we did i thought it's called glamour glamour right out of time soon i wanted to let people know how can they get in touch with you what's the best way for them to donate to you do fund raising how do you raise the funds are fund raising is the fund raising is very difficult because we are such a small organization that it is very very small group who are really doing everything so i do rely on the people helping us through making donations and so they want to make a can and our address is there and we'll have that posted on the show alike so they'll be able to get to get a hold of you so tell me what kind of reaction because we don't have much time left what kind of reaction do our program sisters have that saturday morning though you know and what does that do for you i think everyone who's been part of the room puts their love and their energy into the room and when our sister we actually do a ribbon cutting so there's i'm going across the room and our sister gets to cut the ribbon open up the doors and walk in for the first time scuse me that's our our opportunity to see the love that we've put in go to her go to that sister and there's just there's just no better feeling for us and we've had reactions from being totally dumbfounded to child on christmas morning from one thing to the other well they said you know i've worked with many clients but i do feel that the program sister that we worked on together for me that saturday morning i mean i was i was a little bit  you know just you know the pace of it all was overwhelming but that saturday morning when she walked in and it was like it was all worth it yes absolutely it was absolutely all worth it so we are running out of time and i normally ask my guests a quick question you know i believe that there are many things in our homes that make us happy one what in your home makes you happy in my home it's it happens to be some pieces of art that i have you to feel and i happen to have a beautiful oil painting that is visible the minute i walk through my front door and it never fails to make me smile yeah art is so personal an art really has to touch you or again touch your soul touch you emotionally so where does this come from this piece of art this piece of art was one that i had found at one of our showrooms  showroom and it was an original oil painting and i just i actually bought the piece of art while we were in the process of moving from one home to the other but the art spoke to me and i had no idea where i was going to put it but i said i needed to have it and i bought it yeah and traveled around for four months until we found our right for it i we wanted it we weren't even in the house we were living month to month of the lease where we're closing on your house and i carried it with me and it never ceases to get me to you well liz from lynn lynn thank you so much for being with us today and i hope that our viewers go to your website and even if they give you a small donation at all it's forty women and counting forty two were about world war two and counting and maybe i'll get the enough courage enough to to do another room with you and i invite designers and volunteers cooling want to volunteer and getting