When it comes to a season of gifting, we cannot help but remember the other side of that coin.

The yin to the yang of giving, is of course, receiving. I know for me, when I think about the most meaningful offerings anyone can gift in my direction, it is always presence and time given from the heart of the people I love – touch or a song, music played, a kind note, a homemade meal or a thoughtful call, a walk in the park or a hand drawn picture, a read book underlined because a verse brought me to mind. In light of knowing what I most like to receive, I too can give of myself to the people I love. Most vulnerable and authentically, I’ve written poems for my friends and family. I know we all have gifts inside us. I asked a few of my colleagues to share some ideas of theirs in hopes that we all might remember how meaningful it is to give and receive home-made and from the heart.

My son gifted me a painting of my home a couple of years ago that he painted. I thought it was so thoughtful. It was one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever received. I have it hanging in my bedroom and think of him every time I see it. – Jennifer Hadfield, Property Consultant

My favourite is to gift loved ones a shared experience, something we can do together, another memory created as a pose to another physical thing. – Lala Weiss, Director of Transformation

When I lived in Orem, we were gifted tickets to the Orem Hale Center Theater for a couple of years. So along with enjoying beautiful shows put on by talented community creatives, it felt amazing knowing that this gift wasn’t just a thing that had been purchased, it had supported a local business with so much history in the community. – Michaela Lyon, Design Assistant

For me, the best gifts are the thoughtful and intentional ones – making someone’s favorite meal, asking them on a hike or to a place where you’ve made beautiful memories. Give them a card with a map to meet you somewhere special on a specific day. Inviting someone to join you in something that you love doing together; I got my dad and I dance lessons one year because we both love to boogie. – Rachael Leprey, Property Consultant

I like to give gifts that connect people with the earth, and the plants, and their own vitality – feeling good in their own bodies. Making people herbal tea blends, tinctures, and body care products that I get to infuse with my love and intentions…that’s the good goods to me. – Corigan Kushma, Property Consultant

“When you die, only three things will remain of you… what you have taught to others, what you have created with your hands, and how much love you have spread. So learn more and more in order to teach wise, long-lasting values. Work to leave the world things of great beauty. And love, love, love people around you for the light of love heals everything.” — Francois Bourillon

One thing I know for certain, we are energetic beings not separate from one another and our environments.

Our neighborhoods do not have clearly defined boundaries and no amount of red-lining, or other deliberate means of division and oppression, past or present, can keep communities from integrating. Our physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual borders with others, and within ourselves are dissolving. As we develop over the course of our lives we become more aware of how fundamental our wellbeing is in relation to the wellbeing of others. What surrounds us on the outside, as well as what makes us up on the inside, becomes our balanced imperative. If we spend too much time on what is outside of us, our inner state can become weak and malnourished. If we spend too much time on the inside, we can become isolated and lack awareness for the concerns of our fellow humans, the environment and our personal and shared living spaces. So balancing our inner and outer health, the micro and the macro, the esoteric and the exoteric, the introvert and the extravert, becomes a major focus as we grow up. To recognize that our homes impact our bodies and our homebodies impact our houses, and how both impact and influence our communities and relationships, is the work of cityhome. Always has been, always will be. We love architecture and interiors that are inspired by beautiful souls and we love the creative makers who adorn them. Our clients come to us because we care both about how they are on the inside and how the outside honors and reflects their Truest Selves.

We are continuing our conversations at cityhome regarding all things home, both in body, in our houses, and communities. Our cityhome lounge has been such a refuge over the last decade, from healing justice gatherings, a quiet place to read and reflect, live music, to being inspired by brilliant educators and creatives, let’s keep connecting, sharing ideas, and just being with each other. Our underground continues to house local art, movement, breath work, sound mediations and all the things for our inner wellbeing. As designers and property brokers we find that it is our privilege to offer you what we do best – create space for people here in our city to feel at home. The balance of our mid-century building on South Temple is a container for all that we do – our creative studio, our boutique brokerage, our community lounge, and our underground. You are invited to be a part of all of them, as clients for sure, but for our neighborhood allies as well. Because when it comes to living well, we love to talk about it, but more so, we love to simply be about it. If you are a past, current or future client, a fellow home lover, a creative, a caregiver, a lover of the body that is your house, working to balance your inside world and your outside environment and would like more information on a few of our weekly and monthly offerings at our home on South Temple, hit us up. You will likely find other folks who would agree, we are all affecting the world around us and the world around us is affecting us, so the best way to change the ripples we are putting out is to address the cause, ourselves. From our grounded centers and happy bodies, let’s make the spaces around us shine more brightly this year. Cheers to all of us doing the work of returning home, together.

XOXO — Cody

Call/Text us at 801.718.5555 or email [email protected] for more info and to RSVP

Morning Offerings | January – March 2023

Tuesday (weekly) Yoga

Wednesday (monthly) Community Coffee

Thursday (weekly) Qigong

Monday – Friday (by appointment) Lounge

A bit about the teachers, the classes and the offerings…

Yoga – Kavita Bianchetti has been practicing yoga and Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine) for as long as she can remember. At this stage of her practice, Kavita pays close attention to the most subtle aspects of yoga, breath, and the way we attend to ourselves. Her style of practice, which she’s done for over a decade, reflects her traditional roots in India. Kavita believes all bodies can benefit from exploring a regular practice. Class is open to all folks, all bodies, all abilities.

Qigong – Scott White has practiced movement medicine for over 20 years. He uses Qigong to help folks access and optimize their potential in business, relationships and personal fitness. Qigong is a gentle practice of slow steady movement that shifts us into a healing mode, helping still the mind and open the heart. This class is especially gentle and open to all folks, all bodies, all abilities.

Community Coffee – We have been gathering once a month for coffee – sometimes on the front lawn, incense in grass, and sometimes in our lounge amongst design/home/wisdom books. We love bringing people together to share ideas and meet neighbors, other creatives or fellow home lovers. The coffee is on us, the conversation is up to you.

Lounge – If you are a friend of cityhome and curious about scheduling time in the lounge for a community meeting, alone time for you and a book, a lecture series online with our cityhome values and our love of all things houses and community, connect. We will be happy to explore lounge options with you.

From buzzing bees to beautiful museums, our definition of home includes the inside out and from the ground up. Committing to a holistic approach to living has been and will always be the most beautiful and likely way to thrive, in our humble and honest opinion. We chose a few of our favorite collaborations and features from this last year that got straight to the heart of what we’ve been saying –

Love Where You Live.

1) Springville Museum: Utah Art at Mid-Century

The show features almost 70 artworks from the Museum’s collection by traditional and modern artists working in Utah in the 1940s to 1960s, plus two galleries of mid-century interior design and decorative arts curated and designed by our very own Cody Derrick and Kelly Carper.

2) Tautology

What she has produced is as sensual as it is haunting…the nude form, baked navajo sandstone and ominous thunderclouds her subject material. There’s a poignancy in her work that catches in your throat and refuses to let you forget the desert is hard and unforgiving but also, and simultaneously, unimaginably delicate.

3) Design | Austin Tx, Oasis

The task at hand was least to say AMBITIOUS and it included a total transformation of a generic, builder-grade development property to an exquisite all-custom home that radiates with old world Flemish charm. Clustered around an emerald green pool, paved with amalgam of reclaimed stones brought from Europe and encircled within lush gardens (that feel as if they were there for decades), this home is an oasis of privacy that celebrates the marvelous connection between the indoors and the nature that surrounds it.

4) Lola | Form of Love

There are not many locally owned restaurants that embody an amalgamation of food, sensuality, and design with such success. Chef Sam (whose amazing techniques were cast and forged in numerous domestic and international culinary Meccas) well understands that beauty elevates ordinary.

5) Let it Bee

The social ties that hold bees in a hive together are the same qualities that bind us, compassion and collaboration among them. (Did you know when it gets cold enough, bees cluster into a ball and take turns rotating in and out of the center where it keeps warm and cozy?) The importance of community cannot be understated. We are all part of the fabric of what makes this city what it is, and, without community, who among us can make it?

6) Stone Shelters | For The Love of Land

For us, this land has a sacred significance as it is the homeland of the great Shoshone tribe, the very place they returned to at the beginning of each winter season. To be entrusted to collaborate with our dear friends on the creation of the first modern permanent structures has felt like a great honor, and equally a tremendous responsibility, as we wanted to pay homage to the beliefs, values, practices and the land itself.

7) Design | Lynwood Dr. Lounge + Workspace

Our clients like to push boundaries and our goal was to design an eclectic space to reflect that persona. With funky shapes and unexpected pops of color, this basement lounge strikes the perfect balance between cozy and lively. Around the corner, a custom designed desk and bench by Craftsman Kitchens completes the home office experience – making the work day a little more enjoyable.

8) IO LandArch | Healy House

For Shalae Larsen, residential landscape design is not only about creating a beautiful first impression, but also considers functionality, water conservation, the local ecosystem, and historic context of your home. The latter is a bit of a specialty for Shalae’s Ogden-based Landscape Architecture and Urban Design studio, Io LandArch, and was the focus of my recent visit to one of their signature projects.

9) House Calls | Encircle SLC

That’s exactly what Encircle has created, a home. A home for anyone in our community that needs it, especially the LGBTQ community. From the open and warm entryway, cozy touches, and sounds of laughter flooding the space, it truly creates the sensation of being home with friends and family, seeing as you are.

10) House Calls | Mark Pittman

There’s no other place I’d rather spend an afternoon. This is a space that truly reflects its lovely dweller. Mark spent his early years in Germany before moving to our city at the age of 16 with his family. He’s a man who has brought all of his worldly adventures together in order to create a truly unique home.

11) Life in Your Space | The Maryland

We believe this unit is especially fantastic because of all of the folks who made it home; you are where all of this fantastic originates. To all of you homemakers, keep the fantastic flowing. We believe in you, and your sanctuaries.

We showed you how to livee that mid-mod life inside the Springville Museum of Art a few months ago. Thank you to the museum crew for that lovely invitation to create a home within your home. The Conversations we had with so many great patrons of the arts that evening inspired us to contiume the conversation together.

Save the evening of February 8th | Loacated at the Springville Museum of Art | 126 E 400 S Springville

What happens when your clients are your muse? Well, you work with more heart, I know that. You wonder more often how to really see them, their talents, their hearts and their good taste. We get more curious about what our people have to teach us. For me, the love started early with these folks and their house, just over a decade ago. It’s easy to love the house they chose, that’s the thing about great clients, they have great taste. Andrea and Dave purchased a place eleven years ago that synced well with their own needs, interests and values. Andrea and Dave and their insight are a gift to us at cityhome and I hope that their insight can be a gift to you fine folks that read our words and view our images. I sat down with them to chat about their thoughts on what it means to be a good global neighbor, a good friend, and a good person. During times of struggle and strife, we can use all the insight we can get. Especially when it comes to people who live globally, but who love locally. Here are a few gems from these friends who I just cannot get enough of.

Cody – Let’s chat about the causes that y’all care about and what it means to be a good neighbor.

Andrea – What we do professionally is possible because Salt Lake City is such a good hub. We have traveled to twenty three different countries, but traveling less now we still find such meaningful engagement. The idea of being a good global citizen means being involved. We don’t necessarily need a house in a place to be a part of its community. Maintaining community can mean so many things. Investing in ways that enrich friendships to enrich the world and hopefully, our planet. For us, the financial stability [with] selling our home and having a place in New Zealand, means more time with family and friends, more time for passion projects.

Dave – When the pandemic started, we wanted to still help out as much as possible. Doing epidemic intelligence remotely, allowed [us] to put our shoulder to the wheel, helping the community even when you can’t physically interact.

Cody – What makes it worth continuing to invest in a community if you’re not there?

Andrea – There is nothing that replaces people who hold you accountable for the person you once were. Not only accountable, but celebrates it. Pissed off punk rock kids, Andrea and Dave! Do not forget this rage and indignation. For any amount of oppression, there is an equal amount of rebellion. That rebellion and indignation is LOVE. It is a part of everything we do in our work, as systems collapse and climates change, we rage on.

Dave – There is love in letting the natural world soothe you.

Cody – We want to help folks and encourage them to take care of their body so they won’t burn themselves out. So they can fight the fight. What does allowing nature to soothe you, mean to you? What does it feel like? How do you rest to remain present in this world?

Dave – I am big on forest bathing, going for runs up City Creek Canyon and home.

Andrea – Communion with your ancestors. Less ownership of things. Not being so tethered to things allows us to invest ourselves in families and friends.

Cody – How do we find ways to connect with people?

Andrea – Relational esteem is something that you can scale into a community. One part of relational esteem is being able to stay within your isolation. To be able to stay still in moments that are filled with grief. “Don’t just do something, stand there.” (shared laughter all around)

In a world hell-bent on celebrating our ability to go it alone, I wanna shout out everyone who is moving beyond creating a life just for themselves – those who are leaning into making a life connected more to each other. To make it on our own, is a strong belief in the world I came up in. While individuality is a value we hold dear at our collective, true independence is beautifully bound with individuals cooperating to create the future, and the now. Sometimes individuality can be conflated with independence, just as sovereignty can be with solitude. With as many influences in our lives pointing to our wildly opposing places of separation and difference, I wonder if it would do us well to spend a bit more time considering our dependence on one another. I depend on my neighbors Scott and Maria to keep being neighborly. I depend on my colleagues to keep upholding a lofty vision for community-building and client-loving. I depend on the wisdom of our elders who are teaching me lessons from the land and history. I depend on mentors, coaches and teachers to continue helping me unravel blocks and blindspots that many of us were raised with – a mentality of competition over collaboration. I have been lucky enough to see, that over the years these beliefs have been proven to be pretty damn inefficient and unsustainable, compared to a route where community and relationships are the heartbeat, be it business or otherwise.

It’s easy for us in our career to see how many individuals it takes to do our jobs and to do them well. We rely on a whole crew of folks who know how to love on houses and people. We rely on electricians, appraisers, photographers, makers, handy-guys and gals, we have painters, artists, designers, plumbers, and about a hundred more talented tradespeople, book nerds, full-on holistic house magicians and the list goes on. These circles of care ripple out into our neighborhoods and cities. When we slow down, we realize that we would not be able to survive without each other – in life, in business, in all of it. I’ve been chatting with one of our cityhome neighbors, Diego, with The Other Side Academy, we want to share their good work and mission with more folks; some neighbors are so easy to love. More to come on this one, but I will say in the meantime; when we listen to enough people’s stories, and find out what really matters, one thing is becoming clear, when people talk about their version of home, it’s never really a place. It’s a sense of belonging. And that is an inside job. While we share in this desire to belong, the ways we arrive there could not be more different. It is our inter-dependence and our one-off uniqueness that makes us wildly important in our communities, which crave diversity to survive. It us! Our differences makes us all valuable, and our togetherness and enthusiasm to celebrate each other, with each other, binds us. In the best ways. We come to rely on each other over time, and that will continue to help us make it in this world. Preaching to the choir here, I know. Let’s thrive, together, so we don’t fail, apart. The more diverse people we welcome into our awareness, the more likely we are to belong, in our bodies, our houses, and in our communities.

Seems to me that inter-dependence and independence are as bound together as this land, and you and me.

We believe in homes because we believe in people.

The folks that tend to invite us into their spaces to either sell, style, design, or all of the above, typically follow our guidance because they know that we are following theirs. Our friend/client/neighbor, at The Maryland, is an educator who loves literature, art and architecture. We believe that the best way to bring out the beauty in a space, is to look into the beauty and the brains of our clients. Here’s the thing, sometimes people just need to know how great they are and how much they already know about how to live. And how to live well.

We simply get to bring a bit more of that inherent personality out by seeing folks and houses for who and what they already are, unique – in this case, grounded, art-filled, smart, courageous, bright and kind. What fun ingredients for us to collaborate with and a great reminder of how many hands and hearts it takes to create a safe space. Our hats are eternally off to the makers, shopkeepers, the homeowners, the architects and designers, the handy-gals/guys, painters, roofers, the cleaning crew and everyone in between who readies a house for living. We believe this unit is especially fantastic because of all of the folks who made it home; you are where all of this fantastic originates. To all of you homemakers, keep the fantastic flowing.

We believe in you, and your sanctuaries!

CLICK HERE FOR FULL LISTING

Long live the artists. And long live our town’s collective art!

Our community has been producing beauty from the bones of despair and death these last few years. The Utah art scene, since our state’s founding, has been struggling to emerge untainted and free, in a place that has oftentimes required an extra push for truth to be honored in all its visual, tactile and audible forms. Oftentimes, freedom to express in conservative states, deserves mad respect and encouragement. Those of us who create from scratch know that true art tells the truth and truth comes from the depth and the height of the artist’s innermost, everything.

So, as we continue to transmute our world’s suffering as best we can, into wisdom, then passing it on for the world to see, we too, would like to invite y’all to visit the studios of a handful of friends, fellow artists and ally-interior lovers. Join us in celebrating the arts and supporting the artists who deserve to know that what they are creating matters to us. Because it is a beautiful reminder that when life gets gnarly and we don’t have a lot of extra life force to give to the world, for those who are spending that energy to create beauty for the rest of us, our applause and praise is the least that we can do. And a purchase, well, I am sure that would be well received too.

Much love, see you at the Mill Building Studios. And a sincere thank you, to all of our makers and creators in this beautiful place we all get to call home.

Artist Open Studios Friday, May 13th, 5pm -10pm // Saturday, May 14th, 10am-2pm and 5pm -10pm // Sunday, May 15th, 10am-2pm

MILL BUILDING Studios | 244 WEST 300 NORTH SLC | located at the north end of the parking lot

Mill Building Artists: Portia Snow, D Hake, Dallas Graham, Kent Miller, Michael Aberman // Guest Artists: Carlisle, Colour Maisch, Regina Stenberg

For seventeen years, we at cityhome, have been dedicated to highlighting, promoting, encouraging and loving the creators who contribute to making houses a home. We applaud the makers, the artists and the house lovers at every turn. With that, we are so proud to present the creative work of our long time cityhome client, family member and dear friend Alexandra Fuller. Next Friday, you, our beloved community, are cordially invited to a casual evening of art and friends, in the basement of our cityhome design division, that we lovingly call cityhomeUNDERGROUND. Open house style 6pm-9pm, Friday the 29th at 641 East South Temple. In a world that has, in so many directions, gone the way of screens and fast posts, we’d like to encourage the opposite as often as we can. Let’s take a minute, slow down, appreciate the heartfelt work of a fellow creative and come together in real life, as often as we possibly can. From our house to yours, come on by. You are always welcome in our city, home.

click here to rsvp | cityhomeunderground

Pretty much all of our conversations these days quickly turn to the stuff that matters – our peace, our health, our survival, and what and who we love. Leave it to Benny Wiemeyer and Jayda Jackson to give it to us straight. The patio of Bar X always holds space for real talk. Much love to these two COLLECTIVE friends for keeping it honest and for continuing to show up in this town. We love the both of you and thank you for sharing your thoughts. As we continue growing up together here in Utah, we will continue to be in conversation about the stuff that matters and welcome you to participate. We see you and we hear you. And if you see us out and about, come say hi!

cityhomeCOLLECTIVE: What matters most to you in this town?

Benny: My community of close friends and creatives living in close proximity.

CHC: Hopes for our future?

Benny: That planners, developers, architects get some culture or at least pay respect to it; so they can quit fucking up all the cool neighborhoods with their lack of effort, heart and thoughtful buildings.

CHC: Wisdom to share?

Benny: Practice not being scared. Reflect often. Have compassion without making excuses for other people’s behavior. Learn to take great care of yourself and most important – have fucking fun! Why not?!

CHC: What matters most to you in SLC?

Jayda: All the surprisingly rich counter culture.

CHC: Lessons from the Past?

Jayda: Invest young, invest in yourself and don’t mess up your credit.