Envisioning something beautiful

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Kacy Carroll says when she was growing up, her aunts — Phyllis Lyons and Buffy Hargett Miller — would faux finish everything.

“They were always painting something,” she said. “Phyllis was probably painting my cousin Allie if she sat still long enough.”

Carroll just assumed at the time that her childhood was the way everyone grew up. She thought it was normal for her grandmother to turn the car around to go get something out of a trash pile and make it into something amazing, or for her aunts to craft on family vacations.

But turns out, it wasn’t.

It was the product of being born into a family that has “the eye” — the Mountain Brook residents have long been known for being able to see beyond what’s there and envision something beautiful.

It started with Carroll’s grandmother, Betty Drennen, whom Lyons calls “a Southern belle.”

“Mama did Imagination Incorporated — that was the name of her flower business,” Lyons said. “Back in the day, they used to have huge cocktail parties and debutante balls, and they’d be written up in the paper.”

Drennen went to England and trained under Sheila Macqueen, who had decorated Westminster Abbey for the coronation and wedding of Queen Elizabeth II, as well as the wedding reception of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Miller said her mother and the women she worked with back home were known as “the flower ladies of Birmingham,” some of Mountain Brook’s early master floral designers. And Miller and Lyons grew up learning from them.

“We worked for them; we carried buckets and learned the floral,” Miller said.

But she and her sister also “had this sort of creative eye” that came out naturally in the business — a gift they inherited from their mother.

That’s something that can’t be taught, Miller said.

And it’s something that’s blossomed into long design careers for both Miller and Lyons.

Lyons was an art teacher in Baldwin County Public Schools for 10 years, then art director at The Exceptional Foundation in Homewood for seven years before she retired. Outside of her day job, she’s done everything from decorating to making jewelry to faux finishing and marbelizing walls.

And she’s worked alongside Miller, who for 28 years was the senior stylist at Southern Living magazine. Miller also built a floral business on the side, and over the years, she created the backdrops for up to 25 weddings and events each year.

Her sister has been right there with her.

“I call us the creative crazies, because that’s what we were,” Miller said. “We’ve always been ‘designing women.’”

Miller said her sister has a gift for taking something old and blending it seamlessly into decor.

They both fondly remember Christmas trees they decorated in people’s homes around town over the years, and they rattle off stories of times they drove to venues in the middle of nowhere with a carload of decor to set up for a magazine shoot.

“We would style shots, food shots — I brought all the props,” Miller said.

Lyons also worked at different points in the prop room for Southern Progress, which published Southern Living as well as publications for Lowe’s Home Improvement.

“Lowe’s would pay me to come up with different ways to use their products for Southern Living,” she said. “I would take three mailboxes and paint them different colors to hold the kids’ stuff in the kitchen, or I’d take a toolbelt and Velcro it to the side of the bed to hold things. This was before Amazon, before you could just buy everything ready-made.”

It was part of a shift for Lowe’s, a time when they changed the game and started marketing their products to women, not just men. Lyons helped with that shift.

And so did the next generation — Carroll also worked with Lowe’s on their magazine later on, using all Lowe’s products to design spaces in homes.

Carroll — whose father, developer Jay Drennen, is Lyons’ and Miller’s brother — found her way into design somewhat unexpectedly, almost like a family magnet pulling her in.

“I was a marketing major; I’m really good with numbers, and I never thought I could do design for a living,” she said. “But as I got older, I fell into spots that showed my gifts, and I decided to pursue them.”

For the past 10 years, she has run Kacy Carroll Studios, designing home and business spaces by selecting colors, hardware and high-end furnishings.

Like her aunts, Carroll loves for it to be a family affair — she often brings in Miller to do the finishing touches with decor.

“They’re very crafty,” Carroll said, “and I’m more of a structural type.”

But they all have “the eye,” and they have something else that ties them together: their favorite color is chartreuse. Lyons, who has pops of chartreuse all over her living room, said it’s the new neutral — “everything goes with it.”

It’s also the favorite color of Lyons’ daughter, Allie Nielsen, who lives in Andalusia and runs Vine + Branch, a shop that offers luxury faux floral and moss designs along with Southern wild Smilax (or greenbrier) pulled fresh to order.

Nielsen also tried a different path before leaning back into the creativity she grew up with — she used to be a lung transplant nurse in Chicago. Now with Vine + Branch, she collaborates with her aunt and cousins too.

“I’ve sent containers down to Andalusia, and she’ll fill them with arrangements and send them back for clients,” Carroll said.

They all have projects all over the place at any given moment, but for Lyons and Miller, their primary creative outlets have shifted recently — on the last weekend in March, they decorated for their final two weddings.

“I just retired from doing big weddings and events,” Miller said. “I want to make more time for my passion, which is painting.”

She quickly added, “and other creative projects.”

One family project they have planned for the near future is to redo a room at the Foundry, a rescue mission and recovery center in Bessemer.

“I’m excited about this next chapter, because it won’t be as stressful,” Miller said.

But slowing down isn’t really in the family’s genes. At 94, Drennen is still very much into “other creative projects” too, and Lyons said she’s “as alive as she can be.”

Drennen is still providing guidance in the gardens at her daughters’ Mountain Brook homes, which are next door to each other and connected by a patio.

“We love our gardens — Mama has taught us to do that,” Lyons said.

They have many pass-along plants — plants that have survived for years by being passed from one person to the next.

“We did a video on pass-along plants in the garden with my mother, and it got about 80,000 views,” Miller said.

She said Drennen has also already had two pop-up shops this year at the local retirement home where she lives. Residents can charge their purchases at Betty’s Beads and Bangles to their room account.

For merchandise, Lyons said she takes her mother’s vintage jewelry and beads and blends them to make “elegant, elaborate statement necklaces and cuff bracelets” — all of which are $10. Over the years, Drennen collected a lot of pieces in her travels, and she had spaces at shops like Hanna Antiques and Irondale Pickers.

Now her daughters love helping style her collection into new things.

“We have crafternoons, and our husbands hate it,” Lyons joked.

But their husbands can’t stop it, just like Lyons and Miller can’t stop their mother from checking out other people’s discarded items as they drive around town.

“Trash to treasure is a big part of Mama’s heart,” Lyons said. “The other day, I was driving her back from the doctor, and she was like, ‘Slow down, there’s a trash pile.’ She does it every time, and I say, ‘What are you going to do with it, Mama? What are we going to do with the chair?’”

And every time, she’s got a vision.