Walk into Rick and Debbie Seid’s home on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and you can’t help but think you’ve entered Who-ville. Bright green feather wreaths adorn windowpanes, and hot-pink stockings with green dots hang from the trim. Fish and mermaid ornaments sway from the limbs of lime green, fluorescent pink, and shocking aqua trees. Gaily wrapped packages scattered about the room echo the theme. And dangling beneath a ceiling fan, keeping watch over all, is a gift-bearing snowman-in-the-moon. The Seids’ family room looks like a scene straight out of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Rick and Debbie adopted their pink-and-green decorating scheme after moving from Virginia to Pawleys Island. They had long envisioned retirement on the coast and frequently vacationed from North Carolina to Florida searching for the right town. “Rick’s job as a director of human resources brought him to Pawleys Island for business,” Debbie says. “He called me and said, ‘This may be the place.’”
“We always knew we wanted to live near the water, and the goal was to move once our son completed high school,” says Rick. But unexpectedly, the couple found a house ahead of schedule and accelerated relocation plans before their son graduated.
Rick retired in 2002, and filled his days painting furniture for the new home. Wanting a fresh look, he chose vivid shades of pink, green, and yellow. “It’s what you should use at the beach,” he says. A newly remodeled kitchen and the family room addition repeat the same brilliant hues Rick used elsewhere. Dining chairs and bar stools pop with intense color, and coordinating fabrics complete the design.
“After Rick ran out of projects around the house, he opened his gift shop, Lazy Fish,” says Debbie. “It features gifts and decorative objects with a coastal theme.” This year the Seids incorporated items from the shop when they decorated their home for the holidays. “We’re traveling this year, so it makes sense to use fabricated decor instead of fresh,” says Rick. “We don’t worry about throwing out a tree before we leave, and these decorations can stay up until we come home.”
