Archive for December, 2008
Posted on December 30, 2008 - by Estate Manager
A Bird’s Book of Colors
What’s your favorite color? The bird and I love the color blue. Slade is known for his love of the color green. And MeeBoo? Well it is too soon to tell. This morning the bird and I worked on a color book that was really fun to make and it turned out super cute. This idea came from a new craft blog called The Hybrid Kid, you can download her templates for a nominal charge. Today though we cheated and came up with our own version. The Hybrid Kid version is a lot more cute. I took 5 brown paper lunch bags and folded them in half and stapled them. Then we cut out our different color squares and glued them to each page. Then we took some old magazines that Slade finished reading and cut out pictures that corresponded with each color we were representing. We added some animal stickers and made paper tags. It kept us busy for about an hour.
Posted on December 29, 2008 - by Estate Manager
Welcome to Hearthstone House!
Welcome to Hearthstone House! These posts that you are reading are the goings on of a wife, mother, designer, short order cook and estate manager for a suburban home. My hope is to encourage, inspire, connect, and reconnect with friends and family and to create new friendships as well. Please feel free to leave a post and comment.
I want to thank Slade my husband for creating this for me, I have wanted a way to digitally scrapbook and archive all the fun and wonderful things we do as a family and this encompasses all the things I love. I love you and I hope you know this means so much!
Sincerely,
Estate Manager, Hearthstone House
Posted on December 29, 2008 - by Estate Manager
Bird Jewelry
Recently the bird has really been interested in jewelry and playing jewelry store. Grandma Pam and the bird played jewelry store over and over while we were visiting Florida a few weeks ago. Bird was so cute pretending to be a shop owner, showing her wears, telling the story of how the piece was made and giving a price. Then she would put the pieces in a box and send Grandma on her way. This inspired Grandma and I to get the bird a jewelry making kit of her own for Christmas. For the past few days bird has been designing her own line of Pop Bead Jewelry that I think is rather smart looking. I couldn’t resist helping her in her endeavor by organizing the beads in an Art Bin. Target carries the set and it is made by the Parents company.
Posted on December 29, 2008 - by Estate Manager
Puppet Show at Hearthstone House
This morning the bird and I tried this super easy idea for a puppet show. We were inspired by a post on the Crafty Crow website. We used a tension rod in one of the doorway openings with an extra curtain panel I had sitting around the house. You could also use a table cloth or sheet to achieve the same effect. We took turns singing silly songs and making up stories. This idea can also work under a table or chair to make a fort.
Posted on December 25, 2008 - by Slade
Roast Pork Tenderloin
I will fully admit this… I am only putting this in here to serve as a placeholder for the Recipes category. I like pork tenderloin, but I am not sure if it warrants its own blog post. Oh well… here’s the info:
Ingredients:
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Directions:
Position a rack near the bottom of the oven and preheat to 500°. Mince together the garlic, salt, sage and pepper. In a small bowl, combine with the oil. Rub all over the meat and place the tenderloins side by side but not touching in the smallest roasting pan that will hold them. Roast for 10 minutes. Flip over and roast again until the internal temperature registers 155° on an instant-read thermometer, about 8 minutes more. Let rest for about 10 minutes (the internal temperature should reach 160°). Slice into 1/2-inch-thick slices.
Posted on December 25, 2008 - by Slade
Palm Springs at The Parker
One great thing about 2008 was the birth of Anora, who’s the baby daughter of Neil & Quirine. What’s that have to do with Palm Springs, you ask? Lots. We went out to Palm Springs for the second time back in the Spring of 2007 and it was amazing. All of us stayed at the Parker Palm Springs and it was amazing. We didn’t do anything but sit around the pool all day, go eat dinner and then sit around the fire all night drinking wine (or root beer in my case) and just chatted and looked up at the stars.
I can’t wait to go back with the girls in the near future. Its nice to look back at these photos when its cold and gloomy outside and think that its warm and sunny somewhere, and we just need to carve out the time to get there and relax.
Posted on December 24, 2008 - by Slade
Monkey Party!
Julie made these great party favors and sign for our friend Mandy a month or so ago. Little Drew’s party theme was Monkeys, so it was a great little project, and lots of fun. Mandy loved it, and everyone at the party had a great time. The best part was that FedEx delivered them the day before, so nobody freaked out and the party went off with a hitch. We’ve known Mandy for over 12 years and she’s a great friend. We’re hoping that she and her family move out here to Atlanta soon, as they’re a lot of fun.
Posted on December 24, 2008 - by Slade
Geeky Christmas Wreath
So I, Slade, started a new job last week, and somehow I ran my mouth within the first few hours at how amazing my wife was at decorating and design, so surprise, they ask me/us to do the company Christmas wreath for the office park Christmas Wreath Contest. Normally, a project like this would involve multiple sketches, a few heated arguments over items we could/could not get a Target, and a couple of nights working on it. We managed to get it put together in a few hours…
We took some old cds, a hard drive controller board, some old cables, a busted mouse and slapped that on a fresh wreath, along with some Orange Cat-5 Cable, and some wonky tube lights. I think we took third. I am not even going to show you what won, you’d just be mad. The other offerings in the office park were shoddy at best, and I truly think that we were looked at as “ringers” as we have a dedicated team of designers, so I am going to just chalk it up as being too good, and that’s why we didn’t win.
Posted on December 24, 2008 - by Slade
David Hicks
David Hicks (1929-98) has emerged as the most influential interior designer of his generation. His style, known through his own books and now through his son Ashley’s 2003 book David Hicks: Designer, has inspired contemporary designers of both fashion and home.
Hicks was born in the English country village of Coggeshall, Essex. After public school at Charterhouse and studies in art and design at the Central School in London, he launched his design career with the decoration of his own house in London in 1954.
Early clients mixed aristocracy, media and fashion (Vidal Sassoon, Helena Rubinstein, the Duchess of Rutland and Mrs Condé Nast). Hicks married Lady Pamela Mountbatten in 1960 and was soon making carpets for Windsor Castle and decorating the Prince of Wales’ first apartment at Buckingham Palace.
Posted on December 20, 2008 - by Slade
Merry Christmas, Julie.
I like the fact that I can make you things. Its pretty neat. Its a lot more fun when I actually think of these ideas with far more than enough time to execute them to my expectation, but I am really happy that we get to sit around and geek out. You with your laptop and design blogs, me with the imac learning weird things in the Apple iPhone software development plan.
This is going to be a lot of fun, you getting to learn more about what I do each day, and me getting to show you how to publish things, link to new content and make new friends on the internet. I hope you like this as much as I loved making it for you.
Flickr Photos
As Seen On
