2013 Highlights: My Faith, My Family and Hadley Court

This quote by Dr. Martin Luther King exemplifies what I felt when I answered God’s calling a little over a year and a half ago to honor the creativity He blessed me with and start my own interior design business here in Midland, Texas, where I live, and to enter the world of interior design blogging with my blog, Hadley Court.

My children, whom you’ll meet below, are getting older, and, though I still can’t see the whole staircase, I thought I’d take some time to reflect on some of the highlights of 2013. This is a long post, but I hope you’ll stay with me, as I’d like you to meet many of the people who’ve made these highlights possible for me, including you, dear readers.

Thank you for taking this trip with me and subscribing to HADLEY COURT. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that you find value and inspiration in what you read here. I love receiving your comments and I read each one.

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For me, nothing is more important than my faith and my family, and so I want you to meet my children, Amy and Grant. I am so very proud of their many accomplishments. Amy was accepted into The University of Texas and Grant got his driving permit. I love them dearly and everything I do everyday is centered around them.

As many of you, dear readers, can probably relate, when you have one child about to leave for college { Amy this coming year } and one getting closer { Grant in 3 years }, it’s time to start thinking about your own future.

I took several baby steps in 2012 towards that end, but this year, 2013, I felt called to take more concrete steps by seeking out professional guidance for both what I needed to know to have a successful interior design business and for what I needed to know and do in order to understand social media and use it to build my blog and my brand.

Thank you, Tobi Fairley, for your Designer MBA and Master Mind programs I attended which helped me so much in understanding how to price my interior design services properly.

and thank you, Leslie Carothers, { @tkpleslie }, CEO and founder of The Kaleidoscope Partnership for helping me understand how to use and engage on social media platforms and for helping me to build the Hadley Court brand in 2013, and now, even further, into 2014. Leslie offers interior designers group webinars and one on one training social media training.

To contact her about them, please email her at leslie@tkpartnership.com. [ Be on the lookout, too, for her 2nd business launching in 2014, http://messagesofhope.com, where she will give back 20% of her profits to the charities that her customers choose. ]

And a special shout out to my blog’s guest contributors in 2013, especially Kristi, who has been writing my Motivational Monday posts { see one here }, to Jessica Gordon Ryan who writes Welcome Wednesdays and whom you’ll meet separately below, to Shelly Mabry Rosenberg who wrote some excellent TREND THURSDAY posts for me { see one here } and to Lynda Quintero Davids who writes her own lovely blog on thrifting and DIY and styling here, and who wrote some special guest posts for me while I was at High Point Market in the fall – see one here.

I also hired Lynda to re-design my Hadley Court Pinterest Page, here. Thank you, Lynda, {known to many who use Twitter as @nyclq } for doing such a beautiful job in helping me begin defining the visual look of the HADLEY COURT lifestyle brand. The picture below is from my DECOR DETAILS Pinterest board, here.

Now,

My Top 10 2013 Highlights For My Interior Design Business, and my brand and blog: HADLEY COURT.

1. Winning the Design Bloggers Conference 2013 Hall of Fame award for Best New Interior Design Blog 2013. I did not know I was even in consideration for this award until the nominees were announced and I could not have been more surprised to win it – I was crying and so honored.

Thank you, Adam Japko, for making this possible for HADLEY COURT. I was very honored to be nominated alongside Rebecca Reynolds blog, Kitchen Ink, and the owner of The Kitchen Design Network and other fine interior design blogs and to have my name listed alongside the previous winners below.

If you’d like to attend the Design Bloggers Conference this year in Atlanta starting on Sunday, March 2nd, I will be there and would love to meet you. Click here if you’d like to register for it.

2. Completing 9 interior design projects with 4 more now in progress. { the picture below is of bedding I designed and is one of the few pictures I’ve been able to take. I love monograms, do you? }

In general here in Midland, Texas, my interior design clients { I practice out of the offices of Chancellor Interiors } are very private and do not want their names mentioned or any part of their homes published, even though many are worthy as Midland, Texas is a very dynamic area, as shared here in Texas Monthly magazine.

3. Having one of HADLEY COURT’s blog posts chosen by HOUSE BEAUTIFUL magazine as one of their Top 5 interior design blog posts of the week: If you’d like to see the full article, please click here.

4. HADLEY COURT’s regular contributor, Jessica Gordon Ryan, who pens *Welcome Wednesdays* for my blog [see an example here ] also writes her own wonderful design blog, The Entertaining House, and also contributes to the #1 interior design blog in the world, Freshome. I was so appreciative when Jessica invited me to be interviewed by her for a post on Freshome this year about what you need to know to start your own interior design firm.

I hope it might help some of you reading this who may also want to start your own interior design business later in life: Please click here to read it and thank you, Freshome, for publishing it. I was very honored to be featured on your blog.

5. In 2013, I was asked to be a host, twice, of the Dallas Market Center’s SNEAK PEEK blogger events in January and July of this year. I was honored to be asked and had a wonderful time helping the Dallas Market Center’s sneak peek blogger event attendees feel welcomed. Click here and here to read the posts I wrote about these very special events.

Thank you, Meredith Hite, for making this possible for me and thank you for asking me to do it again next month, in January 2014, even though I was not able to accept this time. I hope every designer friend of mine will attend Dallas Market, though, if they can. It’s exciting to see so much beautiful lighting and decorative accessories at one time. Click here if you’re a fellow designer reading this for the next market in Dallas, January 15-21st, 2014:

I was also very excited to win a gorgeous lamp during the July SNEAK PEEK blogger event this year which is now in my home here in Midland. Thank you to the Littman brands: Hudson Valley/Corbett Lighting, for hosting us in your lighting showroom at the Dallas Market Center and making that possible for me.

6. Another highlight of this year was attending High Point Market and meeting bloggers I’ve long admired, like Stacey Holston Bewkes, who writes the luxury blog, Quintessence, [enjoy her post on 2013 champagne here ] as well as designers like Bunny Williams whom I’m pictured with below. Bunny and I share a mutual friend in Midland and we had a lovely conversation about him.

Bunny has designed a new outdoor collection for Century Furniture that I fell in love with and plan to specify for some of my interior design clients here in Midland, Texas and to possibly use for my family’s lakehouse in Austin.

Meeting Dustin Van Fleet was another fun moment during High Point, whose silk and wool affordable area rugs I like and have specified for a project I’m currently working on. He’s interviewed on HADLEY COURT here.

Joining WITHIT, Women In The Home Furnishings Industry Today, the only professional leadership development organization for women in the home furnishings industry also led to meeting some wonderful new women and men while at High Point and I want to thank their members for making me feel welcomed and supporting Hadley Court.

I also visited the Bienenstock Furniture Library while at High Point and want to thank the chairman of their board, Charles Sutton and the rest of the staff there, including librarian Karla Webb, for making me feel welcomed and for their gift to me.

Readers, I encourage you to visit this interesting library anytime you’re in High Point. It contains the country’s largest collection of rare books on furniture and furniture history that is free and open to the public. If you love books, too, I invite you to LIKE their Facebook Page at http://facebook.com/BienenstockFurnitureLibrary and to read this article about the library on Editor at Large, by clicking here.

And a special thank you to Bernhardt Furniture for making me feel so welcomed in their showroom during market. I bought their SALON collection for my new interior design offices here in Midland and also fell in love with their gorgeous purple velvet NADINE sofette { see it used in an Olioboard 3D virtual design below where, in December, I ran a fun and short contest with the members of the Olioboard Fan Room on Facebook and where Bernhardt was kind enough to make Starbucks gift certificates available for my 3 winners. Thank you, Stephanie Lowder and Heather Eidenmiller!

Bunny Williams and I at #HPmkt at the Century Furniture showroom { and thank you to Century’s marketing director, Comer Wear, for their lovely tour, too }

Above is a piece from Bernhardt’s SALON collection that it’s in my interior design offices here in Midland, Texas.

And click here to read the post I wrote about Bernhardt’s NADINE sofette, pictured below, that I want now and click here to read about the winners of my Olioboard contest regarding Bernhardt’s NADINE sofette that I asked them to put into a 3D virtual room setting.

My #1 winning Olioboard design, created by Eddie Wood Design for my contest is below:

7. Another highlight for me this year was receiving a personalized copy of Howard Slatkin’s lauded and lush new design book, FIFTH AVENUE STYLE. I wrote about it here, but what really made this a highlight of 2013 for me was that I received an invitation to meet him at a private event in Dallas. I flew in for the evening and have rarely met a more charming and humble man.

None of this would have happened without me beginning my blogging journey, which I began to take very seriously after attending Kelli Ellis’ and Lori Dennis’ Design Camp in late 2012, which is where I also met Leslie Carothers for the first time. Thank you for your ongoing, vocal support of my journey.

Lori Dennis is on the left and Kelli Ellis is on the right.

This is the way Howard’s book, FIFTH AVENUE STYLE, came wrapped to me. Isn’t it beautiful? I love ribbons and wrapping paper like this. Do you?

Howard Slatkin in a relaxed moment.

8. Another highlight for me was getting to know Amy Howard of Amy Howard home much better. We had a long discussion about our faith, our families, and our businesses and I felt so connected to her. Thank you, Amy, for the time you spent with me sharing yourself and your business wisdom with me and I wish your business, Amy Howard At Home, every success in 2014. I hope to try some of this gilding your paint products make possible, myself, in 2014. For more on Amy, please click here, here, or here.

9. My 9th highlight of 2013 was having HADLEY COURT nominated by major retailer and etailer, LAMPS PLUS as one of Top 25 Best New Interior Design Blogs of 2013.

Although I did not win this category, but came in 10th of 25, I was again so honored to have HADLEY COURT included and wish to extend my thanks to everyone on http://facebook.com/HadleyCourt who voted for HADLEY COURT to win as well as my congratulations to the eventual winner in this category, Angela Betlewicz who writes: http://hickorytrailblog.blogspot.com/.

If you’d like to get to know 100 excellent design blogs and bloggers, please click here to meet everyone who was nominated by LAMPS PLUS in every category.

10. Lastly, but by no means least, was being asked by one of our country’s leading experts in Boomer Living, Mitzi Beach, to be interviewed for her new book, Boomer Smarts, Boomer Living for her chapter on Spirituality.

I was humbled to be included and to be able to share with Mitzi and her readers how much my faith has played a part in all that has happened to me in my life so far.

Thank you, Mitzi, so very much. Seeing my name and that of HADLEY COURT, in print, was the biggest gift to me [ and to my family and my Mother ] as I ended 2013 and I wish you and your own family every success in spreading the word about how us baby boomers can really LIVE well in our 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and beyond with joy, faith, hope and love.

Readers, I encourage you to visit Mitzi’s site here: http://mitzibeach.com if you’d like to buy her new book and meet Mitzi.

As I end 2013, it is YOU, readers, I also want to thank you so very much for subscribing to http://hadleycourt.com/blog/, and for following my journey that began with baby steps.

As we enter 2014, if any of you are now using Google’s new social media platform, Google Plus, I invite you to follow my Hadley Court G+ Page by clicking here.

I’m grateful for your attention and I’m looking forward to sharing more with you in my next post about my continuing vision for HADLEY COURT as we enter 2014. I hope each of you has a very prosperous and happy New Year in your own families and businesses and if there’s anything I can do to help make my blog more entertaining or interesting or relevant to you, please leave me a comment and know I am listening.

And don’t forget….

Many Blessings,