AsterHouse, defined

New England foliage...Southern charm...West Coast beaches...Northwest mountain ranges....Midwest....hmmmm....

As much as Amanda and I both love to visit these gorgeous destinations, we don't live there....we live in small-town-midwest America...and most days, we love it! It is where our families are being raised, our husbands work and we play (and do a little work of our own!!). There are so many blessings to small town living.

As we sat down to brainstorm ideas for our business name, descriptors flowed fast...simple, approachable, casual, elegant, unique, crisp, clean, comfortable...Our desire was to find a word or phrase that pulled those things together. We loved the thought of a beach house...a place that oozes comfort, family, memories, simplicity, and welcome...alas, we are miles and miles and miles from any beach... In fact, we are almost smack dab in the center of the country...as far away from any said beach as you can possibly get...so, how could we find a word that communicated those same qualities, yet celebrated our flint hills, small town locale??

Aster: name of a flower prolific in the plains and hills

of Kansas...the name comes fromthe ancient greek word

meaning "star"

"Ad Astra per Aspera": our state motto...meaning "To the Stars with Difficulty...the aspiration of Kansas is to reach the unattainable; its dream is the realization of the impossible"

From the outset of our business, our desire has been to stay true to our midwest roots all the while aspiring to bring quality, welcome, simplicity, creativity and great design to each of our clients...We hope these words will quickly become synonymous with AsterHouse Design!!

A Lesson About Self

So you think that you “know” yourself, that once you reach a certain age you know who you are. There is a point in your life that you understand all your likes, dislikes, passions, strengths and weaknesses. And for the most part that is the core of what makes you “you”. What I love is that we were so creatively designed, so complex and intricate, that there are things still to be discovered about ourselves! They seem to happen less frequently now that I’m approaching 40 than they did as a teen or young adult, but they happen nonetheless.
What have I learned you ask? That blocking out creative design time in a day filled with appointments, meetings, and my girl’s errands will end up in a disaster! Friends ask me all the time, “How do you get it all done?” My response is that I am organized, making to-do lists for my errands and projects. My life, from planning family meals to selecting commercial tiles, is one big list. And, for the most part this system as served me well…until this week, when I forgot to pick up my girls at art class, and forgetting to drop them off for a sleepover with a friend, oh yes and there was that phone conversation regarding a play date of which I was unable to recall the details. All of those mental slips ALL occurred during our creative design planning sessions.

What’s really troubling to me is that during our design time I had ABSOLUTELY no recollection that I had anything else in my life going on! How in the world is that even possible? It’s not like I became a mother and wife yesterday. So of course this is concerning to me, am I losing my edge? Is this what I get to look forward to now that I’m reaching mid-life? Relax gals. After much pondering about all my mental hiccups this week, I figured it out. When I’m designing a space, I mentally crawl into a space in my mind where nothing else exists. What’s crazy is that I didn’t know this little area in my brain even existed until recently. Is it possible that after 37 years I’ve learned something new about myself? YES!

The moral to my recently learned life lesson? Amanda cannot schedule design sessions on days filled with other obligations and setting a kitchen timer to bring me back from my creative vortex will help too…

Amanda P.