California Christmas
Posted by Heather in Events, Family & Friends, Favorites // December 25th, 2011
The Marina Del Rey Boat Parade – complete with fireworks – what fun! 
Pumpkin Pecan Pie with Whiskey Bourbon Sauce
Posted by Heather in Recipes // December 25th, 2011
This is my favorite holiday pie.
It was adapted from a Paul Prudhomme recipe by Chef Julie Sokolsky. I took her eighteen month Kitchen Academy for the Home Gourmet Cook program at The Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts (in Pasadena).
I took pictures this year as I made it so I could share the recipe I so often get asked for.
Start the Crust
- 3 C All purpose flour
- 1/2 t salt
- 1 C butter (2 sticks)
- 6 – 8 T cold water
Combine flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Add butter and incorporate, using fingertips, until mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle water over flour in tablespoon increments, stirring continuously with a fork.
Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic and chill in refrigerator for one hour. 
Mise en place (A place for everything and everything in its place)
Flash Forward is Back! :)
Posted by Heather in Career Development, Craft, Directing, Events, Family & Friends, Favorites, PowerNetworking, Public Speaking, Reviews, Screenwriting, Writing for TV // July 2nd, 2011
I’m really excited and truly honored to be coaching the first big Flash Forward in years.
I’m thrilled to be joining a dozen terrific alumni coaches (see list below), all of us volunteering our time to mentor and support the 80 actors, directors, TV and film screenwriters, playwrights, producers, composers, singers, musicians, magicians, comedians, Dept Heads – you name it – who will be combining all their time, energy, effort and resources to help one another flash their careers forward by each pursuing an audacious year-long goal and playing a game to achieve it in one month! Read the rest of this entry »
Watercolor Ink Resist and Pours
Posted by Heather in Art, Craft, In Development, Projects // July 2nd, 2011
Several of you have asked me to keep sharing my watercolor progress. As embarrassing as it is, its kind of liberating, too. I’ve been painting for years and not showing anyone, so daring to share the crap I’m still struggling with is kind of a “coming out” for me. It is with the greatest frustration that I look at what I churn out – I just WISH I could DRAW what I see in my mind’s eye! But the truth is, you don’t set a kid at a free throw line and say he has no talent when he misses his first shot. Like anything else, it takes practice. Fundamental skills and (l)earned knowledge – and hopefully, some innate skill. And if you’re lucky, you run into (and recognize) some good teachers, mentors and coaches along the way who can help you develop all of that as they teach you the tools and techniques of the craft they’ve picked up along the way. Read the rest of this entry »
Color Theory at Otis
Posted by Heather in Art, Craft, In Development, Projects // July 2nd, 2011
As many of you know, I’ve been getting my Fine Art Certificate at Otis. I put off the prerequisite, Color Theory, forever, feeling like it was the brussel sprouts of the curriculum that I “had” to take because it would be “good for me.” But I hit the point in my program where I couldn’t take any of the higher-level (read: more fun and creative) classes ’til I got this one out of the way. I’m actually glad I put it off as long as I did because I don’t think I would’ve appreciated it or learned as much ’til I started hitting brick walls in other classes as all the full-time students around me seemed to know all sorts of stuff I was clueless to: which paints stain or granulate, which ones are transparent or opaque – how do they know all this? Well, I didn’t learn any of that! LOL! Turns out, that’s earned by trial and error (which I’m making plenty of mistakes that’re teaching me these things) but I am glad I finally took this class because I did learn all sorts of other things I didn’t even know I didn’t know.
We started by making our own original color wheels by mixing each and every precise color out of a small palette of primary and secondary acrylics.
Here are the three assignments I thought might be of most interest to others to learn from.
Analogous Colors:
This might not look like much at first. Like, why on earth did I put that vibrant cadmium orange and cobalt blue in the center of all those browns and greys? Well,who knew you could make every skin tone known to man out of these two analogous colors (a hundred and eighty degrees apart from one another on the color wheel)? They also make great colors for earth, sky and fog. Read the rest of this entry »
