March 14-17, 2023
Seminar Stage Headliners
Lisa Steinkopf, The Houseplant Guru
Lisa Eldred Steinkopf is passionate about houseplants. Known as The Houseplant Guru, Lisa is a freelance writer and has authored four houseplant books. Her newest book, Bloom, covers everything you need to know about flowering houseplants. She also currently writes articles for Michigan Gardener Magazine.
For more, check out her website thehouseplantguru.com or find her on Facebook at facebook.com/HouseplantGuru and Instagram at www.instagram.com/thehouseplantguru.
Lisa’s Books:
Sponsored By:
Leslie Hart-Davidson, HDD Studios
Leslie Hart-Davidson is a nationally recognized professional interior designer, author, and owner of HDD Studios in Michigan. Leslie holds a B.A. in interior design and has nearly two decades of industry experience, but credits her family for the desire to enter the world of design. The Hart family practiced real estate flipping while she was a child, so her calling for home improvement came early.
Leslie lives and breathes interior design not only in her successful design business, but also through her extensive writing career. She has written two home improvement books full of snark and great content: Remodeling Your House without Killing Your Spouse in 2014 and It’s Not Your Room, it’s You in 2016. Leslie’s most recent book is a combination kitchen design/memoir/cookbook titled Food is Love that will be showcased during the 2023 season with two cooking stage seminars to feed your soul.
The design philosophy Leslie adopted when she started her business more than 20 years ago is straightforward: design is a democracy, not a dictatorship. This guiding principle helps audience members and clients better understand design language and the psychology behind how they live in their homes. Her design stage seminar “The Reveal: Hilarious, Heartfelt and Headshaking Stories from a Professional Interior Designer” teaches lessons from her upcoming 4th book with free digital downloads to help attendees take action with their space. When she’s not on stage or on camera, you can find Leslie posting witty lifestyle content to her Facebook and YouTube pages and whipping up delightful meals in her charming 140-year-old Michigan farmhouse.
Carol Pasternak – The Monarch Crusader
Carol Pasternak, MBA, Llb, is an author, teacher, photographer and sought after speaker who has been raising monarch butterflies with her families for 40 years. In her free time, she can be found in ditches, meadows and forests, scouring every crevice for signs of wildlife. Her book How To Raise Monarch Butterflies A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids, has sold 50,000 copies and received international acclaim. Her latest book, 5 Butterflies, inspires young people to pause their devices to revel in the natural world outside their door.
Learn more at MonarchCrusader.com!
Seminars:
Drama in the Butterfly Garden
Explore the secret lives in your yard or nearby natural area. Through macros and videos, you’ll see insects hatching, eating each other, transforming, parasitizing, fighting for territory, courting, and even farming! Take a break from the news. Butterfly expert and author Carol Pasternak will dazzle you with brilliant photography, then stay to answer all your questions.
How to Raise Butterflies at Home
Are you looking for a fun summer activity to get the whole family out of the house and into nature? Bring the kids to learn how to raise the caterpillars they can find right in their own yard. Through brilliant photography and videos, butterfly expert Carol Pasternak will dazzle you with the life cycle of common butterflies. Stay to ask questions and pick up a copy of her best selling book, How to Raise Monarch Butterflies A Step-by-Step Guide, for just $10. This is going to be fun!
Chef Jeff Brandon, Executive Chef – Smuggler’s at North Shore
ABOUT CHEF JEFF:
Jeff began his cooking journey in 1990 in Mt. Pleasant Michigan working for the LaBelle Restaurant group while attending CMU as a music major. Finding himself “skipping class” to pick up shifts at the restaurant Jeff decided to change his major and his life . He and his wife Amy moved to Grand Rapids where he attended and graduated GRCC (now the Secchia Institute ) and graduated in 1994 with an Associates Degree in Culinary Arts. He spent the next 13 years “Chef-ing” at various Catering and Restaurant operations in the Grand Rapids area , including the Scheldes Restaurant Group , Executive Chef for the Fredrick Meijer Gardens and Railside Country Club. As his family started to grow Jeff made the switch to the Food Distribution side of the business and took a job with Superior Foods in 2007 as their Corporate Chef. Now Jeff is the Executive Chef of Smuggler’s at North Shore on Hess Lake in Newaygo.
Jeff and Amy live in Allendale and have 3 sons and a daughter in law.
2023 RECIPE: “Food Truck Style Foods at Home”
….. Building layers of flavors and combining elements of sweet and spicy are all the rage on food truck menus across the country. Get your creative juices flowing and learn with Chef Jeff how to create those magical sweet and spicy flavor combos in your kitchen. Whether it’s a Turkey slider with Sweet Pineapple BBQ on a Spicy Cornbread Muffin … or … a Cherry Habanero Jelly Ice Cream Sandwich with Peanut Butter Ganache you’ll see how easy it is to build those fun portable “Food Truck Style foods” in your own kitchen and “spice up” your every day menus.
Plant Michigan Green
Join Plant Michigan Green at the Garden Stage for a series of seminars on how to create great Michigan landscapes!
Smart Gardening
Join the MSU Extension for their Smart Gardening Seminar Series on the Garden Stage!