New Home Shows

I'm so excited to discover that Genevieve Gorder, (from old-school Trading Spaces days) has a new show premiering on HGTV on New Year's Day, right after the Rose Parade. I always enjoyed her on Trading Spaces because she started her career as a graphic designer, so I related to her on that score...and she had such a cute personality, she didn't have to resort to gluing hay and feathers to the wall to get attention.

Dear Genevieve sounds a bit similar to Rate My Space, in that viewers upload pics of their design dilemmas on hgtv.com in hopes of garnering personal design advice from Genevieve--or in the case of the lucky ones--an actual makeover managed by Ms. Gorder.




Jennifer Bertrand, winner of Design Star Season 3, also has a show making its maiden voyage on New Year's Day. Unfortunately, Bertrand didn't get a recurring show like the first two Design Star winners. For some reason she's been relegated to the occasional on-air special, and a lot of online how-to videos. I thought Jennifer was precious on Design Star, and deserves her own show at least as much as Kim Myles (winner of DS Season 2). Kinda scratching my head over her diminished exposure, but maybe she didn't want to make the move to Cali. Our loss.

Jennifer's show, Paint-Over--as might be expected if you watched Design Star--is all about making design changes via paint treatments, which is a show focus we haven't really seen since Debbie Travis' heyday. I suspect Paint-Over could be really successful in the coming months, as people look for inexpensive ways to make design changes in their homes.

Scrooge Goes Postal

My apologies to the 90 or so Room Fu clients whose holiday postcards were returned to me recently. Reason? "Sender address needs to be on top left corner."

On a postcard?

This is just wrong on so many levels:

1. A bazillion similarly-inadequate postcards made it past Scrooge and on to the recipient. Why were 90 singled out for rejection?



2. If this is some new rule resulting from terrorist activities involving the post, can we not recognize the fact that this is a friggin' postcard? Where is the anthrax supposed to be hiding?



3. You have the audacity to print "Happy Holidays" while cancelling my stamp and then pull this kind of Scrooge move?



4. The killer of all? I printed a note about my change of address on the postcard, which is how the post office was able to return them to me. So...the return address was good enough for them to return the postcards to me, but not good enough to deliver them to the recipient. Nice. And oh, so logical.



5. Evidently the postal service now has quotas to meet--like cops busting speed traps around the end of each month--and this is their new method of selling more stamps.

It was bad enough that I'd accidentally misspelled the word "divine." (Devine? Can you believe I did that? I was the third grade spelling bee champ in my class, for gawd's sake. Man...do I speak Southern or what?)

After this stack was returned, it just felt like the whole project was doomed. But I vow not to let this dampen my holiday cheer. In case I am not successful at convincing the postmaster to go ahead and deliver my mail, here are my holiday wishes:





Oh...and one more thing...those snowflakes are made out of...

...wait for it...

...wait for it...

lamps.

Happy Festivus!

The Real Santa

Phoebe's First Christmas, 2005

Banish those memories of Bad Santas Past. The real Santa is hanging out at Barton Creek Mall. This Santa is so authentic-looking, I've refused to take Phoebe anywhere else for the past 4 Christmases when it came time for Pics with Nick. His beard's real, his bowl-full-of-jelly is (presumably) real, and his costume is finely detailed. I don't care how old you are, you will have visions of sugarplums dancing in your head after a brief encounter with this Santa.

The Real Santa is the only Santa you'll see at Barton Creek Mall this year, so you don't have to beg the staff for his schedule like I've done in years past. (I'm not obsessive...I prefer to think of myself as detail-oriented.) Although I feel for the poor guy sitting there all day every day with Sore Smile Syndrome, I do appreciate the fact that I don't have to drum up some explanation for Phoebe as to why Santa looks different every time we see him.

Makeover in Progress

I'm so excited about how this makeover at Lee Kirgan's photography studio is coming along! We still have to place art, but I thought I'd share a few snapshots I took yesterday...

 

We had a blank slate of beige walls and chocolate/charcoal carpet to start with, so we've come a long way.

Coming soon: the food styling kitchen and a work/eat zone for clients!

ReadyMade

Discovered some cool stuff in this issue of ReadyMade...


No more worries over lost baby mittens!


These simple ceramics by rae dunn make me smile.


Party dress platter.


Knock on wood plate.

A Boost of Color

Today's client has a beautiful display area in her dining room and fabulous color on the walls...but the plethora of clear glass in the built-ins isn't creating the impact the space is capable of.

BEFORE

AFTER

 

I gathered a ton of bright-colored accessories, including fun books from Half Price and got to work. Mixing punchy colors with more subdued objects and adding a bit of shiny metal gives the overall space the feeling of history...that these things have been collected over time, and with care. I'm proud that the room feels polished but still retains a lot of warmth, because this is a very lively, loving home. It may look "put together" but it doesn't look like a stage set. That's really important to me.

To top it all off, today is the client's birthday, and cake was involved. Three cheers for cake!

West Elm or Bust

Last Tuesday I woke up with a wild hair to drive to San Antonio and pick up two of these Step Side Tables from West Elm (brown ones):



I called my friend Lynn, who's from San Antonio. She was fully on board with the idea of a spontaneous road trip, so I headed over to her house to pick her up.

When I arrived at Lynn's at 10 am, I went ahead and gave the store a call so they could set aside the two tables for me. Wouldn't you know, they did have the two tables...but someone else had already paid for them.

Shoot.

Well, we were all buffed and puffed and in the mood for a field trip, so we decided to just go anyway for fun. And boy, was it fun. That was one of the nicest shopping experiences I've had in a long, long time.

I've always been a fan of their merchandise (although I did discover their seating isn't comfortable to me) but the store itself is just a pleasure to be in. It was very spacious and well-designed, very light and airy. Very California. I could've stayed in there for hours.

I highly recommend the excursion...and if you go, be sure to save some time to hit the McNay art museum, as we did. They have such an incredible collection, it made me feel closer to my old haunts in NYC.