Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 44,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

But back to Design Star!

Aside from the fact that they eliminated Kellie far too early and Mark far too late, I think the final two are pretty spot on!  I actually really like both contestants and am looking forward to what they bring to the final dance, but here are my “thoughts” on tonight’s finale (and maybe some final commentary by Friday when I actually get around to watching it SO NO SPOILERS HERE PLEASE!!!).

Meg

At first Meg kind of rubbed me the wrong way.  It was something about her voice or mannerisms….I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  And in a nostalgic some-of-my-family-lives-in-Chicago-and-I-get-that-personality kind of way, I could sort of see the charm of it but it was initially kind of grating.  However, I think she’s got a really solid sense of design.  The only time I think she really didn’t “shine” was when they did the HGTV’d episode and she was responsible for both the upstairs and downstairs foyer areas:

Though, admittedly, she probably had one of the largest “rooms” in the house to design, so I could totally see that.  And with the time constraints these kids are given, it’s not surprising that this room was such a challenge.  And, really, a hallway??  There’s not much you can do with a hallway to begin with – you have to actually WALK through a hallway so it’s not like the function of it is obvious like a dining room, bedroom or kitchen.  I think this room would’ve been tough on ANY designer, so I can understand how it was probably a bit of a challenge for her.

My absolute FAVORITE room that she designed was way back in Episode 2 or 3 when she took a mishmash room from this monstrosity:

….to this beachy, soothing and beautiful room…

She was paired with somebody on this episode (can’t remember who), but she really stood out on this episode and introduced the whole HGTV community to her sense of style.  I think she’s called her style “South Beach” or something like that and I can totally dig it.  Granted, it’s a little “in” at the moment and probably a little cliche, but I just LOVE it!

I think her hosting is also pretty spot on.  She kind of has a Rachael Ray thing going on – upbeat, lots of fun, somebody you’d really like to sit down and grab a drink with.  And in that way she’s REALLY grown on me and I could totally watch a show where she was the host.  I’d really love it if she was based in Chicago, too.  So many shows are in LA or New York and it’d be so much fun to see something with her in it based there.

Karl

Karl has been one of my favorites from day one.  I love his honesty and I totally fell in love with his vulnerable hosting style.  There’s just this feeling that he’s a regular guy just like the rest of us and is kind of awed and overwhelmed by the whole “I could be an HGTV star” thing, which I find so endearing and charming!  He also has a lot of really good ideas and 9 times out of 10, is able to execute them flawlessly.  I loved his graphic tree wall from the first episode:

…and above is the bedroom that he made over for HGTV’d, so it was really a great opportunity to see him shine on his own, which is sometimes pretty hard to see in this show.  Overall, I think Karl has a really good sense of style and design, but none of it stands out to me as, “WOW, that’s amazing!!”  It’s fun, energetic and clever, which has definitely helped him.  I loved the idea where he took a traditional bookshelf and used books as shelves!  And I love how approachable he made that seem.  Such a clever idea!

I think Karl’s hosting style has also come a looooooong way from the very first episode.  He doesn’t feel quite so unsure as he did in the first few episodes so it’s been fun to see how much he’s grown.  The question is whether or not that’s going to get him far in the finale?!?!?

Only time will tell!  I’m so excited to see the finale tonight and I don’t know who I want to see win more.  I think Meg will likely rock it out of the park just because she’s so in-your-face good, but I have a sweet spot in my heart for Karl because he’s just about as cute as Christmas.  It’s a hard one to call, but looking forward to seeing what the results are tomorrow!

I was not comped or asked to write this write up.  I am just writing it as a fan of the show who is looking forward to the finale and glad HGTV has given me something fun to watch this summer!

….and then came bedding!

Quite a difference!  I have literally been searching for bedding for something like a year and a half – back when we switched up the color palette to a more soothing blue and taupe-y scheme – and I finally found something that both Dr. J and I could agree on from Overstock.com!  In fact, I believe they are still selling it, so you can click here if it’s up your alley!  This bedding fit our need for something that was more colorful and contemporary.  It also fit the bill for something that felt both feminine AND masculine – a near impossibility, lemme tell ya!  I was also looking for something in the blue/green color range, which was ALSO a difficult find.  And since I’m SUPER lazy, it also helped that it came with reversible shams and a few accent pillows that are making me rethink the whole soothing blue color scheme.  Hrmm….

Notice anything else?

We *finally* got nighstands!!  And the best part is that they actually are the same height as the bed, which is a huge improvement over what we had before.

And the source on those nightstands?  God bless JCPenney.com.  Though I admit we had to buy three of them and return one because the first one we got had a nice big crack in the front drawer, but it literally took a day or two, so no big deal!  I love how light and bright it feels even though it’s so much bigger than our previous nightstand (which didn’t match!).  And since it’s “mirror”, it automatically reads as a neutral so it really could go with any piece of furniture because it will always match!  How cool is that?  Oh, and here’s the other one just for kicks:

Pretty cool, huh??  So here is where we are now:

• New nightstands.  Hopefully something shiny!
• A new mirror
• New bedding – ideally something with a little bit more color
• Paint!  That wall paint is starting to feel a little too muddy to me.
• Curtains
• Accessories
• Furniture re-arranging??  We’re talking about moving the current tall boy to the opposite corner, but it’s still up in the air
• Get rid of our old “tallboy” dresser – it’s still sitting in the left corner which you can sorta see in this picture.  It’s totally empty, it just needs a new home:

It’s progress, but we still have to paint.  Paint….urg….this could take us awhile.  Ideally, I want a lighter color so that our furniture will pop against the walls.  But the lightest colors on the bedding are creams and I just don’t know that I could do a creamy-beige bedroom.  The room was originally “builder’s buttercream” as I liked to call it back when we moved in:

Wouldn’t it just be kinda silly if we went back to that??  God, I hated that color anyway – blech!  Ok, bad idea, bad idea!  If I could go with something more blue-y and/or gray or maybe even a very pale aqua, then I think I could be okay with that.  I’ve even considered taking the original color that we painted this room (Olympic’s Stone Gray, I believe) and just upping the white tint for a lighter version of the same color.  But I’m seriously SO OVER TAUPE!  I’ve really got to start looking around…

However, there really are times when I sometimes feel like I’m yakkin’ to myself and think,”Hello, is there anyone out there…?” So when another blogger stops by to comment or give me kudos, it really broadens my horizons a wee bit and makes me appreciate the grander “community” of home bloggers out there – and, man, there must be THOUSANDS! I have a Google Reader FILLED with amazing bloggers and blog friends and I love seeing what they’re doing on a daily basis. There really are some creative cats out there and they make what I do look like child’s play. But I don’t ever feel the LEAST bit inadequate to ask a question about how somebody did something or their inspiration for doing so, etc. Everybody is out to help everyone else and THAT is truly amazing to me. It’s like Better Homes & Gardens turned interactive only it’s REAL and not staged by a stylist or explained only in the most basic terms to make you feel like a total idiot when you try to attempt it yourself and wonder why you fail. It’s way better than HGTV or The Food Network because it’s real people with real lives, timelines and budgets and I find more inspiration from this amazing community than just about anything else.

So this is where I say THANK YOU to some amazing bloggers who were so kind enough to write posts about our finally completed bathroom remodel last week. It’s been a doozy these past few weeks in terms of traffic on this blog and it’s been fun to “talk” to some people virtually about their upcoming renovations and dreams. But let me give some MASSIVE kudos to the following people:

The DIY Showoff was one of the first places I found when I started blogging. Roeshel has been around for awhile and is currently renovating her beautiful 1927 farmhouse in a way that should really be featured in a Pottery Barn catalog. She has been so gracious to feature us a few times before and she was so gracious to actually invite ME to be featured one time back in the day when we refinished our hutch and I was so grateful for the early exposure to a wider range of readers! I’ve been a loyal follower ever since and she wrote a nice post this week about our bathroom remodel which you should click over to see! Thanks, Roeshel for the sweet write up! What an honor to be featured again!!

Cassity over at Remodelaholic.com has to be one of the hardest working bloggers in all of blogger-dom…blogger-land? Not only does she do three posts PER DAY, but she also manages to juggle being a wife, mother and chronic remodeler (heh – I can certainly relate!). Not only is she making over her current house (including her most recent stairway renovation), but she’s on her THIRD (yes, I said THIRD) remodel! We’re only on our first and I’m pretty sure it might kill us! Haha! One of the best things about her website is that her fans are like-minded people like Dr. J and I – just regular people remodeling their homes and making the most out of small budgets, poor layouts and wonky builder features. If you love Before & Afters, THIS is the place to get your fix. We’ve actually been featured a few times on Remodelaholic. The first time was our Knotty Pine Hutch transformation (that’s a popular one, I tell ya!), then our Guest Bedroom Transformation and lastly our HUGE Laundry Room remodel from last summer! So I was still quite verklempt when she agreed to feature out bathroom remodel a few days ago. It was an honor to be featured and we are so grateful for the additional exposure!

Kristin from My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia is another West Coaster like me! Though she lives in sunny San Diego and I’m stuck with raindrops and Gore-Tex most of the year . Her budget kitchen remodel is what I show to my husband at least every other week. She took her kitchen from this:

to this…

The first time I saw that makeover I immediately thought, “There’s NO WAY that can be the same space!” She never even removed the cabinets! She simply moved a few cabinets, modified them with some custom finishes and painted them all a creamy white color that looks like a million bucks even though it was all done on an EXTREME budget! Seriously, click here for the details - her kitchen takes my breath away every time I see it!

So recently, Kristin had a fire in her downstairs bathroom and has been in the process of “rebuilding” her bathroom – with a couple of upgrades, of course . So I left her a comment on her blog showing her our renovation so that she could get some more bathroom inspiration and then she asked if she could feature our blog on hers!  Really?!?!?  Awesome-sauce!!  So if you want to see our full on blogging feature, then click on over here and check out some of the nice things she had to say!! 

So that’s it!  Isn’t it enough to stroke our big egos??  Haha!  But seriously, thank you so much to The DIY Showoff, Remodelaholic and My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia for being so gracious!  But what are you waiting for!  Hop on over there and show them some love and devotion

…and here are a few WAY old pics (like right after we moved in pics) to show you the other pieces of furniture in the room:

And here we are today with the BRAND NEW FURNITURE!!!!!!!!!!

Isn’t it so pretty?  Again, I apologize on the quality of the photos.  Everything is still mid process so these were kind of taken on the fly.  And to answer a few of those burning questions right off the bat: it comes from Bassett Furniture, it does NOT match our bathroom cabinetry (this is espresso colored and our bathroom is black), and we only purchased a dresser, tallboy and sleighbed!  We did NOT buy nightstands!

So what prompted us to buy furniture in the first place?  Well, first off, the previous furniture was my Grandma’s, God rest her soul.  She bought that furniture as her wedding suite when she got married in 1941, which makes that furniture ~70 years old!!  It’s got that cool art deco retro vibe and a classic Waterfall design that I just learned about recently.  But as with all things old, it was just….ahem….OLD.  And much like our wobbly dining table that was also Grandma’s which we replaced recently, it also needed to go.  It was small, only had one nighstand and the bedframe didn’t fit our queen sized mattress.  Poor Dr. J also only had two drawers that he could use (which meant our closet was stuffed to the gills) and it just didn’t have enough storage to be useful to a married couple.  It was great when I was a singleton, but not so great when we got married.  I had always planned on replacing it, but I still wanted to keep it since it reminds me so much of my grandma and I still love the look of it all these years later.

Alas, I had no place to put it and I refused to put it in storage as I think if you have no use for a piece, then you should either get rid of it or *make* it work if you have nothing better.  My “dream” is to someday use it as additional Guest Room furniture, however all the rooms at the “inn” are full and the worst thing I could do would be to stuff it in the garage, which would just ruin the piece and not give it any credit.  I also refused to get a storage garage, which is sort of the popular thing to do in the Pacific Northwest since nobody has basements or attics – urg!  What to do…what to do….?

…then Dr. J’s parents bought a house!  A vacation/rental/investment house to be exact!  And with that began the great Pacific Northwest furniture expansion and migration project of 2011!  In the end, my Grandma’s heirloom furniture has found a temporary home with my in-laws at their permanent residence – at least until they retire and/or we buy a home where we can lovingly bring that furniture back.  I feel extremely relieved to know it’s in good hands and will be cared for and used less than it was being used before!  Phew!

Finally!  We were able to purchase furniture for our bedroom!  And as much as I loved the idea of finding something on Craigslist to rebuild and/or reimagine, I also knew that I didn’t want another hand-me-down furniture set.  So we began hunting and pecking.  Here were our wishes/wants for bedroom furniture:

• A sturdy headboard.  We were originally looking for something upholstered and/or a nice sleigh/wood bed.
• More storage than what we presently have (which honestly wasn’t difficult to find since we had practically no storage before)
• Sturdy construction and finish.  Something that would wear well because I really don’t plan on buying more bedroom furniture in my lifetime.
• In keeping with the above bullet, solid wood construction with dovetailed drawers – which is actually REALLY hard to find!
• Nothing too matchy-matchy!

I don’t think the above is being too picky, is it?  Because of the above, I immediately ruled out Pottery Barn.  I love their furniture, but I have coffee tables/end tables from them and their finishes just don’t wear very well.  Restoration Hardware is great (and all of their drawers are cedar lined, which is a big plus), but their furniture is ridiculously expensive for what you get.  I’d be better off going to a traditional place for furniture.  Macy’s had some good pieces, but the construction wasn’t solid wood and the drawers seemed flimsy and cheap.  We also ruled out places like Ikea, Mor (local) and Ashley furniture for various reasons aligning with above.  So we finally decided on Bassett Furniture, whose Portland branch was going out of business.

via

Let me tell you why I LOVE our bedroom furniture.  First off, the lines and finish of the furniture is contemporary and (hopefully) classic.  It doesn’t feel pretentious and/or too traditional/stuffy.  We’re certainly not stuffy or pretentious and a lot of the overly traditional pieces felt very carved and too “fancy” for our tastes.  We’ve got a fancy bath now, isn’t that enough??  The best part of the pieces is that the bottom drawers on all of the dressers are actually cedar lined!!  How cool is that?!?

Regardless, now we have a few “issues” to deal with still in the bedroom.  Here’s a little rundown of some of the things that still need to be “tackled” in our new space:

• New nightstands.  Hopefully something shiny!
• A new mirror
• New bedding – ideally something with a little bit more color
• Paint!  That wall paint is starting to feel a little too muddy to me.