Jennifer the Next Design Star

It was no surprise that Jennifer was crowned the newest design star of HGTV, but what was really a surprise was the rumored non-appearance of Mikey V., whose chatter on the Internet said he was dis-invited to attend because of some role in a porn movie. Well, ok, maybe he has a past, maybe he did some not so nice things, but come on guys, you're the ones that let him on the show, at least you could have let him end the show. Jeez, what's up with these producers? The finale was pretty much a snore fest combining the crowning with a reunion show. One has to chuckle at Mike S. so in love with his sassy self, "I'm so amazing in my white wife beaters! Are you kidding me"? He's definitely a mama's boy. Now we know why Stephanie was the viewer choice designer, it was her "friends" that got her in as Scotty said! Tracee is still obnoxious as ever, as she and Mike S. proclaim their BFF forever, yeah right. In the end, it was my single vote that got Jennifer crowned. Hey what was up with her laugh? I bet her Chinese zodiac sign is the horse! Matt was the gracious loser or in this case runner up. What a nice guy! Hey isn't Cynthia Rawley too old for hot pants?-Single D --No Mikey V's porn but you can view Mikey V.'s my space page- http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=57922350

The Next Design Star-Finale

Matt and Jen's final challenge is to design a living room, dining room and kitchen for two families that went through the Katrina disaster. Both houses are still in complete disrepair from the flood and it amazed me that people are still dealing with this disaster. I felt kinda of seasick in one of the houses that still had stuff all over the floor. I don't get it, I know they are probably busy, but wouldn't they go through that stuff two years later? Well luckily for both families, design star chose them to do a challenge for. Both designers get help from Trish and Mickey V. Matt got to chose first and generously said that he would give Jen Mikey V.'s help since Jen would need help with her kitchen cabinets. Ok that made me want him to win it. What a generous spirit and kind soul he is! Jen even said that would garner him votes. You betcha. Both designers get 36 hours and $20,000, nice! I don't think a recap is necessary at this point, in the end, I tried to be non partial in my review of each house, and came to the unadulterated conclusion that in my non biased, non judgemental point of view, I loved Jen's house much better, noticed that's just one love! I like her living room with the leather white sofa, which at first I thought, white? Guess you don't have dogs or kids. I can see muddy paw prints all over that thing honey! But it worked along with her fire engine red kitchen cabinets. Can I live a lifetime with those fire engine red cabinets? Maybe, if I don't watch too many slasher movies. I did however, loved, loved Matt's dining room with that crystal light fixture. Can I just wear that thing on my head? Nothing says class like sparkle! And speaking of sparkle, don't you love watching Sparkle's Vlog-video blog, on HGTV? He's so funny, like he said, Sparkle's the new black! Back to Matt, I think his kitchen was too plain on the side that he didn't put cabinets on. I know he's a minimalist, but it's a kitchen, it needs storage, shelves, spice rack, tile, something to give it that wow factor, because Jen's red cabinets definitely gave her kitchen that punch with that red and those black granite counter tops. Matt definitely had the better hosting skills but Jen had the better design. Let's see, can we fuse those two together?-Single D

The Next Design Star-Family Affair

Final three, Trish, Matt and Jen. Last year this challenge was to design a room for a family in need, which I totally liked. You know giving back and all that junk. But this year, the contestants get to design a room for their families. I guess the judges thought designing for a family member would be challenging, well maybe for Matt. It seems his mother has her own ideas of what she wants and apparently is an avid crafter. Matt will be decorating his mother's basement and turn it into a craft/gameroom. Matt's main focus is to hide the kiln, I guess mother is a potter also. Trish's family lives in Detroit and she is decorating their living room. Her mother seems nice enough telling Trish whatever she designs, she'll love, while dad sits mutely. Jen is designing a living/dining room for her sister that lives in Iowa. Each one has a handyman to help them with the renovations. Trish's handyman is apparently new to his craft, when she ask him how long has he been doing this? duh six weeks. I thought for sure Trish would come back and the wood floor would be laid in a mismash design. Jen's design for her sister's house is to possibly refinish the wood floors, but decides that they are too messed up to do that and resorts to carpeting. Didn't her sister say they ripped up the carpet in the first place? I don't care if it's made with recycled stuff and is green for the environment and is so soft. I would want wood floors. I definitely thought the room had way too much carpeting. I did like her signature hand painted walls, which Vern said, be careful or you might become a one trick pony. Out of all three rooms, Matt was the most innovative, although Ms. Martha didn't understand why he chose 4 black leather club chairs for the seating area. I thought that was genius and looked great in that space. In the end, I knew for sure that Trish was going to be cancelled since she didn't bother to move the living room furniture in a different direction. She basically kept the same layout but just resurfaced the fireplace and added decorative pieces and got new living room furniture. Well I guess Dad got a new recliner out of it. Basically this episode lacked the drama, suspense, pizazz! Essentially, everyone lacks personalities. Heaven help them if they pick Matt, while a great designer, do we want to continue to look at that bald head and Trish's personality was mostly flatliner. Jen's the best candidate for this but is she really that talented? Well, we'll see what happens in finale, somebody, dazzle me!-Single D

The Next Design Star-Suite Sara Evans

This challenge takes us to Opryland and the Gaylord Hotel, where the designers learn that they will design two suites in the design stylings of country songbird, Sara Evans. The designers are split into two teams, playground pickin's with team captains Trisha who picks Mikey V and Tracee and Team Jenn with Matt and Stephanie, is that a dream team or what? They have 28 hrs and $15,000, but first it's a visit to Sara's country estate. Here Sara explains that her style is Southern elegance, shabby chic, mismatchy pieces with color tones of creams and whites with that down home southern comfort. That's me, shabby chic Target. The two hotel suites are large with circular windows and a separate bedroom. Team Jenn seems really organized where Team Trisha seems scattered as Tracee goes into a hundred different directions when shopping. She drives me crazy. I really like the architectural pieces Matt picked out for the bedroom head board. Tracee on the other team picks out old painted doors for their headboards and says to Mikey V that she will take total claim for doing these because he's not so sure of the flaky paint, I don't mind a nose full of flaking lead paint! I was surprised that Trisha and Tracee worked so well together or is it that Trisha has alot of patience, bless her. Back to team Jenn, Jenn keeps saying that she can acid wash all the dark wood furniture. Ok that's great if you have all the time in the world. Are you going to acid wash everything? On the last day, Stephanie's main job was to find the sofa that would go with the other leather sofa in the room and finally brings one back only to find out that it is too large to go into the hotel. Matt asks Steph what's plan B? Like duh, there's no plan B, just move some chairs around the big leather couch (I was like why did they buy that leather couch, that's so not shabby chic!). I'm wondering why they left that important piece for the very last minute? This episode was pretty tame now that the little sh*t stirrer Michael has left the building. Part of this week's challenge was to give a TV presentation of their rooms, while the judges were watching their performance from their judge's desk on the monitors. What was around Cynthia's Rowley's neck? Looked like some kind of neck ring made from tin can rings, are you part of some ring toss game? Tracee was totally tongue tied and what was up with Mickey V? He looked so like some homie with his grey wife beaters tee shirt, yo man, wasss up man! Like Vern said, it was like you better like my shabby chic or I'll beat you. Vern declares Trisha as the best, gee who knew? Next we get to see Sara Evans judging their suites. I thought Team Jenn's suite looked very lackluster, where was the pizazz, where was the wow? The biggest question though was why wasn't there a sofa in the room? Steph kept deferring to her teammates which Vern called her out on it. That's right Steph stand up and take responsibility. I bought the wrong sofa, I was wrong, say it with me. Sara did like Matt's wood work in the bedroom but wished there were more colors on the walls. When Sara saw Team Trisha's suite, Sara let out the biggest surprise horseface, you would have thought that she won a trip to the moon. She obviously liked this room the best and declared this the be the winning room and I surprisingly had to agree. Team Jenn's room which I thought was going to be the winner was just a let down. I would have bet money that Team Trisha's team was going to fail miserably. In the end, it was all about the accessories, all about the color, all about the comfy couches and personal touches. Sara felt so much at home, she got in bed with her shoes and clothes on. I guess the judges couldn't overlook that huge mistake, but the couch thing was like the silent elephant in the room and Stephanie's show was cancelled.-Single D

Design Star-What Country Am I?

The designers are told to pack a bag and take their passports. Everyone is so excited. Wait a minute, pack a bag and take your passports, something smells fishy in Barcelona. I would have never fallen for that. Clive meets them on the tarmac of some small airport where he pops out of the private jet that looks more like a prop than plane. Each one of the designer open their paint can with the name of various countries, Italy, Thailand, and Mexico. Because Mike won he gets to pick any place in the world, so he picks Spain, because he's been there like a million times. Ok show of hands, how many thought they really weren't going anywhere? Me! The airplane hanger doors open to their individual room challenge which is to create a space of their chosen country. Well, lucky for Michael to chose a country where he's been to a million times! Tracee (Italy) says that her idea is so incredible and that she's going to win this challenge which translates into I'm a loser! Any time you tell the camera that you're going to win is a sign that you're going home. During the entire process Michael with his nose in the air and his strutting of patronizing fakeness keeps telling Tracee how much he loves her design all the while putting his finger down his throat in a mock attempt to puke, nice! I love it when Clive comes to visit the set and makes faces at the designers work. What, don't you think it's great? Michael keeps saying that his design is furr-roach, the term I thought was coined by our little Christian on Project Runway. Maybe furr-roach is the new hot design word for the day? Each of the individual rooms disappointed me. I wanted somberos, I wanted Thai elephants, I wanted Venetian masks, ok maybe not the somberos. There was not a speck of ethnicity in any of the rooms! They just looked like generic rooms-which country are we in?

Back at the TV studio, there in the green room is cute and tiny Lisa LaPorter (Clive's co-star) and some bald guy? Whose he? They were there to give a pep talk about how to keep on working for their dreams, blah blah blah. They really could have left that part out. I was really disappointed in the green room. I have always envisioned this room being really large, with lots of tables with heaping piles of food and drink and lots of comfy couches. Where was the food? I think there was one small table with a couple of pieces of fruit, hey what gives? Where's the hot food? Where's the buffett?

Judging time: Jennifer and Tracee both had Italy-which I loved Jenn's room with her yellow and blue, but I thought the blue should have been a more deeper blue not the washed out stuff she had. I thought her free hand painting on the walls were incredible, ok I guess she does have some talent. Tracee tried to do a gondola Venice bed with red walls and a free hand painted chandelier which didn't quite make it. I thought the bed looked sloppy, she should try to steer clear of carpentry work, or in this case foam board work. I thought the worse design of the lot was Matt who showed so much promise in the beginning. He had the country of Thailand and tried to create an abstract Buddhist temple which looked more like the monolith that was on Space Odyssey 2000, you know the one that the monkeys were worshipping? It was absurd and didn't look like Thailand at all. Mikey V's room looked more Chinese than Thai and as Vern said, more like Chinese takeout. Gotta love the Vern! Jenn wins the challenge with over confident prancer Michael getting axed and crying for his mommie. I want my mommie! I want my mommie! Well, that's what happens when you bad mouth others, karma's a bitch!-Single D