The Next Design Star

There are two things that I love, love, love. All things cooking and all things interior design and that is why I watch Top Chef (which Double D blogs on), Hell's Kitchen (cause I think Gordon Ramsay is cute in a piss off kinda way) and now the Next Design Star and the Next Cooking Star. I love the Next Design Star/Next Food Star, because I am an HGTV junkie and Food Network junkie. Or as my husband would say, just a reality show junkie and that is why I am here and you are reading this. My absolute favorite designer is Divine Design star Candace Olsen. Her designs are truly amazing and no one can hold a taffeta curtain next to her. So with this show it's interesting to see if any up and coming designer can become the next Candace Olsen, seriously doubt this. Last season's winner, Kim Myles and her show Myles of Style is lacking style for me and what's his name, David Bromstad (I cheated, I had to look it up) also doesn't flip my ottoman. This season's lineup started with a limo ride to the Nashville countryside where the they are dropped off by a pile of suspicious looking lumber and toolboxes. Doesn't look good. Each one speculates that they might have to build their own living quarters, eeks! Designing and building a house, that would be a first, what is this Extreme Home Make Over?

Clive Pearse tells them that they will have $100,000 and 7 days to build a space where they will live. Tall order. He leaves the designers in a quandary as they scramble to decide how to do this when Clive comes back-ok punk'd, just kidding he tells them as they board a boat that takes them across the river to their house. Once inside they are shown rooms, dining room, living room, sun room and 2 bedrooms. Their mission, to divide up the space and design their living quarters. The house is really amazing, a stately mansion with old architecture. The designers divide themselves up into groups of two to four with only Scottie choosing to do one of the bedrooms by himself. What was he thinking? That could either be genius or disaster, in this case disaster. Doing a room by yourself, you have no one to blame things on if the room goes totally wrong. Who will you throw under the bus, point the finger at and tell the judges it was his idea, huh? huh? This decision eventually became his undoing and as Clive says, his show was cancelled. Vern Yip, the judge, was really harsh on him saying that his design, so seventies, was all wrong right down to the color choice (burnt orange) to the beds laying end to end, who wants to smell stinky feet? The best design was the other bedroom designed by carpenters Matt and Mickey V. with their unique 4 beds/loft bed design. Well, duh they are carpenters and know wood. I thought the living room was a beautiful room with dark blue grey walls and the silver insets in the bookcase. I wasn't too crazy about the dining room with it's beautiful fireplace mantel distressed brown or as judge Martha McCulley said, you turned the wood table white and the white fireplace brown, one word in my book, why? In the end, I guess the judges thought getting rid of the one that worked alone was the choice, so it's cut for Scottie, Mr. Bowtie, you look like you should be teaching a college course not designing rooms.-Single D