Summer Addiction to HGTV

The Tulips Go With the Walls

I’m on vacation…a working vacation, but let’s not split hairs.

There’s a great big tv sitting opposite a great big couch, which is positioned dangerously close to my computer. Because even though my back is to the couch and tv when I’m sitting at the computer, I feel their eyes on me, drawing me back to daytime tv.

This summer I discovered HGTV. Who knew?! Did you know? All those fabulous shows?! Omigod. I’ve been in heaven.

It all started with those House Hunter shows. The ones where these intensely hopeful couples end up with the place they never would have wanted in their wildest dreams, and absolutely loving it.

This is the show where I found out granite for the kitchen counter tops is the Louis Vuitton bag of kitchen counters. Couple after couple, especially the young ones who don’t even know how to cook, walked into the fab kitchen, looked at the counters, and cried “Oh no, it’s not granite.” I didn’t even know there was such a thing as granite counters, okay? But after seven weeks of House Hunters and Virgin Property Owners and International House Hunters, I do. Thank god!

I’m in love with Candace. Candace tells all while re-making these wrecks of rooms into absolutely gorgeous reflections of the owners’ tastes. Someone named Genevieve works this magic too. I love her as well. And David Bromstad who is in Miami and is fab with color…I’m in love with him too.

These Flowers Go With the Walls, Too

And don’t get me started on this couple, the Novogratzs. They are even more fab than all the others put together, and they cart around seven children to boot. In fact those seven children kind of freak me out. The Novogratzs obviously have no bounderies–which works really well in their designs. This week they’re doing an loft in something they call ‘industrial comfy’. Is that fab or what?! I wish I could drag them into my house–

Which amazes me. Until this summer addiction took hold, I honestly thought I knew what I was doing decorating my homes. I would no more trust a decorator to mess with my taste than I would crawl across a freeway during rush hour.

That is, until this summer and Candace and Genvieve et al. I’ve just rented a miniscule apartment as a pied a terre in Oregon near my daughter. It’s 450 square feet. A non-existent kitchen. Big windows. I like arty urban with some bling and luxury thrown in, but it has to function primarily as my office, because it is meant to be a quiet retreat in which I can write without my SoCal life’s daily distractions. Until this summer, I had total confidence I could ‘make it work’. Now, sigh, I know that it’s the Novogratz or Candace or David who could really make it work. Excuse me…they could make it pop! And I mean really pop!

Yellow and blue

I do know now that I must have this color called ‘withered moss’ (I kid you not) and another one called ‘cucumber sandwiches’. I know I want a staple gun, that I’d better make friends with a fabric store and spray paint, and that it’s time to finally get all my old lamps re-wired. Because now that my eyes have been opened, I realize I might fall over the perfect lamp shade anywhere.

Okay, gotta go now. A Design Challenge re-run is on. They’re making kitchens. They are making pale green kitchens and the design adviser, David Bromstad (from Miami, remember?) is telling them they need to step up their games, so immediately two of the kitchens have gone orange. So now I know, see, that the orange kitchen is nervy.

Hey, my kitchen is orange. Well not orange exactly. But the wood floor and cabinets definitely have shades of orange in them. And those orange wine glasses I have sitting on the shelf I bought for one Thanksgiving and never used again? They’ve just taken on a new reason for being . And there are some oranges out on the (tile, god forbid) counters from breakfast. The color looks really good–

But wait! Let me add some green limes and now, look at that, total POP!

#Television #Vacation #HGTV #DavidBronstad #Photography #SummerVacation