HGTV

HGTV - the Home and Garden TV Network. I love this channel - almost as much as I love VH-1 Classic. I think these two channels are my minimal requirements to be in a cable service before I subscribe. I use to watch HGTV when we were house hunting just for the show 'House Hunters.' I just wanted to get an idea of how other people were approaching home buying and often wonder to myself: why can't our house search be in the $200K range? Now that we're in a house, I think I can fully enjoy all the other programming HGTV has to offer.

I still watch 'House Hunters' but I also find myself looking for 'Carter Can,' 'Design on a Dime,' 'Deserving Design' and just a whole slew of other home-idea shows. 'Carter Can' is hosted by none other than Carter Oosterhouse - known as the second carpenter that was brought onto Trading Spaces. (He blew Ty Pennington out of the water, as far as I was concerned, in looks and hunky-ness.) His show is about recreating a space for a person/family and basically walking you through the step by step process of designing and creating, all the while proving that any average joe can do it themselves. What I love about these shows is that when they get ready to go to commercial break, they always give you a nail biter about what's coming up next...'Will the family love what Carter has done to the place or will they totally hate everything?' Well, that's simple...'Hells yeah - Carter did it...it's Carter...he's in your home and he's doing this whole thing with your space....and did you see him while he was working on this space? He's hot.' So I don't know why they feel like they need to tease me to stay tuned - I will stay tuned - cause it's Carter...and yes, he can!

The other show that I have been meaning to watch comes from another Trading Spaces alum, Vern Yip. He was always my favorite designer on the show. I always thought if we participated in Trading Spaces, I would be bummed if Vern wasn't designing my room. Anyways - I think whatever Vern does is so great - his design really fits well with my taste. I would really love to do some of his projects. Heck, I would really like to get on his show....I may have to look into that. Us Asians need to stick together!

All the other shows are pretty good - we're not at that stage where we can make changes to the house we're in - not that we need to - the place was practically move-in ready. And we do have a blank slate for a basement right now that we're hoping to fill and decorate next spring - so these shows always give me some good ideas.

I'd like to know how the shows pick the people for their episodes....do you need a sob story to get on these shows?