~ Hi there! On HGTV's Hit Reality TV Show DESIGN STAR, I sewed, painted & sawed my way through some pretty tough challenges, but design doesn't have to be hard! I believe in combining simple, timeless design ingredients to create what I call "Design Recipes". I hope you find this to be a truly awesome resource. www.design-recipes.com contains design tips, articles, podcasts, how-to videos and of course design recipes galore! I invented Design Recipes simply because I love sharing my ideas! For years I collected design magazines, tagged and clipped pages with inspirational images & did nothing! That's because I didn't have the resource information so I could purchase the beautiful furniture I was seeing on the pages of the magazines! With Design Recipes, I SHARE how the room was executed, giving you the basic design tools needed for you to recreate the same look on your own and best of all I give you all of the resource information! Enjoy!

Episode 3 was a really rewarding and fun challenge. It was also realistic because we were designing for real clients! What was actually quite different is unlike a real design situation, we did not consult with the client throughout the project. It was fabulous when Christina whose basement me, Karl, and Bret worked on was thrilled with our design. Essentially we turned a former in-law suite created by a previous owner into a liveable and useable space. Christina told us she literally closed the door to the space and pretended it didn’t exist. It is so wonderful that she will be able to fully use her home again. I hope she enjoys her new space for years to come! There were many aspects that went into the design. One aspect that was not mentioned on the show were two large abstract canvases I created. I thought they turned out really well and Christina even commented that she liked them during the walk-through.

P.S. Can I just say anyone who has ever hired me, worked with me, for me, alongside me or observed me knows I am an absolute workhorse. Heck I was out “in the street” as a hard scrabble news reporter covering everything from the Bosnian Civil War on the ground in Sarajevo in 1993 to having water up to my upper chest covering the Missouri Floods, for 20 years! I have driven live trucks, carried gear, tripods on my back, moved construction equipment, need I go on? This long-time reporter must share “the inside scoop” which is that the hours and hours of footage that made it onto the cutting room floor, included a conversation in which Bret, Karl and I made the decision that the first day all we could accomplish was the demo and that they would do that while I shopped. Everyone including me who painted the room by myself as well as all the trim boards..got our hands dirty…for the record.

In Totowa, New Jersey Courtesy: HGTV

Entertainment Room Before Courtesy: HGTV

Entertainment Room Before Courtesy: HGTV

Me, Karl and Bret - Despite the tv clips we worked so well as a team! Miss u guys!--Courtesy: HGTV