See you next week!

OMG, I can’t begin to tell you how crazy things have been! We’re a week into videotaping our $30,000 Style My Room makeover show, and the Agenas have been an absolute dream to work with.

They’re positive, can-do personalities, which is perfect because they’ve dealt with all four kids coming down with stomach flu, a super-early appearance on KITV4, full-day excursions to scope out flooring, lighting, window treatments and furniture, and repeated invasions by an army of contractors and videographers—all in one week. I’m going to let them tell you all about it—you can follow their blog right here at this website, by going back to the homepage.

Right now I’m in a whirlwind of packing for a family trip to Lake Tahoe. I promised Darrell and Nicki that for the next five days, there’ll be no blogging or e-mailing! No skiing either, for me anyway. Say what you want, I guess I’m just not a natural! While everyone is on the slopes, my plans are to curl up in front of the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate and some magazines to drift through … and before I know it, I’ll be back, fully recharged and ready to go!

Here’s hoping those of you with Spring Break plans are looking forward to some well-deserved R&R with your families. And to everybody out there, Happy Spring!

And … rolling!

Our grand prize winners, the Agenas, had known for a week that they had won our Style My Room contest. No one can say grass grows under our feet: we started production on our one-hour Style My Room Makeover special yesterday, the very day The Honolulu Advertiser announced that the Agenas had won.

We set our call time for 9 a.m. Because we were invading a family’s home, we decided not to set a crazy-early call time like some of the days during production of our DVD last year. The Agenas do have four young kids, after all, and we didn’t want to cause too much commotion on a Sunday morning in their quiet neighborhood.

Our crew consisted of two video guys, our director, James, two grips (lighting guys), and of course Lissa, Kara, Melissa and myself—talk about a full house!

We shot the first segment outside on the sidewalk, and were probably the talk of the neighborhood. Cars slowed down to watch, neighbors came walking by, everyone wondered what all the commotion was about.

We shot the rest of the morning inside the house, which would have been a little bit cooler if not for all the lighting we had. The kids were great. Sarah, the youngest, was really cute. She kept going around yelling, “…and … Action!” I don’t know where she got that from, because James doesn’t say that! But it was very funny.

Once their part was done, Jo Ann’s mom and brother came to pick them up, because we knew they would soon get bored with our rigid schedule.

We are a low-budget production. There’s no hair and makeup person—well I guess there is: me! And we don’t have a great lunch table with all the fixins. Papa John’s had to suffice. Everyone ate on the fly, whenever they had a moment of down time.

The final shots of the day were done outside, by the infamous clothes line where we ambushed Jo Ann with the great news. This is where we filmed the “confessionals,” where Chris and Jo Ann got to share their thoughts on all the happenings. They were actually put up on little crates to get more of the background greenery into the shot. Lissa was just out of the shot, asking the questions, and we brought out diffuse lighting to make everybody look good.

Stay tuned—this is the first of my behind-the-scenes reports as we stay with the Agenas through their living room makeover.My, my, the things that go on behind the scenes!

It’s over

After all these weeks, the $30,000 Style My Room contest has come to a close. We’re no longer taking entries, but are in the final phase of selecting our grand prize winner. And I can tell you, it has been a huge process. We have not taken this lightly. The overwhelming response has touched and uplifted us.

We wish we could give everyone a prize. It’s been the most difficult thing, narrowing down well over 1,000 entries to just a few finalists. Fortunately we’ve had a lot of help and support from our sponsors, who also sit on the judging committee.

There have been entries from people who we just want to be friends with and have enjoyed meeting, both virtually and in person. You’ve inspired us to want to do more with our company and our website.

There have been heartfelt stories, funny stories, and most importantly, stories of you wanting to learn to be empowered to do your own space.

Just yesterday a gentleman submitted his entry, saying he would be happy for the opportunity to learn and get guidance from me—and that if he won, he would donate the $30,000 grand prize to the family of Asa Yamashita, the Waianae High School teacher who was killed last week. He said, I’d be happy to give up the $30,000 to the family that really does need something.

So here’s a heartfelt thank you to all of you who entered. We read every one of your stories. The contest may be over, but hopefully our time with you isn’t. Please continue to stay in contact with us. Move your photos on over to our online community so we can help you there. We’ll keep putting up teaching videos, articles and events. We want to do everything we can to help you attain those dreams you have for your living room!

You gotta love live TV!

So yesterday’s my KITV day, and I’m at the studio bright and early as usual, all set to share a real family’s story about their living room, when oh-oh! A technical glitch pops up that threatens to derail my plans.

As you know, we’re running a $30,000 Style My Room contest along with The Honolulu Advertiser. Every week we’re giving away a runner-up prize, and this week’s winners are the Cadelinia family of Hawaii Kai. Their cream-colored living room carpet had turned more dirt-colored after years of traffic from two active kids, lots of friends and their pet Golden Retriever. They want to make over their living room from the floor up. I’d emailed photos of the room to KITV to flash on the screen during my segment.

Well, as I’m getting miked up just before going on the air, morning co-host Mahealani Richardson asks if I have any photos. They never got my email! My heart just about stopped! I’m a very visual person, and I was counting on those photos to help viewers picture a dramatic before-and-after effect.

Mahealani asked, can you still do the segment? Sure! I said. At least I brought samples of the fabulous European wood flooring that the Cadelinias won from EuroFloor—we’ll just roll with it!

We start the segment, and while I’m on the air, a cameraman notices, lying by my handbag, an 8x10 picture. It’s a printout of the Cadelinias’ living room that I was using to focus my thoughts while I was waiting. He picks it up and starts creeping toward us on the set, just out of camera range.

If you were watching, you probably didn’t notice that while I’m talking, my eyes momentarily dart to the right. Then you hear Mahealani say—quite naturally like the pro she is—oh! Is this a picture of the room you’re talking about? And the camera pans to that printout she’s holding, which is of course grainy and not as clear as what was supposed to flash on screen, but at least viewers could finally see what we were talking about!

My husband Darrell told me later he watched the whole thing and couldn’t tell anything was out of the ordinary. So no one was the wiser—thanks to that cameraman and Mahealani for a smooth save!

To see those actual photos and read the Cadelinias’ whole story, click on Contest in the navigation bar at the top of this page. And if you want to watch that KITV segment for yourself, it’ll be up on our homepage next Tuesday!

Let’s set some things straight

There’s been a lot of excitement and a little confusion about our $30,000 Style My Room contest. We’ve gotten some calls and emails about this, so while it’s still early, I thought I’d clear up some of the latter for you with this Q&A.

Q: How come I keep seeing your ads when you already have a winner?

A: What you saw in last Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser was our congratulations to the first of seven weekly winners, the Saul family of Ewa Beach. For the next six weeks, in the same Sunday paper, you’ll be seeing a fresh story about the latest week’s winners. Our $30,000 Grand Prize winner will be announced in the paper in March. So there’s plenty of time and lots more prizes!

Q: What are you looking for? Are you looking for the worst possible living room?

A: No, we are not looking for the absolute messiest, ugliest living room possible. Nor are we looking for a small living room, a big living room or any other criteria like that. We have seven runner-up and one Grand Prize to give out, so we’re looking for single-family home, multifamily, young, old, retired, townhouse, condo—doesn’t matter.

The main thing we’re looking for is people who are not simply looking to get the prize, but those who want to learn, be inspired and empowered to add style to their space, who are going to be able to take what they learn from us and apply it to their other spaces. We want to hear your story, we want to know about you, your family and your home and what you hope to learn from this experience. So when people tell me, my living room isn’t falling down and beat-up, it’s pretty nice, we just have white walls and I don’t know what to do—perfect! Sign up!

Q: Do I have to design a living room makeover to enter?

A: Nope. This is for you to learn how to design your living space. All you have to do is enter, answer a few questions, and click the submit button.

Q: Will I win $30,000 in cash and do the makeover myself?

A: No. If you win the Grand Prize, you’ll receive up to $30,000 in products and services from our sponsoring companies to be used on your living room makeover. I will be there to take you by the hand and teach you how to add style to your space. And no, we will not be painting walls or building bookshelves—we are using the money to buy all the furniture, finishes, lighting et cetera and to have professionals install everything and do the work they’re expert at.

Q: Why does the winner have to be an Oahu homeowner?

A: Because of production costs—we’d love to help the Neighbor Islands, but our video crew are all here on Oahu.

Q: Are you going to come to my house and do my living room if I win?

A: I will definitely come to your house! But we are not sending you off somewhere while your makeover is done for you. This will be a process where you will learn how to find your style, shop for the furniture and accessories that will go into your living room, choose the styles and colors you want, and pull together your own unique look. You and your family will be involved in every step of the process.

That’s it! I hope I’ve answered some of your questions. Let me know here if there’s anything else I can answer.

High five!

Cathy: We did it! What a relief—our contest went live this past weekend and Lissa and I had been holding our breath along with everyone else in the office. She’s here with me and we’re doing a joint blog. Just think, with all the glitches that could have happened—

Lissa: It’s cool to see a contest coming to reality. Remember six months ago when it was just an idea? We were having a meeting in this conference room and James came up with the idea of doing a makeover contest, but one that was different.

Cathy: Well of course James—he’s our video director and the only guy we work so closely with—it all has to come back to him! He said not only do a makeover, it should turn into a TV show. We started brainstorming and one thing led to another, and we came up with the concept that it shouldn’t be just a makeover, the homeowner should be involved!

Lissa: And then as we started plotting out the contest and how it was going to work, Mari was on board to conceptualize the ideas for the website—

Cathy: What’s great about Mari, our editor, is not only does she put words in our mouth, she also puts a lot of food in our mouth! She’s a foodie, and we like that!

Lissa: And all the work that went into the look of the contest, all the ads, that was Katie, our graphic designer.

Cathy: But I have to say, the MVPs of this whole process have to be—

Lissa: Bigger Bird Creative.

Cathy: Absolutely. Annie and Aaron are our web developers and Bigger Bird at http://www.biggerbird.com/ is their company. They’re responsible for the look and functionality of our website. This contest was a whole new ballgame. It’s a whole new functionality—

Lissa: And making sure it was easy for people to enter, looked visually pleasing, going back and forth as the rules were being approved by lawyers from two companies, making sure every page was easy to navigate and user-friendly, right down to the wire!

The contest launched at midnight last Sunday, and last Saturday was amazing, let me tell you, the whole day a bunch of us—Annie, Aaron, James, Mari, Kara, Melissa and I—we were working the whole day doing last-minute touch-ups, proofing, banging out our test system and making sure it all worked, til just about midnight.

Cathy: And amazingly, everybody came through on deadline! Needless to say, it was a huge group effort.

But you know what I’m excited about, Lise? I’m excited about finding a winner. Actually finding lots of winners, because we have the seven weekly winners and the final Grand Prize winner. Seeing the entries that have come in so far, it’s heartwarming because people are saying they really want to learn.

Lissa: And you get to help them spend $30,000!

Cathy: I can do that!

Lissa: That’s going to be a heck of a living room.

Cathy: I can’t do it for everyone, but I can do it for the winners, and it’s going to be documented on TV and that’s how everybody will learn.

Lissa: Yeah, you can’t go to everybody’s house, but with the TV show at the end you’ll sort of be going into everybody’s living rooms.

Cathy: I’m relieved, I’m happy, and really excited about helping some Hawaii homeowners. We wouldn’t be able to do this without The Honolulu Advertiser promoting this contest and really getting the word out.

Lissa: And making that great full-page ad—

Cathy: And also KITV for agreeing to air the program in June.
It’s been a tremendous team effort, so I just wanted to give credit where it’s justly due and let you meet some of the people who don’t get the recognition, but who play such a huge role behind the scenes.

Great job, team! High fives all around!