As an avid yard saler/thrift shopper I wanted to like this show so much! I can find "treasure" in other peoples castoffs. Once I posted about a shower curtain I found at Goodwill which brought me to tears. But, I'm not really drawn to her or the format of the show. Entirely. I love seeing the houses of junk/treasure, and I like seeing the pieces that are reworked for sale in her super cute store. I can do with out people haggeling on prices, and her and her team climbing through piles of crap. I think if it focused more on some of the items (and not cars, I could not care less about the cars/motorcycles), like when they had all the lunch boxes...feature them, show some and the value they have, or some of the pottery/dishware. And maybe show more reworked items, or the reworking of them...tips on refinishing etc. I dunno, I like the idea of the show, but the execution is unbearable. I usually watch it On Demand and fast forward through most of it. And as I sit around and start to plan my spring planting, I really wish they'd bring the "G" back! I did see a show I hadn't see in ages, with Karen Macaloon (sp?) where she helps people do a room. That was pretty good. too bad it was at 6:30 am!

I don't care for furniture at an angle. Maybe I've just never seen it done well. We have a large amount of square footage, but the rooms aren't large. White, white, and off-white is popular here. It always looks to me like the people just didn't know what to do and left it. The biggest reason is most people think it brightens up a room during the winter. I always think they look rather stark and their artwork isn't always shown to it's best. My mom had the pottery barn look in the early sixties, when everyone else was going with the brown, gold and green trinity. Her walls were painted a soft sage with a silvery base tone. Crisp white cafe' curtains and white wool carpeting. It was a very pretty house and those color walls were in the bedrooms and bathroom, too. She loved that house. I like color in my house and in our former home the kids rooms were all kid colors (pink, blue and yellow) our playroom was yellow and we did the office in a burgandy and our living room was a deep eggplant. I wanted colors in this house, but it has those type of walls where there aren't good stopping and starting points. I ended up putting the colors on the ceilings. I have 8 foot in most rooms, 10 in the entry and several tall stairwells. Our living room is 11 x 14 and only has one window. I knew my eggplant wouldn't work well, so I mixed it half with a glaze and put it on the ceiling. I really like the effect. One thing I've learned with colors (ranging from whites to everything else) is that you need either a warm or cool base depending upon what else is in the house. If your woodwork is a mahogany color, it will need a base with red tones. If it's a light oak or maple it may need a base with yellow tones. You can get any color in a warm or cool base, so it's not like you can't have blue if you have a warm base, you just have to match it to the right type. My current house has cream walls in a warm base. If you put it next to a stark cold white it almost has a peach tint. Get it away from the cool base and it returns to cream. Using that as my guide I have the purple living room, a peach dining room ceiling, sage green kitchen, blue sewing room, gold hallways, a jadite green in the entry, a pink in a couple of niche areas, navy blue and grey in another area. All of the colors were tinted with a warm base and the eye doesn't read conflicting colors. When you walk into my front door you see four different ceilings and since they are all separate they are four different colors. They all look good together. Since I've carried the theme of the colors only on the ceiling in most of the house you don't get the feeling of "too much" even though there are 17 colors, total. If you have painted woodwork you can take the cue from your wood furniture and then just repaint the woodwork. Warm or cool, red or yellow. I've found Benjamin Moore paint to have a really good color system. Each is marked W or C for the base and you can figure out what type of warm. They also have a paint finish called Pearl. It's pricy, but it's almost like pudding and goes on in one coat, I kid you not. I just painted my bedroom a deep, deep sage and we covered white in one coat. When I used Ralph Lauren on another project it took three coats to cover in a deep color. Since we have pickeled oak cabinets in the kitchen and red oak laminate as well as terra cotta tiles in the halls, it was easy to work with the warm bases here. My cabinets have actually taken on a peachy hue since the painting has been done and I picked up on that with tan, peach and sage green 12" vinyl tiles in the kitchen. Pick a room and get brave. Don't feel like you have to go with the trendy deep colors if you prefer light colors. I love pastels, so I always have some even though I'm still having my affair with the eggplant. Just match those bases to wood and fabric and I think you'll be happy with the results. Gloria

This thread has been very, very interesting to read and although I like to think of myself as a pretty understanding person, hopefully it will remind me that often, circumstances impact how other people behave in ways that won't necessarily be obvious to us. We moved to a new home about a month ago, and noticed that our across-the-road neighbors had quite a bit of random yard furniture and building supplies stuffed into their front porch. It does look rather messy, although it doesn't bother me much (our neighborhood tends to be pretty casual). It was only about a week later that I realized these neighbors were having a new garage built, and had torn down their old garage. Now, I'm sure that's where the front porch items came from and I bet they'll make their way back to the new garage once it is complete. Had I judged my neighbors harshly based on first impressions, I would have not only been unfair to those neighbors but also would have denied myself a potentially good neighborhood relationship. One thing that I do think is interesting is that some people in this thread have mentioned not wanting to form closer relationships with neighbors specifically because they don't want to be held to higher standards of behavior or maintenance (as opposed to simply wanting more privacy, etc.). I'm sure that there are plenty of examples where this is the case, and neighbors will bully their "friends" into conforming with how THEY believe the neighborhood should look and behave. But, I think that more often than not, it's the other way around, and people will be more understanding of individual circumstances when they better know the people involved. My office actually had a workshop-type meeting at work this week led by a professional workplace consultant (not sure of her official title), with the intent to "improve office civility" that touched on this very point. The consultant brought up the example of what happens when someone cuts us off in traffic. Our first reaction, usually, is "What a jerk! That moron doesn't know how to drive." But if we then notice that it's actually a friend of ours, or something that we know and think well of, then we might decide that "There must be something wrong; perhaps he or she is late to something really important, or there's some emergency, or he or she simply made a mistake" or something along those lines. In other words, if we don't know a person, we are more likely to attribute poor behavior to the person him or herself. But if we do know a person, we're more likely to attribute poor behavior to an accident, emergency, or mistake. Of course, that's not the case in many situations, but perhaps it's worth thinking about. If I were in OP's position, I probably would put some effort into rebuilding relationships with my neighbors on a one house at a time basis (although I certainly wouldn't kill myself trying to make nice). But that's just because I enjoy my home more, and feel more comfortable in it (and especially spending time in the yard and garden), when I feel like I have a good relationship with the surrounding families. OP is certainly under no obligation to do so, however--this type of thing is so individual.

House Hunters International, yes, I love seeing the ones that are not tropical. We are amazed at how much you can get a house for in a tiny little town in Italy... we're like "We could afford that!!" Course the ones we could afford need major work, LOL. Agree with everyone on Color Splash Miami... if I could call him on the phone, I'd beg him to go back to San Francisco. I love David Bromstad, but can't stand his show anymore. His helpers have zero personality. While I think it's cool that his design assistant is someone who I think just got her degree, so she's kind of an intern, I really miss Ian and Danielle. The two women on this show don't do anything that requires skill, all they do is shop and answer cell phone calls that say stuff is not coming/going to be late. And the two men who actually have skill have no personality and rarely talk to the camera.