Our 15 Minutes of Fame

I have been an awful blogger in 2010 I don’t think I’ve written one post and there’s so much to tell! We went to Shiner TX in February with Meredith Jamail and her new husband Mike Rice and had a blast, I had some awesome pictures for you guys but I lost my camera in a bar...no doubt after one too many Shiners. Well, I've got a new camera for my birthday from the husband and it rocks! I've even taken a digital camera class to learn how to work all the gadges, F-Stops, shutter speeds, ISO's and many other new words. So with any luck I will have some awesome photo loded posts for you all coming up!



Now for the most exciting piect of news. Philip and I were on the Today show on NBC in May! My mom sent me information to apply for a show called Desperate Landscapes airing on the DIY Network. Each year they do a super front yard make over worth $25,000. It’s not just plants it’s replacing roofs, windows, porches, siding etc. In her words my mom said ‘you guys cannot NOT win with that front yard of yours’…thanks mom! Needless to say our yard was (and still is) pretty awful. Philip’s décor consists of a rock garden with cactus and cow skulls….yes I said cow skulls in the front yard. Well I guess the folks at NBC and the DIY Network couldn’t pass up a chance to have Texas represented as one of the four worst yards in America, especially when there are dead cattle in the yard. Our yard pictures were posted on their site for all to see and vote on the worst. We got a call from the shows’ producers asking for us to make a short video of our yard.


After we sent in the video we filled out some paperwork and were scheduled to do a conference call with the host of the show, Jason Cameron. If anyone is a fan of HGTV type shows he used to be the carpenter on a show called “While You Were Out.” He also hosts ‘Man Caves’ on DIY currently. Anyways, we do the conference call with him on Skype online with video and he tells us we are one of the four finalists and we are going to New York to compete on the Today Show to win a yard makover. Much screaming ensues and we jump on a plain and fly to The Bigg Aple. It's our second trip there so we didn't do any site seeing. I did visit the Clear Channel office in NYC and meet some of the people I work with over the phone so that was cool. We met up with Philp's friend Mark, who lives in the city. There was a bar under our hotel called Johnny Utah's (think Keanu Reeves' character in Point Break.) The bar had a mechanical bull that everyone was trying to ride. The next morning we had to be up at 5am to walk over to the Today Show. It was raining and we’re being shown an obstacle course that we would have to complete to win the yard makeover. The we were taken to hair and make up and yours truly had her hair and make up done sitting right beside Mr. Newt Gingrich who was on the show talking about something not as important as a $25,000 yard make over! After that we waited around for our segment, because of the rain the hosts elected to not compete in the obstacle course, because their hair would get messed up...yes that was seriously what we were told. So Philip had the unlucky task of having me for a parter.

First we had to roll out three pieces of sod, then maneuver a potted tree in a wheelbarrow around large rocks on the ground. Pick up said tree and place it in a planter box and fill it with mulch (more on this part later.) After that we move on to lay paver stones to complete a pattern that was halfway done. Then pull five flowers from their pots and plant them in a window box THEN jump onto a riding lawn mower and ride to the finish line. Easy right?

Well…it wasn’t. The today show hosts were judging each task to make sure you were completely finished. Where they went wrong was not assigining a host to each team, instead one host was trying to watch everyone at the same time, whomever finished first got a packet of seeds and was allowed to move onto the next task. When we got to the part where you shovel the mulch into the planter box to fill it up everone was neck and neck. When we got to the red line inside the box we called Matt Lauer over to give us our packet of seeds. Mr. Lauer then said 'there's a little bit unfilled in the back corner'...two handfulls later we were done...AGAIN. Jumping around and hollering for Matt AGAIN he ignored us and gave everyone else their seeds first and us last...at that point it was over, we could't catch up. Philip is still holding a grudge against Matt Lauer for not giving us the green light to move on, but we did win a riding lawn mower…not too bad. (I’m still waiting for the mower to be delivered by the way) All in all it was a great trip, we had fun and picked up a cool prize, I guess we’ll just have to do our own front yard now!



(I may be biased but Philip was definitely the cutest husband up there!)


(Our riding lawn mower)

Hopefully that only counts for 5 minutes of fame so we can still use the other ten on something else, I'm thinking we need to try out for The Amazing Race, I love that show!