8.09.2009

Extreme Home Makeover!

I am guessing most, if not all, of you have heard of the TV show on ABC, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." It's a reality show where a team of designers, led by Ty Pennington (formerly a carpenter on the cable show Trading Spaces), scouts for and chooses a family to build a new home for. Their aim is to choose families who are deserving and in need, and complete the house in 1 week.

For example, the Hamptons. The mom & dad both work, and are involved in various things like a rodeo association. They have kids, but one day not long ago, Social Services called them and said, you have one hour to decide if you'll take in your nieces/nephews or else they go to foster care. And they took them in. The family- now of 8- had to share the one bedroom farmhouse, so every room was filled with stacked tubs of belongings, they shared beds, and the older kids had to take their meals on the floor.

Extreme Makeover decided to redo their home, so they came to Ash Grove, MO to surprise them.....about 30 minutes away from Springfield. And here's the kicker: the local builder selected for the project is a big client of Meek's- a hardward store down here. A hardware store that is a big client of Young & Company advertising. So I wrote a press release to promote our client's involvement with the show! :)

My boss & I got passes to enter the Media area on-site one of the days during the build, so we paid a visit!
A construction sign gave us a heads up that we were close (the screen flipped to give directions to the parking area). My boss stopped at the side of the road so I could take a picture- haha!

Inside the Media tent- I took a picture of anything that proved I was at the actual site.

Mom encouraged me to sign up as a volunteer so we could hopefully see me in a hardhat on TV. I was too late for the sign-up, but I got a picture in a hardhat at least! The house is in the background- Day 3, and already the frame and most of the exterior is complete.


I didn't see any celebrities, but this volunteer woman (the one who let me wear her hardhat) had autographs on her shirt, and her husband emerged from the inside of the house to show her he got autographed photos from Ty & Paige (one of the designers).

Even though I didn't see any national celebrities, I saw local ones. Here's a husband & wife anchor duo from KSPR news (the Springfield area ABC). They were practicing their update as the camera crew set up.

I think the show is set to air in September or October if anybody wants to tune in. It's sure to look very different from the actual process I heard about and/or witnessed, so it'll be interesting for all of us MO folk to watch!

3 comments:

dad a. said...

did you see any camera crews for the show filming? you could have been that person who jumps up and down in the background waving... classy... and your boss would have been impressed too.

dencan said...

Very cool, but when do we see pics of your new digs?

Atalie said...

I didn't see any camera crews for the show either! They must have a schedule of particular things they have to get film for or they were filming inside at the time).

You'll see pictures of the new place soon, hopefully. We wanted to get the place a little more put together first, so we were using that time as an opportunity to catch up on other blog posting material (plus we just got our internet hooked up). We're thinking next week we'll have some friends over for a BBQ, so we're going to work hard to have the place in good picture-taking quality by then!