The Nate Berkus Show

*Updates on this post can be found here and here*.

We got audience tickets and went to The Nate Berkus Show today and had a very fantastic time!   We'll update this post in time as links become available online and we get names of who did what.

The show started off with:
- Cristina Ferrare's Big Bowl of Love, her segment was first, showing the daughter of a woman how to cook.
These may be out of order but thinking....
- Next Nate presented House Proud, a fantastic renovation!  Much inspiration for our own kitchen.
- Followed by a style segment featuring a website that could let you see what was trending hot per your city.  Phoenix was remarkably different than Cincinnati.
- A son wrote Nate for help his mom wore too much denim after dramatic weight loss, what to do!
- and last was a how-to-lesson in Modern furniture make-overs and misconceptions.

They said the episode we watched should be on approx Wed. May 11th, next week, so set your dials Team Nate & look for the cute couple in yellow & navy in the 2nd row!

Which by the way 2nd row center was a complete fluke.  After we had both signed our release forms I got up to get us both a cup of coffee to share.  As I'm pouring creamer at the other end of the room (picture the lobby at Jiffy Lube but there's 50+ people & only 5 are guys), the entire room stands up and heads out the door.  Thank goodness for bright yellow jackets, as there she is, in a sea of humanity, going upstream, bobbing her head peeking for me.  Like at the dramatic end to a movie, I can't see her, she can't see me, we just want one more kiss at the airport but I can see her reflection in the glass or a glimmer time to time.  So I get crazy and I break the rules.  Sorry Nate, I stood on your audience-green-room chair.  I did!  And our smiles met and we sipped some of the coffee together on our way to the stage.  *sigh*

The room was mostly seated and we were grabbed and asked to sit 4th row on the "Orchestra" seating benches.  The staffed called it the mosh-pit.  Every seat is like the Loge though, not a bad view in the house.  Then a production assistant asks us to get up.  Uh-oh, busted for stepping the chair.  Nope, she moves two ladies out of the second row and plants us there!  We sat next to the mom and sisters of the guest for the House Proud segment!  & right behind the relatives of the guests who were "in trouble"- daughter can't cook, mom has no style but for denim.  Should def. be some face time footage, too cool!

Prior to taping we all practiced expressions and reactions: the thoughtful nod, the giggle, the knee slapper, etc. together as an audience three times each.  The stage management and production assistants were on their game, very friendly, and precise.  I'd go again just to watch them more next time, attention to detail at its best in action.  Nah, I'd forget and watch Nate.

In-between segments the audience played 90's Trivia - our team, the Mosh Pit, as you can see from the photos why so aptly named, tied with the West Wing.  A certain yellow someone had answered questions which seemed meant just for her, you'd think the deck had been stacked... on "Friends - who dropped a steak knife onto Chandler's toe?"* and Alanis lyrics.
*I found out at night over a glass of wine and recounting the day that there was some involvement in the past when Monica, the knife dropper, was fat and a bit about a carrot being the missing toe in a ziplock baggie, & omg, she really knows a lot about that show!

Look, its someone's head in front of me, hooray!

Everyone was a winner and got a copy of Cristina Ferrare's Big Bowl of Love cook book.

The winning T-shirt!

The one segment we liked best was the virtual room re-design where Nate gave tips on how to present modern.  He really knows his stuff and we nodded along like gospel about lessons we've only recently learned.  That modern isn't 50's-60's-70's-80's plastic, see-thru, star-wall-geo-pattern-wall art.  The book, 50 Chairs that Changed the World was one of our first lessons that the movement started after the 20's and really that space-age look was so pre-dated during the 1930's, which is exactly what Nate told the audience.

Nate emphasized the way to really make it work is to not have the room look so Jetsons-modern is by having other pieces in the room of other eras.  Which we totally have going on but there's a very big couch issue at the moment so no photos.  No worries, nothing like the couch situation in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (which by the way, the title I think would be better suited for I heart Huckabees, but this a completely different matter and direction of digression I had wanted to go...)  so we'll post about the couch and the living room later.

The point is, I'm going to steal your chair Nate.  Our Manhttan Map office requires it's presence.

We got to see the infamous chair at the end of the taping as they had set the chairs for the next episode to tape, which we couldn't stay for unfortunately.

Nate's excellent dog andirons and birchwood.

Our front yard dogwood.