I’m so excited to discover that Genevieve Gorder, (from old-school Trading Spaces days) has a new show premiering on HGTV on New Year’s Day, right after the Rose Parade. I always enjoyed her on Trading Spaces because she started her career as a graphic designer, so I related to her on that score…and she had such a cute personality, she didn’t have to resort to gluing hay and feathers to the wall to get attention.

Dear Genevieve sounds a bit similar to Rate My Space, in that viewers upload pics of their design dilemmas on hgtv.com in hopes of garnering personal design advice from Genevieve–or in the case of the lucky ones–an actual makeover managed by Ms. Gorder.

Jennifer Bertrand, winner of Design Star Season 3, also has a show making its maiden voyage on New Year’s Day. Unfortunately, Bertrand didn’t get a recurring show like the first two Design Star winners. For some reason she’s been relegated to the occasional on-air special, and a lot of online how-to videos. I thought Jennifer was precious on Design Star, and deserves her own show at least as much as Kim Myles (winner of DS Season 2). Kinda scratching my head over her diminished exposure, but maybe she didn’t want to make the move to Cali. Our loss.

Jennifer’s show, Paint-Over–as might be expected if you watched Design Star–is all about making design changes via paint treatments, which is a show focus we haven’t really seen since Debbie Travis’ heyday. I suspect Paint-Over could be really successful in the coming months, as people look for inexpensive ways to make design changes in their homes.