We entered this little design contest with about 400 other people and, of course, there is a voting round to weed out around 390 of those entries and end up with 10 finalists.  Because there is voting involved, not necessarily the best designed rooms, just the rooms that received a higher percentage of thumbs up, than thumbs down will be the 10 finalists.  Following??  Basically, the first round is just a popularity contest.  Unfortunately…especially for us.  The good news is if we make it to the top 10 (voting ends Friday at midnight ET), then 3 actual judges from some of my favorite posh decor magazines like Elle Decor, Country Living and House Beautiful will decide who deserves the $5000 to renovate their next room.  Big incentive, huh?!

If it wasn’t for that 5K or the thought that the executive editor for Elle Decor (eeee!) would be glancing at my digs, I would have dropped out.  The whole contest is ending up to be entirely too cut throat for me.  People (I am assuming other contestants and whoever they can drag along with them) are going around and giving a thumbs down to the competition and our 94% has dwindled down to a teetering 80%.  It puts us around spot 10-11, but with all of the thumb wars, the game is ever-changing.

Chris and I have decided (for better or worse) we are going to play clean and not give anyone a thumbs down.  Yes, it makes us completely vulnerable and we are certain it is why we dropped from number 4 to number 11 in a few mere hours, but we aren’t nay-sayers.  Nope.  Not us.  Could it cost us 5 grand? Maybe, but we are counting on positive voting to help us.  That’s where you come in.  You can only vote once for us, so it’s not something we will nag you about every day until Friday.  You don’t have to log in anywhere, you don’t have to sign up for anything.  You just click here, scroll down under our picture (which they cropped really weird!) and click the little thumbs up.

If you are feeling extra generous, you can pass the word a long via facebook, twitter, email, whatevs.  Here’s the link:

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-home/designer-in-you/contest/room.aspx?contentid=4777

Or, if you prefer a button for your blog or something, we have that option, too.  Just kidding.  I have NO idea how to make a button.  Maybe one of these days, I’ll take a break from painting my house, or DIYing a light fixture and sit down and make a freakin’ blog button.  But if you are savvy enough to do so and want to help out…here’s a cool pic that would make an awesome button!  Right?

(or just put the picture in your sidebar AS a picture and link in the page.)

Honestly, we love some good friendly competition (Blokus anyone?) and we feel like we fit into the true spirit of this contest.  We are working on our house and could sure use some moolah to work on it some more.  Gracias, friends!

See more pics of our ever-progressing living room here, here, here and here