JOAN STEFFEND is nothing if not real. She doesn’t believe in perfection, but she has a darn good time looking for a way to keep a home stylish on a budget, all while looking for a good laugh.

A national Emmy award-winner for her writing and reporting, Joan has worked since 1997 as host of HGTV’s “Decorating Cents” on the Home & Garden Television Network (now in more than 85 million homes). Joan’s “can-do” way with a 500-dollar budget has led to appearances on “Oprah”, “The Today Show”, “The CBS Early Show”, and “Live with Regis and Kelly.”

Joan has also hosted many HGTV specials, including highly anticipated tours of three of HGTV’s Dream Homes. In addition, she closed out 2002 & 2003 as host of HGTV’s “Christmas at the White House”, a show that became the network’s top-rated hour-long prime time special.

Joan’s hallmarks as a host are her warmth, her genuine enthusiasm, and her comfort with the spoken word and the camera. Her hallmark as a shopper is her ability to spot a sale sign at 500 feet! To be able to put together a line of home accessories that appeal to her budget loving heart is a dream come true!

But... if you really want to know who she is... the seeds of Joan’s career were sown in the first grade appearing on stage as a green light bulb in the school Christmas pageant. She knew she had found a place where she felt comfortable (and no, not inside a scratchy, green, crepe paper costume, clutching a flashlight).

Flash forward through years of school plays, summer stock, and a stint at Warner Brothers Film Actors Workshop and you find Joan taking a left turn into television news - anchoring and reporting the news, first in Duluth, Minnesota and then in Minneapolis- St Paul. In her time at KARE-TV (NBC), Joan received many national and international awards for her compassionate writing and reporting, including that national Emmy, and the Grand Award from the New York Film International Festival (there’s also the Houston Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, the Cine Golden Eagle, a Telly, and so on).

In the spring of 1997 the green light bulb part of Joan’s character re-emerged when HGTV came into the picture, offering Joan a chance to host her own national decorating show, called “Decorating Cents." On the air since October of 1997, it’s one of the network’s most popular shows, founded on the principle that a little do-it-yourself creativity can stretch a 500-dollar decorating budget all the way around a room.

Showing a Lucy Ricardo kind of flair, Joan already has managed to break a pedestal sink, hot glue-gun herself to a kitchen tile, and have a little too much fun with red paint on a cream Berber carpet. In these days of economic uncertainty, her show, “Decorating Cents” remains the least pricey decorating show on TV and also one of the most popular for HGTV.