By Mallory Sherwood, Managing Editor

Christi Proctor had less than $1,000 and only one day to complete her most recent challenge.

Her task: to transform an ordinary residence hall room for two freshman women, who would be calling the room “home” for the next eight months, into a luxurious home away from home.

Proctor, a designer on The Learning Channel’s “Trading Spaces,” helped two freshman women turn a typical residence hall room into a modern Moroccan suite on Aug. 13, when they began moving into Gardner Residence Hall.

Ashton Bellville, freshman biology major from Cleburne, has known Proctor since she was four years old. “She’s always been a friend of my mom’s and our family since I can remember,” Bellville said.

Bellville said that she, along with Proctor and roommate Ashton Lloyd, a freshman graphic design major also from Cleburne, began shopping for fabric for their room in January.

“My mom was like, ‘We should have Christi help us,’ all year, but it wasn’t until January that we went shopping with Christi to pick out fabric for our room,” Bellville said.

The two roommates, best friends since Bellville’s move to Cleburne her freshman year of high school, chose the colors burnt orange, olive green, eggplant purple and gold to pull off their Moroccan theme.

Lloyd said their mothers began sewing the comforters, dust ruffles, curtains and pillows for the room once they purchased the fabric from Childress Fabric and Furniture in Dallas and were working on finishing everything up until the night before they left to come to school.

Proctor, a Waco resident, helped the girls purchase other items needed to complete their room and helped arrange the room to be space efficient and still feel like home, Bellville said.

The beds, arranged in the shape of an “L,” are decorated with pillows in shapes of circles, cylinders, squares and rectangles that are trimmed with beads. The room also contains curtains that cover the wall of windows, an entertainment center, a couch and a floor rug.

“Christi was so ecstatic to help us because she just has boys, and this year her son just went out and bought a Bed in a Bag for his room,” Bellville said. “We were a lot more fun.”

Enthusiasm was contagious through-out Gardner Hall as other freshman women came to view the room, often returning with more friends.

“The girls just come in groups at all hours to see our room,” Bellville said. “We just invite them to come in, even if it is at 1:30 in the morning, like yesterday when we already asleep.”

Even interruption of sleep doesn’t deter these women from continuing to invite more to come in when they stop by.

“It’s been a lot of fun for us to get to meet so many new people who just arrive at our door,” Lloyd said.

Both women said they love their room Proctor designed and would only add one thing: paint, if they could.

Although they said they love having people stop by to see their room, both women said they hope people don’t get the wrong impression.

“Some people might think that we’re special and stuck up for having a designer come in to decorate, but it’s not like that,” Bellville said. “I don’t want people to get the impression that we’re rich and know-it-alls, because we really aren’t. We’re goofy and love to have fun. We’re normal.”