20 Things You Didn’t Know about Jillian Harris

Jillian Harris is an interior decorator and actress from Canada. Her television series include the Love It or List It series in the United States and Canada, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. She also was a third place contestant on The Bachelor and was subsequently chosen to participate on The Bachelorette as its fifth star. She is a down to earth celebrity, with many fans who follow her online to learn about fashion and decorating. She is also actively involved with charity functions and is a quirky fun, loving human, all of which combine to make her very popular indeed.  However, we don’t know everything about her.  Here are 20 things you might not know about Jillian Harris.

1.  Jillian loves facial hair.

During an interview with Urban Rush, she talked about her Extreme Makeover show and all of its unexpected problems and excitements. She also ended her interview by telling hosts Fiona and Michael that she loves “big hairy men”. Jillian takes her love for hair and also puts it to use on her personal website, where she shares hair care tips for her fans. She demonstrates current hair fashions, products and ways to make taking care of hair easier.

2. Jillian participated in Make-A-Wish.

Jillian and Dana Valeria, plus her team from Love It Or List It, Vancouver, decorated a dorm room for Kalee Alvarado from Washington. Kalee requested to have Jillian transform her room because she watches her shows all the time and loves her work. Jillian worked through HGTV to fill Kalee’s room with color and fresh bright and airy things. Jillian stocked the room with cosmetics, clothes, soap, jewelry, kitchen appliances and brand new décor for all of Kalee’s roommates, too, to help all the girls and Kalee get their school year started at Boise State University. It was the first time Jillian had participated in Make A Wish.

3. Jillian feels her goals, values and ambitions came from growing up in Peace River, a small town.

She thought she should pull herself out of the process of working on television in order to maintain the kind of life she had as a child. Luckily enough, her big hit allows her to work in the big city of Vancouver, but go home to the small town of Kelowna on weekends.

4. Jillian is a Big Brother mentor.

She was nervous when she first started. But she and her Little Buddy and spent hours on the school grounds doing all sorts of things like playing games, cooking, baking, and laughing together. Her Little Buddy taught her how to play guitar and piano and how to love herself. She has been volunteering for Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver for over 4 years. She believes that mentoring filled her with life and energy and connected her to her community.

5. Jillian is very close with her mother.

Her mother has supported Jillian throughout her life. Her mother is her best friend and the first person she wants to call about everything. The two women share a relationship which prompted Jillian to post a special tribute to her mother online on Mother’s Day. It features a heartfelt message tailored for her mother, but universal in terms of its message. Daughters and mothers everywhere could share in Jillian’s sentiments.

6. Jillian admitted to Anderson Cooper on The Shot, that she kissed 10 guys but only 4 “with tongue”.

Anderson asked how many she slept with, and noted that she ”greased up this guy with oil on national TV”, which she countered by stating that it was actually aloe vera.

7. Jillian’s “Dirty Little Secret” is her Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

She believes her Magic Eraser will help her to save time as she prepares to take more time off to enjoy and care for her new little one on the way. She uses it around the house on patio furniture, on her shoes, her sneakers, when she is cleaning out her make up or cutlery drawers, and to clean scuffs off of her walls. Jillian has represented the Magic Eraser in many videos. She not only uses it at home but at her partner’s business. She has presented many interviews about the product with tips on Twitter, Instagram and other social media, designed to show the public many new and different ways to use the handy product to clean all sorts of things in new and different ways.

8. Jillian played basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters.

On her second chance on The Bachelorette, the Harlem Globetrotters guest starred to assist her in weeding out the bachelors on the show. She donned a Gloetrotters uniform, in petite size, and spinned basketballs on her fingers…a true mini-Globetrotter!

9. Jillian was a victim of cyber bullying.

Like many other celebrities, Harris has been a victim of countless taunts and barbs on social media.  The bullying included telling her she had a “hot dog nose.”  In fact the taunts even got Harris to take action.  She’s admitted to getting corrective surgery on her nose.

10. Jillian Created Her Social Experiment Giveaway

For Valentine’s Day Jillian sent a fabulous ring to the lucky single winner of a Valentine tweet contest. She created her own special Social Experiment Giveaway. She wanted to help make someone happy who was going to be along on Valentine’s Day. She posted that she was focusing on single ladies who might be lonely and decided since she had been lonely as a single herself, that she wanted the person who won the ring to feel much better.

11. Jillian supported #TreeofHope on behalf of Ronald McDonald House in Southern Alberta.

She designed a craft and taught sick children and their families how to decorate ornaments for the Fairmont Palliser’s lobby tree. The project seeks to create family memories and share hope with the community.

12. Jillian and friends raised about $500 worth of toys for the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation.

They waited at the Olympic Cauldron at the Vancouver Convention Center on December 15th between the hours of 5 and 6 PM during the Christmas Toy Drive, and gave out samples of Jillian’s banana bread to anyone who donated while the treats lasted. Jillian’s loaves of her It’s To Die For recipe were given out to those who delivered unwrapped toys for children at Christmas. Due to many generous donors such as Jillian and her friends, a new BC Children’s Hospital, with its own acute care center has been constructed. Over $150 million was donated to support the construction project. The new hospital was designed to support children with chronic health needs such as cystic fibrosis and cancer.

13. Jillian doesn’t hold back from reviewing current The Bachelorette episodes.

She works in Vancouver, Canada but drives home to Kelowna on the weekends to be near her family. It’s about 3 and a half hours from Vancouver. One morning, she woke up at 3:30 and was on set filming for 12 hours. It was June 23, 2015. She filmed a YouTube video which reported her own feelings about the controversial airing of the previous evening’s The Bachelorette show. She wanted her fans to know that everybody has their own feelings about the current couple’s sleeping together on the episode. She noted that the show’s producers encourage participants to go with the flow of feelings.

14. Jillian thought she was going to be “one of those girls who was only on The Bachelorette for a week”.

She started the show thinking she could just meet lots of guys, because “guys are kind of hard to meet in the city”. She had to make an audition video to apply for the show. She wondered about what being on television was going to be like. She really hoped to find a guy, because she loves family and wanted to have babies and live a family life.

15. The Bachelorette show actually broke her heart.

She fell in love with her bachelor and truly thought he was the one. She took off some time from work to recover. “Taking a breath and calming down” was good for her. She refers to her time in the hot tub with so many bachelors as “man stew”. She also revealed that the time after the show didn’t work out for her was that she “was really traumatized” by the experience.

The Bachelor and The Bachelorette shows were more emotionally wrenching than Jillian had anticipated before participating in them. She has been interviewed frequently about them and honestly admits that the shows are filled with circumstances which cause emotional entanglements and frustrations. She has also been candid about the fact that she was looking for someone to love when she first entered as as a candidate. She felt that it might be one good way to meet that perfect someone, and was disillusioned when she discovered how much of the shows are produced to put two people together into contrived relationships and moments where true love might be expected to blossom.

She believes that the shows production process makes it very difficult for participants to stay rational and not involved with the other participants. She described the entire process as one that contributes to raw emotions and disturbing realizations.

16. Jillian is expecting!

Jillian and her boyfriend Justin Pasutto told the world they were expecting their first child in August 2016. Jillian announced the news on her blog. She wrote that she had dreamed about becoming a mother for years, and often wondered about how she would be as a mother. She and Justin are completely elated about the prospective new arrival. Concerning Justin, Jillian wrote that she was “smitten” with him from the very beginning. She was 32 when she met him, and he was 24, but they got along so well that age never made a difference. They found out 12 days before her 36th birthday that they were pregnant, but they don’t want to know if it will be a boy or a girl. They are looking forward to being surprised.

17. She has been told that she “may wear dresses too much”.

She actually enjoys wearing frilly dresses and skirts while she is working on designing shows, but notes that she also wears hard hats and boots to compensate for her girly attire and still stay safe.

One day, she made a video about how her group of friends was planning to make tutus to wear for St. Patrick’s Day. She was buying tulle at the fabric store when she admitted that she had never made one before, and she didn’t have a pattern. She mentioned that she was “crafty” and figured that she should be able to work out a way to make it easily enough. She also dropped the news that the group of friends who were going to wear the tutus included both women and men.

18. Jillian has “Marjorie” tattooed on her foot to honor her grandmother.

Many know that bit of trivia about the tattoo, but many also don’t know that her “Granny” turned 80 and refused to accept gifts from anyone. So, Jillian and her three cousins had the tattoo done because their Granny has “really been with us, every step of the way.” The tattoo is a beautiful calligraphic design, which stretches across the top of her ankle area, displaying her Granny’s name with elegance. The closeness, and crazy bent of her family is demonstrated by her cousins following her tattoo lead.

19. Jillian’s Dog is named Nacho Cilantro.

Nacho has his own Instagram account. According to his account photos: he loves throw pillows, he was found in Mexico on a beach, and he loves to take car rides.

Cilantro is not a glamorous sort, but he shows a flair for friendship and style. His photos with his doggie friends who are visiting for a doggie sleepover show that his bed is pretty spectacular indeed. His sheets and coverlet are color coordinated in light tones, and the entire room is so stylish! It looks like his Mom is an interior decorator…

20. Jillian is a flexitarian.

This means she is a semi-vegetarian who eats a healthy diet based on plants, but occasionally adds meat products to her diet.

Jillian focuses on healthy foods, and often posts on social media about ways to prepare foods in healthy ways. She is a proponent of using healthy ingredients and how to substitute those for traditional ones to reduce calories and add extra nutrition to the recipes she uses.

She did receive criticism recently because she posted on her social media that she refuses to give up drinking coffee while pregnant. She did, however, note that she has give up alcohol, botox, and partying. She received the negative comments when a photo of her drinking coffee in her car emerged in public. Typically outspoken, what she actually said in terms of the coffee dig was, in essence, “I am not going to give up my d#@* coffee!”