As Hollywood's big date with Oscar draws nearer, last minute details are being decided about who's wearing what, who's bringing whom and what the new ballroom will look like, reports PEOPLE. ETHAN HAWKE, a Best Supporting Actor nominee for his "Training Day" role, has someone besides wife UMA THURMAN pulling for him -- his daughter's teacher. Hawke told PEOPLE that he was taking his 3-year-old daughter Maya to preschool in Manhattan when the Oscar nominations were announced on February 12 and the teacher was the first to break the news to him, but he didn't believe it. Then the school's headmistress came running out to tell him Thurman called. "That's when I thought, 'Hey, I think I just got nominated for an Academy Award,'" he told PEOPLE. . . . Dianna Wong, designer of the Grand Ballroom, the location at the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars will be held, gave PEOPLE an exclusive peek at what the new ballroom will look like. "The exuberant colors of the sunset were the inspiration for the coloration of the carpet and draperies, rose saffron and orange," she told PEOPLE. "The walls and ceilings are richly finished in muted shades of platinum, oyster gray, and genuine pewter leaf." Appropriately, it sounds like something out of a movie set. . . . The skin-baring dresses of this year's Oscar ceremony have celebrities fighting for an appointment with Hollywood skin care guru Sonya Dakar, whose clients include DREW BARRYMORE, DEBRA MESSING and BRITNEY SPEARS. "Oscar season is my busiest time of year," Dakar told PEOPLE. "Not only am I booked 14 hours a day with skin-perfecting facial fitness treatments, but I have been in high demand for body treatments as well. All of my celebrities want to get the skin on their back, chest, shoulders beautiful so that they can wear any gown this year." . . . On the Oscar fashion front, JILL HENNESSY, star of NBC's hit drama "Crossing Jordan," will be making the rounds of Oscar parties (with her husband Paolo Mastropietro) wearing Luca Luca, Jimmy Choo shoes and jewelry by Cynthia Bach, while DESIREE UNDERWOOD, wife of actor BLAIR UNDERWOOD, who will attend the ceremony with her husband as a guest of honorary Oscar recipient SIDNEY POITIER, will be wearing vintage-inspired diamond jewelry by Kwiat Diamonds in an inventive way: Hollywood stylist Philip Bloch will affix two attached earrings, each a cluster of marquis-shaped diamonds, to the rushing on the waist of Desiree's black gown, and another diamond earring will stand-in as a barrette in her hair.