finally...

You may - or may not - remember a while back I mentioned some big news coming up.  Well, I can finally tell y'all what that is.

Our kitchen is in the April issue of This Old House magazine! For real, people! Check it out!

Yeah, that's a before picture at the bottom. Thanfully, I can hardly remember it.

All the yellow and green items are from the stylist.  I guess all my white dishware wasn't colorful enough for the photos?

Here's how it all came about: 

Last year we entered our kitchen in a This Old House Magazine home remodeling contest.  At the time that we entered I didn't realize it was an online popularity contest where entrants were supposed to encourage family and friends to vote for them, and the homeowners with the most votes won, so we never asked anyone to vote for us.  We didn't win.  Live and learn and life goes on.  A few months after the contest was over I got a phone call from one of the editors of the magazine.  She said that, while we obviously didn't win (the winner had already been announced and their picture was in an earlier issue), the editorial staff liked our kitchen, and the fact that we did it all ourselves, so much that they wanted to do a story about it, and would we be willing to do that? Yeah, I could hardly contain my hysterical laughing.  I'm sure she thought I was a lunatic. Or maybe she hears that all the time?

The photograper and stylist came out one day last fall, and then the interivew took place just after the holidays.  In the meantime we had to sign a contract stating that we wouldn't tell anyone about the whole thing until the magazine came out.  Although the editorial staff has been in constant contact with us, it seems likes it's been forever since this all started.  It has been more fun than I ever imagined, and I'm so excited to finally reveal all!  And I can tell you - although we were a tiiiiny bit disappointed that Norm didn't come out with the crew, (Not really.  Obviously we knew he wasn't coming. But it would have been pretty damn cool.)  the people at This Old House are awesome! Our thanks to everyone there.

So that was my big secret!