getting published in refresh magazine - a q & a

It has been a great few weeks since our feature in BH&G's Refresh Magazine came out. Y'all have been so sweet with your comments, emails and text messages. You know I'm dying to share all the details about the crazy fun experience but instead of the typical 'the day the magazine came to my house' I thought I'd answer all of the questions that I've gotten about the experience. So let's start at the beginning, shall we? In no particular order...

How did this happen? Did they contact you or did you contact them?
When the lovely Bonnie Broten contacted me about publishing the Farmhouse Kitchen she said she'd looked at the blog and why didn't I send her some pictures of my house as well. What?! Nothing staged or 'magazine ready', just photos to give her, and possible publications, an idea of the home etc. I was already so excited about the Farmhouse Kitchen getting it's closeup that I emailed off some pictures of our house in a rush and didn't think much of it. I mean, what are the odds? I will say though, that after years of hard work on this little house of ours, it was thrilling to have someone pay it such a huge compliment.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

Did you find out right away that you were selected?

About two months passed from the time Bonnie said "send me some pictures" to the time I found out that Refresh had selected our house. After I sent in the initial batch of pictures, there were some back and forth emails like "what's behind that door?", or "can we have another shot of this room from a different angle?" which help the publications to get an idea of the whole space, what they have to work with and what they might have to work around. I also sent in a brief paragraph or two about our family, how long we've lived in the house, what we've done to it, etc.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

How much time passed from the shoot to the publication date?

Oh boy, it was a long time. So we had the two months from the initial suggestion to the 'Congratulations, it's happening.' Then, it was roughly six months later that the shoot happened on two different occasions a few weeks apart and then a year later that the magazine actually came out. Like I said, a long time! I swear some of my family thought I was making it up. "Uh, didn't you say you were supposed to be in a magazine? Is that ever happening?"

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

Did you know what rooms they were going to shoot? How did you prepare?

Once everyone is on the same page about shooting, there are a lot of emails back and forth to set schedules, ask questions about things you might already have that they'll want to use in the shoot, etc. Then, about two weeks or so before the shoot they send a list of the rooms and images they are wanting to capture so that you can better prepare your home, and yourself, for what's coming.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

As for preparing, I went to town. I was lucky enough to have had the advantage of working on other shoots so I knew that no space is off limits. They might not be shooting a certain section, but they'll need to have other areas available to stage, set up equipment, flowers etc. I also knew that the more prepared the house was (clean, organized and 'ready') the easier it would be for the editors and photographers to set up and get working. A shot can take a long time to set up (an hour even sometimes) and there are a lot of shots to get thru in a day, so the less 'extra' work they have to do the smoother things will go.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

So I cleaned. And cleaned, and then I cleaned some more. My mom was gracious enough to take the girls and Zoey that week so all my cleaning wouldn't be immediately undone by "helpers". Oh and did I mention that this all happened at the same time as I was wrapping up the ORC of our family room? In fact, the first day of the shoot was also ORC reveal day. Good times. For those of you that have participated in the ORC you know the madness of the last two weeks, so that coupled with getting ready for the Refresh shoot was madness. Wonderful, chaotic madness. Thank God for gin!

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

How long did the shoot last?

Since our's was broken up into two different times, that's a question with many answers. They came to shoot the outside (front and back) at the end of summer, right around the beginning of the school year and that was a half day. Then, they came back in November for three days to shoot the inside.
And I'm talking full days people. Those magazine folks are a hard working bunch. Usually things would start around 8ish each morning and end when it got dark (because you can't shoot pictures in the dark).

Did they bring a lot of things or is all of that stuff really yours?

So in the flurry of emails leading up to the shoot you do chat back and forth about what you have in your house, what they might want to add etc. And Jessica Holtam, being the excellent stylist she is, was smart enough to plan for every possible contingency. So she and I shopped for a few extra pillows and she brought a tray and tons of flowers, but that's it. All the rest is mine. There were a lot of pillows we didn't end up using and there was nothing sadder than having to pack all of those lovelies up and send them out the door. Once pillows enter this house, I don't like them to leave.

Was it hard to keep the secret?

Short answer - yes.
Longer answer - family and close friends knew about it, so if I ever felt a need to blab, I could always do it to them. It was SUPER hard after seeing the photos (which you get a sneak peek of a few weeks after the shoot) to not share them with y'all. I wanted to scream "THIS is what my house really looks like. See I told you I was a bad photographer!"

Who are those two girls in front of your house? 

The girl on the right is my daughter, Amelia, and the other girl is her BFF. They were at a playdate (at the BFF's house) while we were shooting outside. The photographer thought it would be fun to include the kids in a few shots and since the girls were just around the corner, I texted BFF's mom and said, "wanna bring the girls over for a few minutes?" So they zipped over, Alise gave them some direction about what she wanted them to do and they went to town. And they've loved showing everyone at school what they got to do "back when they were six."









































Did you get paid for this?

Nope. You are paid in other ways; experience, exposure etc. but no, you are not paid for participating. You do however get a clean house FULL of flowers at the end of it. And some pretty amazing pictures.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

Any regrets?

I do wish I'd taken a few minutes to fix my hair and get myself collected before they took my picture. The whole day is so busy running around, moving and lifting things etc. that they said, "OK sit down and let's get your shot" and I just...did. I should have taken a minute but I was so swept up in the whole thing it didn't even cross my mind. Until the next night after the whole thing was over and I was having a cocktail with the hubs and I all of a sudden yelled out a big "CRAP! What was I thinking?" But otherwise, I don't have an ounce of regret. I loved every minute.

photo credit: Alise O'Brien

So that's the story. If there are any questions you have that I didn't answer, let me know. I'm an open book people. It really is a great issue and you can also check out my friend Emily Clark's house in the same issue! (we had a good laugh about that) Talk about good company!

A million thank yous to Jessica Holtam, Alise O'Brien, Lacey Howard and especially Bonnie Broten. It was a joy to work with each of them, and I learned more than I could have imagined. I look forward to the chance to work with them again!

And now to change up the whole house, I'm getting ready for Christmas along with these great ladies.

I haven't even started to pull out all our Christmas stuff yet, but with this great group of ladies, I need to bring it. I can't wait to see what everyone does!

How well can you keep a secret? What do you do to clean for a big event? Anyone know how I can keep that little one at just that size forever?