Pinch Me! I Was Featured in Good Housekeeping

Hi out there! It seems that 2018  came at me while I was running full-steam ahead. The holidays were barely in the rear-view mirror and I jumped head-first into the New Year, New Room Refresh Challenge during the month of January when I revamped our Kitchen! It was quite the undertaking and I barely came up for air. February slowed down a bit but mainly because I was slowed down by the flu and more respiratory sickness. Knowing I needed to take some time to rest, I’ve spent the last few weeks plotting and planning our upcoming house projects — the ones I want to check off the list before baby #3 arrives! You know, the NINE rooms I talked about in my 2018 Master Project Punch List post?! Believe it or not, I may be sneaking another room or two into the mix, but more on that later. What I am actually here to tell you about today….is my Dining Room feature in February’s issue of Good Housekeeping!!

I keep saying it, but seriously, P-I-N-C-H  M-E!!

The issue was actually released in mid-January, but between the kitchen project and nearly our whole house being down and out with every illness under the sun, I completely put off writing about it here on the blog! So many of you saw my Facebook post when I first shared the news and your notes, comments, emails and messages were so incredibly sweet and appreciated. It’s funny actually, I was getting messages from friends I hadn’t seen or talked to since High School – all congratulating me and letting me know how they’ve been following my blog since the beginning. I said it when the Good Housekeeping feature first hit the newsstands, but it was such a humbling, wonderful experience and I am STILL pinching myself!!

Although, a fabulous Good Housekeeping crew did not come to my house, set-up shop and start snapping photos of our home, they DID come across a photo of our Dining Room that I had taken and shared in the Dining Room Reveal post during the Fall 2016 One Room Challenge. I of course, took the photos, wrote the post and went on with life! Although we’ve enjoy countless dinner parties and holidays in this space, I didn’t think much of it other than I was thrilled to have a fully completed space in our home, one that I worked on from start to finish until it was exactly what I envisioned. Well, one day last Fall, shortly after I returned home from NYC for the Better Homes & Gardens 2017 StyleMaker Event, I received an email from an editor at Good Housekeeping.

I actually took a double-take after reading the email the first time. Initially thinking it was a BHG editor who was following up after New York City. But no, it was a completely separate publication. The GH Editor went on to say that she loved our dining room and thought that the image would be a perfect fit for a piece they were working on for their February 2018 issue.

It was going to be a section called “Ask the Experts” where designers, stylists, blogger, TV personalities, etc. would be asked a question and then their answer would be featured alongside a shot of their space and their headshot. I was like, “Oh my gosh! Absolutely yes!!” She asked me to discuss how to make a dining room feel special outside of your basic table & chairs. Knowing how much thought I had put into all of the elements besides our table & chairs, it was fun to discuss those elements – lighting, the rug, a bench and pillows, yes pillows! So I sent my little write-up back to the editor and as life happens, got busy with the upcoming holiday hoopla and more or less forgot about it until my mom texted me that day in January and asked me if I had been to the store to pick up the February issue of Good Housekeeping yet?!!!

Oh my goodness. I had completely spaced it!

So, the next morning, off to Target I went in search of “my magazine”! I found the magazine aisle and began trying to inconspicuously take photos of it on the shelf ha!! After I few cell phone shots with one eye open I grabbed five copies, put them in my cart and went on my way!

The whole experience has felt pretty special. My 4 year blog anniversary is coming up in another week or so and many of you know that I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing when I started This is our Bliss and still don’t, for that matter! I remember being pregnant with our 2nd little guy and had so many DIY nursery project ideas that I wanted to tackle and so thought, “I follow all of these home bloggers and THEY write about their house projects, why can’t I?!” So, in March of 2014, I began writing my nursery posts,

 hit publish on my new website [the domain I had purchased an entire year before] and started telling my family about my new blog. 1 week after we brought him home from the hospital in May and I felt “recovered enough” from my c-section, I recall gearing myself up to photograph his nursery for my big Nursery Reveal post! My first “reveal”! Again, I had nooooo idea what I was doing, but I wanted to share all of the cute and fun aspects of the room I had worked so hard on all those months as we prepared for his arrival. Fast forward 4 years, 2 houses, countless Room Reveals, hundreds of posts, 3 Haven conferences, a Better Homes & Gardens Stylemaker Event and a slew of blogging buddies [the kind of friends you absolutely can’t live without] later and I have myself a magazine feature. 🙂

I am officially in print. Seriously, pinch me!

While this feature is by far one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me in this hobby / profession limbo I live in, I do not blog in hopes to get noticed by an editor and snag a feature in a magazine. I still blog because I love this little world I’ve created all on my own. I am the creator, the designer, the DIY’er, the photographer, the editor, the writer, the technical professional, the lifetime learner and student, the financial manager, the marketer and the agent. I do the work AND work to promote it. The blogging days can feel long and endless and are sometimes downright HARD, but somehow, I still have that little spark of creativity burning somewhere inside that keeps pushing me to continue. In return, I have a community of bloggers there backing me up and supporting me, while we work through our struggles, as well as celebrate the victories, as well as all of the wonderful readers and followers who continue to remind me how inspired they feel by the things that I share. You all keep me plugging along here each day and I for that, I am eternally grateful.

THAT is why I do what I do. The magazine feature is just icing on the cake!