My son Ethan took this picture of me after we received our copy of This Old House magazine. It is quite surreal going to the mailbox and seeing our own kitchen on the cover of the magazine that we've subcribed to for years.........
It all started with me thinking we might have a shot at winning This Old House annual whole house remodel contest so I went online, put a few before and after pictures, told our story, and hoped for the best.
A couple of weeks later I got a call and my heart skipped a little when I saw New York, NY on my caller ID. Sure enough it was the magazine just asking a few questions because they loved our house and we were being considered in the final decision.......but we needed to send some more pictures.
I sent more and then our family left on vacation over Spring Break. On our way to San Fransisco, in the middle of nowhere Nevada, I get another call from NY and my heart REALLY skipped a beat....maybe this is it!? Nope, they needed more pictures from every angle imaginable!
We pull over at the next exit in the middle of the desert to a McDonalds with WiFi and thankfully we have my laptop with lots of stored pictures. For the next hour and a half we go through hundreds of pictures and try to email them the best ones we could find.
Back on the road (we are crazy with excitement at this point) we get another call from NY. Still need more pictures! The problem now is we don't have a lot of those shots and we're not home to take them. Luckily, my brother, who is an awesome photographer and happens to be in town and willing, goes to our house and takes all the pictures needed and emails them to NY. I warned our contact there that the house was pretty messy but she assured me they just needed angles and they didn't care how messy it was. phew!
I don't remember all the other calls but there were a couple of very nice people from different departments of the magazine.....one which gave us a little interview of our story, things that we did to the house, what our future plans were, and most of all making sure we were the owners of the house and not somebody else's house or one that we planned to sell soon.
The next call was the big one. Dustin and I were sitting in our hotel and I screamed when she told me we won. Dustin and I were so happy, so excited, so amazed....almost in disbelief. For the next 3 days we kept looking at each other, shaking our heads, and telling each other we won. :-)
So, what did we win? Besides the satisfaction of winning and having the coolest experience of having our house featured in a magazine? A NEW TRUCK and $5000 CASH!!
Here's a little bit of our experience. 2 days of photographers taking pictures and videos. Here's 12 boxes of Crate & Barrel stuff that the stylist had shipped to stage our house......
Photographers and stylist at work......I didn't know how much time went into getting the perfect shot........
The lighting had to be perfect.........
Videographer at work......
I was worried about how the video would turn out because I thought I was so goofy. I kept messing up! I told the videographer that he better edit it very well and make me look halfway normal! ha ha
The photographers, videographer, and stylist who came were so awesome, so fun to hang out with, and very talented. They all had stories of working with lots of famous people, magazines, and traveling the world. We loved this experience with them.
Here's a lot of the equipment in our entryway.......
Here's the big truck that delivered the 2013 GMC truck that we photographed with for the
magazine shoot....
With this big truck out in front, photographers taking video and our family pictures out front, we had quite a few texts, calls, and Facebook messages...."What is going on at your house?"
We were supposed to keep it quiet until the magazine came out......for 2 months!!! Very difficult to do.
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