Our house shining in a magazine and our spring mantel

Good morning friends. I hope everyone is enjoying some nice weather where they are. Ours has done a complete turn around so in true Canadian style we must now talk about how nice it is outside. I got to cut my lawn for the first time yesterday (i love doing it) and this was the least trouble I've had with the first cut of the year. I didn't have to do any finagling with a tow because I didn't get stuck once. Hurrah!

Well first up today, I have been hoarding a bit of a secret for a few months. In February, one of the editors of Cottages and Bungalows magazine contacted me and asked whether or not I would be interested in having our house featured in their magazine. I, of course said yes but didn't hold my breath as that just meant that the photos got passed to another editor and they choose whether or not they think it will suit the pages of the magazine. Our home is very eclectic and not for everyone so actually seeing it in a magazine always felt like a pipe dream to me.
We got word just a short bit later that they wanted to go ahead. 
They also wanted to use MY PHOTOGRAPHY!
What... the .... what?

Cottages and Bungalows is based in California so doing a shoot here is far away. This magazine has done a huge turnaround recently going to a bi-monthly publication. As a reader, the quality of the stories and homes for the vintage liveable home mindset people has pulled way ahead and is just fantastic.

I got to work re-editing many of the photos I already had and retook a few, in between the store renovations and regular work madness. I was just crossing my fingers they were going to turn out ok. It turns out they did.

2 weeks ago, a bunch of my readers started emailing me congratulations and that the piece was just awesome. Sad face because the magazine didn't come out in Canada for 2 more weeks. 
It is now 2 weeks later and I have a few copies and oh boy did it turn out just awesome indeed.

It was the perfect issue for our home to be in. The flea market issue.

We are officially on 13 pages of the June/July 2015 issue and it turned out fantastic. A couple of minor glitches in the writing but unless you know us, you would never notice.

It is just fantastic to see all of our hard work on the pages of this magazine, it is even more fantastic to see my name on the photography credit, even if it is misspelled. There are seriously a lot of ways to spell Meaghan so I think we can forgive that lol.

It is amazing that this blog has given me the knowledge that lead to having my photos produced in a magazine. I started out with a simple point and shoot camera and very little knowledge of ISO's, aperture and tripods. Go back to the beginning of my blog, you'll see I'm not kidding. I was terrible. Just goes to show anyone can do this.

One thing I am going to mention because he deserves the spotlight as well. Throughout the article we are referred to many times as the Gizuk's and we are not. I don't know if it even came up in the interview and I didn't even think about it until I read the article. My husband Trevor is the lifeblood of our home. His love, sweat and meticulous work are all over our sweet house but his last name is not Gizuk. When we got married, we were very young and we got married on the beach in Mexico back before that became a normal thing to do. Our documents were all in Spanish and there were certain entities including my profession that didn't allow for Spanish documents. Rather than allot a good amount of money to getting everything translated and notarized, I left my last name my maiden name. My strong independent will didn't mind that at all and he didn't care either. Now 10 years has passed and we don't even think about. He still doesn't care when he read the article, and was just so excited reading the article and that just makes me love him more but it deserved a mention. 

I included this photo from the article, of the dining room because they re-edited my edits and made my dining room floor look friction' fantastic. Our floors are a golden oak tone that one day we want to sand and change. This photo makes them look an almost barnwood brown and now I can't wait to get the sander out.

All in all, what an awesome feeling and we feel so excited and positive about the direction of the future of our home and our business. Thank you for all of your support and excitement.

Now, before we get to full on summer, how about a few pictures of our spring home. I ripped the winter warm and fuzzies down weeks ago but haven't had a chance to take some nice photos because we had a rather dark few weeks sunlight wise.

Today we shall start with our spring mantel. 

I did my regular seasonal rip down, put a few things back after cleaning and added 1 thing at a time. I was going minimalist I tell you. It was in my head

I failed miserably, but I love my mantel.

the full view. lots of white, green and terracotta. oh and some rabbits.

Thanks for stopping by today and we'll be back tomorrow with some more of the main floor spring decor. When I say tomorrow I may also mean Thursday, we'll see how that goes.


Have a great day,


Meg