You know that kind of moment when you’re like, “Oh my goodness, is this seriously happening right now?”. We had one of those moments Sunday afternoon sitting in the Lowe’s parking lot. Before I get to that, let’s back up a few months… Back in November we got an email from an editor at Better Homes & Gardens’ Kitchen + Bath Makeovers magazine asking if we’d be interested in having our kitchen featured. Umm, yes please!! A few days later, I had a phone interview with the ever so nice Maria. I must say, this was only the third phone interview I’ve gone through since we started the blog, not to mention the first one with BHG, so I was extremely nervous – and I was getting over a cold. Go figure.

After exchanging a few more emails, photos, etc, Maria mentioned the feature would appear in the Spring 2013 issue. Four whole months away! I could hardly stand it. Greg, being my ever so patient better half, assured me it would be here before I knew it. And he was right…

Back to the Lowe’s parking lot. It was pouring down rain, so Greg said he would just run in and see if the magazine was out yet. I stopped by a few days before, and they didn’t have the new issue out yet, so I was trying hard not to get my hopes up. Then, here comes Greg, jogging back to the car in the pouring rain, with a Lowe’s bag in his hand. I thought, “Did they have it?! Maybe he picked up some batteries. Or a new light bulb for the dining room.” He opened the door, handed me the bag and said, “Page 30!”.

Sure enough. There it was. Page 30. An entire page with a fancy pull quote and everything. Greg started reading the article out loud while I hesitantly listened, hoping I didn’t come across like I was in a cold medicine-induced fog. We were both really pleased with the article. When Greg read the part where Brown & Barkley was mentioned, we both stopped, looked at each other and said, “No way!” We were on cloud nine, and still are! This is our very first national magazine feature and it’s pretty cool that my Grandma in Florida or my brother in California can go to Barnes & Noble or Lowe’s and see our goofy selves on page 30 of a BHG publication. Oh, and we were excited to see that we share the Blogland’s Best section with our blogging buddy, Jessie, over at Cape 27 (we featured their first house’s kitchen reno here).

In other print news, our “Glass Speaker” post from way back when (check it out here), was featured in last month’s issue of Good Housekeeping. Needless to say, there’s been a lot of magazine purchases around here lately

On to the weekend! This weekend, we have plans to make a dent in some Spring cleaning around here – including straightening up the carport and getting it geared up for Spring. We also may or may not be doing some painting in the hallway and foyer. If we decide to take the plunge and pull out the paint brushes, we’ll be sure to fill you guys in on that next week. Happy weekend, everyone!

Today is the first day of Spring – which is kind of boggling because the weather man is calling for ice on Thursday night in our neck of the woods. Nevertheless, Spring has officially sprung and pretty soon, we’ll all be sprucing up our patios and getting geared up for dinner outdoors and fun in the sun.

Around this time of year, it’s always fun to “Spring up” the inside of the house with some colorful accessories. Simple things like switching out throw pillows, cooking up a fresh recipe or buying a few bunches of flowers at the grocery store can easily lighten up your space and get you out of the winter blues. Here are 7 of our favorite Spring-forward favorites…

1. Poppy Ring Rolling Pin / 2. Botanical Frame
3. The Fresh & Green Garden Table
4. Jacinta Poppy Candle / 5. Threshold Tufted Stool
6. Bellflower Pillow / 7. Baked Apple Lumbar Pillow

As much as we love decorating for fall and Christmas, lightening things up for Spring has its perks too. In a way, it’s sort of mentally refreshing and gives me a new outlook on things around the house. Now that I’m all in the Spring mood, I’m officially adding flowers to the grocery list. Hey, it will be my reward for adjusting well to the time change, haha. Happy first day of Spring everyone!

Top image from here.

Between the late night coding sessions and last minute tweaks for the new blog design, we managed to take the first step in sprucing up the empty foyer by hanging the new light fixture. The flush mount fixture we had before (this one from Home Depot) was doing the job, but it lacked personality and didn’t bring anything special to the space…

Even though we still aren’t completely sure about the plans for this area (we’re just going to let it evolve over the next week or two), the light seemed like a good place to start. After narrowing down our favorites to the fab five, we finally decided on the Olivia Star Pendant.

As we unboxed the fixture, we knew we’d made the right decision. It’s fun, different and classic all in one. The black iron will tie in with the new dining room light fixture, too. Don’t worry–you haven’t missed anything. It’s still in the box waiting to be hung. In other words, it was perfect.

We’ve installed many a light fixture in the almost three years of owning the house (wow, has it been that long?!), but we weren’t sure what the process of going from a flush mount to a pendant light was going to be like. The main concern was we couldn’t remember what was under the flush mount when we replaced the old fixture (a dated brass beauty with ducks etched in the glass). Normally, we wouldn’t be too concerned about this kind of thing, but the builder (or maybe a previous owner) cut a few corners when installing a few of the light fixtures in the house. They just poked holes in the drywall and fed wires through it. We’ve fixed most, if not all, of these spots, but there’s always that little bit of worry in the back of your mind.

Come to find out, we were in luck! The flush mount came down like a charm and the only evidence was a light gray ring on the ceiling which was easily covered up with a light coat of white ceiling paint.

For starters, Greg held the light up to the ceiling to get an idea of how long we wanted it to hang. It needed to be high enough to clear the front door, the closet doors and the top of Greg’s head (he’s the tallest person around here, including all of our friends and family, so it seemed like a good gauge to go by, haha). We ended up with 5 or 6 links of the chain left after we trimmed the links and the wires.

As usual, we made sure all the switches were off before we started messing with the wires. Greg is pretty comfortable with this sort of thing by now (he’s worked with my dad on projects like this around the house enough to know what’s what), but as the light fixture instructions said, don’t mess with this sort of thing unless you know what you’re doing.

While I held up the weight of the light fixture, Greg screwed the canopy in place. Greg originally thought he could handle this on his own, but this part was a two-person job. You need one set of hands to hold the fixture, and another set to hold the canopy and the screwdriver.

Totally painless! And here she is…

You can still see a very faint circle where the old light fixture was. We just need one more light coat of ceiling paint. …and a rug… and maybe a coat of paint on the inside of the front door? And here’s another shot with the front door open…

Seeing this big pop of red in the space has me excited and eager to add furniture, accessories and color to this space in the very near future. Stay tuned for more foyer-related news in the coming weeks!