About this time last year I had 8 week old twins, no clothes that fit and was scrambling to get my house ready for a photo shoot with Yankee Magazine. There was crap everywhere, I still couldn’t carry heavy things without peeing my pants, I was majorly sleep deprived and wondering what former version of myself had cheerfully agreed to this 6 months prior. The spirit was not moving me. Let’s just say that.
But, this was happening crabby or not, so I dug up my Spanx, booked myself a haircut and got to hall-decking earlier than I ever had in my life. I have a thing about not giving Thanksgiving it’s proper due…but the show was going to go on.
A funny thing happened as I was opening boxes full of my favorite trimmings and plugging in lights and unwrapping things my grandmother had made…I began seeing all of these things for the first time. I was overcome by the idea that my babies, though not old enough to comprehend Christmas and all of it’s wonder, were going to grow to know these sparkly things and the way our home feels and the traditions that Coach and I carried from our separate families into our own. These were the things that Ruby & Graham’s memories were going to be made of. The subtle details that were going to make up their feelings about the holidays.
Suddenly the spirit found me.
My mission was clear and the love I had for decorating and making my house a home no longer felt silly or indulgent. It had real meaning and relevance… and had better get done before the camera crew showed up.
The Yankee team was incredible. We had one of last year’s several blizzards the night before but they showed up bright-eyed and ready for a full day. The process was so interesting and I loved watching them work! I felt so grateful and pleased with all the work that Coach and I had done over the years to our little house and lucky to have this tucked away some day for the kids.
Yankee was nice enough to send me some of the photos that didn’t make it into the article(Lucy did quite a bit of modeling!) to share with you, but if you can, the magazine is worth picking up! There are at least 5 recipes that I will be trying in the back of this issue!
My life is total imperfection sprinkled with moments that feel like perfection. This is one of those moments. Thanks for sharing it with me!
Photographs are by the talented Joe Keller, styling by Bette Troy, art direction by Heather Marcus. A huge thanks to Christie Matheson and Yankee for making this happen!
xo
