I'm a cover girl!

My home , all decked for Christmas, 

featured in HomeStyle magazine

Photo credit : Olly Gordon  for Homestyle magazine

EEEEEk!!

How exciting...I can finally tell you all!! 

I've been featured in Homestyle magazine, and I even made the front cover of their December issue!!

I can't tell you how hard it's been to keep this a secret....

But way back in july, I had the wonderful people from Homestyle magazine around to shoot the house for their Christmas issue!

Yes...That's right: Christmas in July!!

With a tree and mince pies and all!!

To say it was a bizarre experience would be an understatement, but a thoroughly enjoyable one at that!!

But even more bizarre, was the feeling of seeing myself on the front cover of a magazine!!

And of course seeing pictures of our home in print and reading about myself....Oddly fascinating!!

Sitting in my kitchen with a cup of coffee, whilst reading about my kitchen....

I have to tell you, as odd as it feels, that t was a truly enjoyable experience having the team from HomeStyle around, and as nervous as I was on the day, having spent the week putting up all my Christmas decorations, they soon made me feel totally at ease....Although the posing for the cover shot felt utterly awkward!

I was fascinated to see how they worked, with the stylists and photographer deciding on each shot, then spending ages tweaking the frames...

I learned a lot about styling and interior photography that day, and I am still trying to incorporate these lessons when I shoot my own photo's...although not quite to Olly Gordon's levels...

In the article the focus is, as it has been here on the blog, about the creative solutions I've had to come up with to achieve the kind of home that I wanted on a budget....I even share a couple of DIY's in the magazine:

The December HomeStyle issue, with me on the cover, is now for sale in the shops, so if you'd like to see more from my Christmassy home, run and buy!!

Or you can see a little preview here!!

And you can read more about my experience of being the HomeStyle cover girl and see more pictures from my home here

I guess this means ....yep Christmas is coming, and there is no denying it now!

Expect more Christmassy stuff on the blog in the coming weeks!