It’s now the three-year anniversary of us moving back into our home after the main floor, plus upstairs bathroom, renovation of our farmhouse-style home that I documented in the blog series, “Renovation Road”. Since that time, we’ve had the exterior trim and porch floor painted. I’ve worked on expanding our gardens. And we’ve acquired a few more pieces of art for our walls.
Newcomers to the house still do the “I LOVE your colours!” squeal. “This should be in a magazine,” some say.
Most home-décor magazines, however, want to feature and celebrate work by professional designers. I hadn’t really thought much about it. We certainly worked with talented pros, with our contractor Jerry Walsh subcontracting for tasks such as tiling and painting, and Joanne Dente-Reynolds, from cabinetry company Woodecor, leading our kitchen design. But I managed the project, made the design choices, and sourced the materials, working with local upholsterers, artists and art framers, and dipping into the bottomless well of the internet to order our kitchen lights (Etsy) and the kitchen divan (Wayfair.)
At a social event, we met a couple who live a couple blocks from us, along with their next-door neighbours. These two households are across the street from a long-time friend of mine who I met in my theatre years. I thought it might be fun for all of us to get together for a dinner party at our place: we had a “Three Pie Night” in late November 2025 with pear, fig and gouda tarts for an appetizer; a Shepherd’s pie with winter green salad for the main; and Anna Olson’s apple streusel pie for dessert.
As usual, there were colour oohs and ahs. From the guestbook:
“Your home is like a Caribbean dream, your powder room is a licorice all sort!” “
Your home is a beautiful oasis of colour and comfort.”
What was unusual was that one of our dinner guests is an editor of a home décor magazine.
Megan Smith-Harris is a talented arts powerhouse. She started her career as an actor, comedy writer and voice artist and since then has worked as a screenwriter, magazine editor, playwright and documentary filmmaker. For many years when she and her family were based in Connecticut, she was the managing editor and a feature writer for Wilton Magazine.
Megan, along with her American husband and their son, relocated to Canada in late 2021 and chose Stratford as their new home. She joined Our Homes Magazine as a managing editor of the London-Stratford edition. She and her husband also founded and run the Stratford Film Festival.
Our Homes Media is one company, and 11 magazines, each focused on a different region in Ontario. Many of the featured homes are grand and designer-y. There can be a lot of tasteful white and gray.
Less than two months after our “Three Pie Night” dinner, on a blustery January day, I got an urgent email from Megan. One of the homes set to be featured in her magazine’s spring edition was no longer available to be photographed. Megan and her photographer were already booked for the job and she wondered if we’d be willing to open up our home.
We’d been enjoying the cheer of Christmas decorations longer than usual. And now we had only a couple days to get them all put away, the house tidied, and source some spring-like flowers to make the house interior look like April, not January.
The photographer, Jason Hartog, was complimentary: of course, if you photograph people’s houses for a living, you would always be complimentary. Dog Ruby was curious about the proceedings and parked her cuteness on the living room sofa, awaiting her closeup. I stayed out of the way while they moved things around for better composition in the photos.
Megan later told me that Our Homes publisher and editor-in-chief loved the photos. Loved the colour. And when it came time to choose the cover for the Spring issue of the London-Stratford edition, we (or rather, our kitchen) got the nod.
I invite you to read the feature Megan wrote and look at the selection of Jason’s photos. And for all of you who’ve said to us, “Your home should be in a magazine”: Well, now, it is.
Magazine webpage link: https://www.ourhomes.ca/london-stratford
Photos: Jason Hartog
