Or, how to make a production “miracle” happen.
1. Realize at the almost-last minute that you can’t use the photo of a medicine cabinet you thought you could get permission for. (The one you grabbed from an online cabinet shop and Photoshopped a stock photo of a bowl of soup into a month ago and forgot you didn’t have the rights to, the one that Managing Editor Melissa Chianta has been patiently and persistently leaving message after message all week for the owners of . . . but to no avail.)
2. Put Mel (Staff Photographer and Ad Production Manager Melyssa Holik) on the hunt for white medicine cabinets that are 1) in town, 2) immediately acquirable, and 3) at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing. Oh, and 4) don’t cost the $635 the one I found does. (Being Mel, she’ll know to take 5–10 minutes first to research this online before taking the search to the streets.)
3. Dig around in the props cabinet for the the blue bowl we bought for our soup shoot back in November.
4. Send Mel out to pick up 1) the remarkably inexpensive medicine cabinet ($30!) she discovered online at a local home improvement store, and 2) some chicken broth from her house. (Here again, being Mel, she’ll remember to also grab a spoon.)
5. Ask Candace (Product Review Editor Candace Walsh) whether she might happen to have any little medicine cabinety things in or around her desk since she’s always getting product samples in the mail.
6. Marvel as Mel returns in less than 30 minutes and assembles the cabinet and heats up the broth in less than 10.
7. Hover as Mel fills medicine cabinet with freebies provided by Candace and a steaming bowl of soup.
8. Note as Mel begins shooting that medicine cabinet seems to be tilted toward camera; wonder if it’s just you showing signs of late-stage production delirium.
9. Shake your head in amazement as Mel whips out her iPhone, equipped with the Carpenter’s Tools level app, places the level atop the medicine cabinet and adjusts accordingly.
10. Watch as Mel shoots away, downloads photos, and hands them off to you to choose from and drop into Cynthia Lair‘s* article on foods that heal.
. . . and TA-DA! Sent the page off for a proof and we were done. Less than two hours—start to finish.
This kind of stuff happens all the time, of course, but rarely so seamlessly and quickly. Maybe not officially a miracle, but close enough for me.
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Image above is from the opening spread of “Your Kitchen Medicine Cabinet,” March–April 2010, on stands now.
*For fabulous tips and recipes—and especially for her delightfully wacky cooking videos, visit Cynthia’s site, Cookus Interruptus.
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Ever had one of those dreams where you suddenly realize you just had a baby? Didn’t even know you were pregnant, maybe gave birth in the bathroom, like those stories of uneducated high school girls who went to the loo with a tummy ache and then Shazam! New baby!)?
So last week Tim and I pretty much simultaneously came to the same eleventh-hour conclusion: boy, that kitty sure is FLUFFY . . . Because she’s never allowed us to pick her up, it just didn’t seem that obvious. (Seems laughable, now, our cluelessness. That large, lumpy “just went shoplifting” midsection. . .)
And then panicking when we realized she wouldn’t go near the box, wouldn’t let us catch her to put her in the box, kept retreating to hide under the bed. We were afraid her fear of us would override her young maternal instinct, nervous that we’d screwed everything up by moving the kittens . . . That old familiar parental panic: What have I done?! I don’t know what to do!
Happy March—or, as we say around here, 
© 2009 Mothering Magazine