With one day remaining on Phoebe Putnam’s visit here, I want
to tell the story of how she came to be a guest blogger. Most of our guests come to us through rather
conventional means – either we’ve known them from our circle of writing friends
and acquaintances or we get to know them because they become engaged with the
blog and we begin a correspondence that leads to a guest blogging stint. Phoebe
took an entirely different route and I bet that nobody would guess it so here
goes:
Shortly after I
found my first NYC apartment roughly ten years ago, I became obsessed with
making the most of a tiny space, especially the kitchen, because I love to
cook. My obsession led me to Apartment
Therapy, a design blog with a mission to help people turn their living spaces
into homes, with an emphasis on real
homes, not the kind found in glossy shelter magazines. The blog appealed to me, more so when it initiated a series of contests that invited
readers to send pictures of their apartments.
I entered the first “I Love My Kitchen” contest (under my screen name, Shoshana) with a picture of the
kitchen in my 200 square-foot studio apartment (I did not win, place, or show).
In 2007
AT sponsored a “Small, Cool” kitchen contest and Phoebe’s kitchen took first
prize. That's her kitchen pictured above. 
Fast forward:
David and I, after searching off and on for several years, finally land our
first NYC apartment. The only draw back? No kitchen (see right). I still had Phoebe’s
kitchen in mind so I e-mailed her for advice.
How big was her kitchen? (Ours is roughly 5’ x 8’). I wondered if we could re-do our kitchen to
look something like hers, which I admired greatly. Phoebe responded from the Boston area and at the same time put me in touch with her architect dad, who had helped her with her kitchen
redesign. Po Putnam and I corresponded
for a bit and I was won over by his ideas, his enthusiasm for the project of designing our
kitchen, and his willingness to work from afar. During the course of our
correspondence, I learned that Phoebe was at Harvard, is passionate about poetry,
and that we have much in common. Thus,
when David and I started this blog last year, Phoebe seemed like a natural
guest blogger. And she is, isn’t
she? We’re hoping she’ll return.
Here's a picture of our kitchen today, as designed by Joseph Henry "Po" Putnam and built by Tony Sapp of Three Pillars. I love it! Click through for a few more: 
