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In the past few years, Chip and Joanna Gaines have gone from Waco wunderkinds to household names. They’ve gone from starring in HGTV’s Fixer Upper and running a housewares shop in their Texas hometown to opening a bakery, fixing up a cafe, running a bed and breakfast, writing a memoir, launching paint, wallcoverings and rug lines and — whew! Are you getting winded just reading this? — now, debuting a lifestyle magazine. It’s enough to make even the most obsessed fans’ heads spin. It’s a lot to keep up with.
With that many projects in the works, I raised an eyebrow at the thought of a magazine. How involved would the couple be, exactly? When they’ve got so many other things going on, are they just going to slap their names on a bunch of photos of the houses they’ve already featured on Fixer Upper and call it a day?
Copies have been hard to come by. After visiting multiple bookstores, newsstands and grocery stores, I hadn’t spotted a single issue — until today at Target. At 96 pages and a $7.99 newsstand price, it’s a bit pricier (and sparser) than most of its competitors, but with its heavy paper stock and matte-finished cover, it feels more like a rustic coffee table book than a read-and-toss glossy mag.
Just about every article has the Gaineses’ touch — most of the time explicitly. There’s an intro letter from Joanna, a spread devoted to things JoJo’s loving right now, Chip and Joanna’s holiday gift guide, a hard-won wisdom essay from Joanna (on living in the moment) in the vein of Oprah’s What I Know for Sure” column in O, The Oprah Magazine, and a story from Chip on helping out a down-on-his-luck stranger who later became a good friend.
Other features include a quote or an intro from Chip or Joanna, clearly noting that the duo paid attention (and approved, it would seem) of every page of the ‘zine.
The style of the magazine feels like a small-batch, lifestyle quarterly magazine — a mix of essays and recipes — though the extensive gift guides and gorgeous photo-driven features in the back of the magazine will remind you of more mass titles, like Garden & Gun and Elle Decor or Veranda.
Here’s what you can probably expect from future issues:
- An essay from Chip and/or Jo on insights they’ve gleaned over the years
- Things Joanna’s loving right now (AKA things you can buy)
- An easy appetizer
- A one-page entertaining idea or way to be a better host
- A feature on a series of recipes
- A profile on someone who inspires them
- A multi-page entertaining feature (how to throw a certain type of party or get-together, driven by a series of photos)
- A tour of a house they’ve renovated