It was nearly two years ago that I heard for the first time about plans for the Suffolk News-Herald to begin publishing a magazine. As a longtime newspaper journalist, I knew approximately nothing about publishing a magazine — except that there was no way we’d ever be able to pull it off.

We were already overworked, I argued. Our schedules would not allow us to add interviews and photo sessions for magazine-length features into the mix each quarter. Our equipment wasn’t up to snuff, and our employees (with a couple of exceptions I didn’t really consider at the time) were talented newspaper people without the experience to begin to know how to put together a good magazine. I had a vision of us publishing a magazine that looked as if a bunch of sleepy newsroom types had put it together.

This week, the sixth edition of Suffolk Living magazine began appearing on newsstands all around the city. Clearly, despite what I like to tell my wife, I’m not always right. (But please don’t tell her I said so.)

More than two hundred different businesses, offices, restaurants, retailers and other venues across Suffolk and the immediately surrounding area got their first copies of Volume 2, No. 2, featuring a cute little girl at a tea party enjoying a cupcake. The image, snapped by one of our collaborating photographers, Rebecca Keeling Gagnon, just screams “SPRING!” It is, perhaps, the best-fitting image we’ve used on the cover since Mr. Peanut kicked everything off in Volume 1, No. 1.

It’s been amazing and gratifying and humbling all at once to watch our staff of newsprint jockeys learn to produce a full-color, glossy magazine that we can all be proud of. All of us have been surprised at just how professional it looks (Thanks, Troy!) and how well-written are its features (Thanks, Tracy and Heather and Leila and Lauren and Tim and everyone else who has contributed to it during the past couple of years).

This month’s edition covers tea parties and homeschooling and Suffolk history and sports figures and emergency medical evacuation, along with a lifestyle section on setting up stylish spaces and a few other fun features thrown into the mix, as well.

Especially if you’ve never seen Suffolk Living before, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of this edition. In case you couldn’t tell from all the horn-blowing in the previous paragraphs, we’re very proud of it. But more than that, we think you’ll find something new to love and something fun to learn about the city we call home.

With 200 distribution sites around the city, Suffolk Living magazine should be pretty easy to find. Look for the little girl in pink biting into a huge frosted cupcake. That should be hard to miss.

Enjoy your spring. We’ll be out with another edition in the summer.