Right now, at the end of the year when the days are getting shorter is THE moment that Azalea plants start blooming. This fall, Ghent Azalea asked me to show how I would style Azalea around the home. A fun challenge, because as much as I love houseplants and flowers, Azalea are something else! They’re Read article…
The other day it started raining, or well actually: it came pouring down and then turned into a huge thunderstorm that caused a blackout in our area. The blackout was annoying and caused some material damage, and it was a reminder that the weather here in Ardèche is “slightly” more intense than what we were Read article…
They’re finally here! The new “Plant Collectors” by publishers of design products VIJ5 are now available! At the end of last year, VIJ5 co-founder Anieke showed me a preview of the new cylinder plant pots that she designed with her VIJ5 co-founder Arjan. They are made of aluminium and coated with a special textured powder coating, Read article…
Do you ever bring your houseplants outside? In our previous home I never did that, it was too much of a hassle, the cacti were already in full sun in front of the 3m high bay windows. But now that we have a terrace and a garden, we have space to let them enjoy the Read article…
Two rooms in the new home were “high priority” on the wall-color list: the kitchen, which you may have seen yesterday, as well as our bedroom. Most of the important rooms, like the kitchen, home office and living room are on the sunny side of the house, and are bright and get a lot of Read article…
Once the backsplash in our kitchen looked like 2021 again (see here), the pale pink-ish color had to go. While I love pink, this shade was just too pale, too grey, too pink, we were ready for something with a bit of punch. I ordered different pink samples from Blime paint, a young French brand Read article…
Maybe you believe that I was charmed by this villa because of the pink kitchen walls? Well, it may come as a surprise: but no 🙂 The old pink walls have a strange undertone and look old fashioned, so we’ll paint them soon. Worse than the wall colors was the kitchen backsplash with dark red Read article…
With this blasting Da Rona soundtrack on repeat for the past 11 months, we still managed to finally sell* and buy a new home in 2020-2021! It’s been a huge time consuming process, but we are ENFIN, finally, ready to move to our new home in the coming weeks. Our initial plan was to build Read article…
High quality furniture is always a good investment. It may not always be in your budget, but you will enjoy it daily for many many years. Some of our first investment pieces, like our dining and office tables, that we bought over two decades ago, are still with us and are still in tip-top condition. Read article…
Being conscious about what we buy, eat, where and how we travel, how we use fossil resources, water and electricity has been a big part of my upbringing. Yet, I never do enough. For example, in my childhood home we had a composter in our garden, but now as an adult I hardly ever compost, Read article…
