Happy Halloween!

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It's nearly Halloween! We love this mantel display because fun as it can be, Halloween is not always the most stylish or tasteful festival. Orange and black is a difficult combination to pull off, even without spiders, severed limbs and chocolate eyeballs!

So why orange and black? The black bit is straightforward - black means night and darkness. One theory about the orange is that it is the colour of undyed beeswax candles, which were used for church services on All Hallow's Day to commemorate the dead. Another is that it is the colour of harvest and that with the black, it symbolises the end of the agricultural year, the 'death' of the earth and the darkness of winter. The reason that orange is a Halloween colour though is probably nothing to do with pumpkins...

Halloween originated in the Celtic festival of Samhain on 1st November, which was effectively a new year celebration but also a time when it was believed that the souls of the dead could come back to earth. The early Christian church made the same day All Hallow's Day as part of an attempt to use existing celebrations to help spread Christianity and gradually the more Celtic elements of witches and ghosts found their place on 31st October - Hallow's Eve. But the ancient Celts did not have pumpkins. Carving lanterns is traditional, but the originals would have been turnips:

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Not only are they much smaller than pumpkins, they have a hard woody texture and are much harder to carve. So turnips might be traditional and there is something a it spooky about them, but for practical and aesthetic reasons we are more than happy to go with lovely orange pumpkins!

And of course, fast becoming a new tradition: novelty pasta!

Happy Halloween!

Blinding!

At least one good thing about the nights getting longer is that we get to pull the blinds and curtains and make the house cosy! Time to think about window treatments.

So, what to do about a big window - actually a trifold door - in the kitchen? Firstly, we didn't want curtains. Fabric in the kitchen collects smells and dirt like any other surface so needs to be washed/cleaned frequently and frankly, with a big window that could be a lot of work. So we had a look at blinds.

With horizontal blinds, the mechanics are the problem. The window is to big to have a single horizontal blind, so would need several next to each other. But then what about the gap between them? And what about the hanging cords or rods? So that led us to think about vertical blinds.

There are really two kinds of vertical blinds: ones that are fixed top and bottom and ones that are made up of panels suspended from the ceiling. We didn't want ones that were fixed at the bottom because we thought that when the blinds were drawn and the door was open, a track on the floor would be a trip hazard. So by now, we had narrowed it down to vertical panel blinds suspended from the ceiling. They can be mounted on a multiple track rail, which means individual panels can overlap and there is no gap where they butt up against each other. There's one cord to operate all of them and it is hidden away at the side.

And at that we were just expecting to look at some sample books and pick out a suitable vinyl fabric, but after a chat with the lovely people at Albany Blinds Edinburgh we realised there was another, much more fun option. They can print just about anything on to a panel blind. So you can choose any professional quality image and they can print it! 

Now we know you're too kind to mention it, but our photography is a long way from professional quality so whilst the idea of a favourite holiday snap on the blind was initially appealing, it didn't take too long to realise that it wasn't a good idea! Fortunately, there are whole libraries of beautiful, professional photos and images and for an appropriate (but not expensive) fee, you can buy the right to use them.  Two of the best are Getty Images and Shutterstock. 

So we asked ourselves: what would be a great view from a window? It has to be a nighttime view, because the blinds will only be drawn at night and a daytime view would be a bit odd. Nighttime in the country or at the beach is just, well, dark. The only thing that would really show up at night is a cityscape - and remember how great the view from Frasier Crane's apartment looked? 

Now we just have to pull the blinds and we're in Boston! 

Albany Blinds Edinburgh provided a great service and couldn't have been more helpful.

Happy teardrops

We heard about this the other day - a very cool concept caravan holiday home with sliding internal doors so that the space is flexible enough to provide bedrooms, dining space, a relaxing area or a cinema for 9! (We know: a cool concept caravan - guess you just never know what you are going to type one day...)

The idea is based on Japanese design and the idea that walls can be moved to change the internal configuration of a space for different occasions. As you can see, the design is as far from the traditional, dark and old fashioned caravan as you could want.

But do you know what? Even though we are not people to whom the idea of camping comes naturally, it just made us remember that we have always really wanted one of these: a retro teardrop trailer.

A teardrop is usually 4 feet by 8 feet and the main body is a sleeping area. Cooking is done outside the trailer from a galley concealed in a lift-up hatch at the back. (This gorgeous picture is from a website called oldwoodies.com which has lots of pictures of and information about wooden framed body vehicles.) Just enough room for two. So really the other end of the spectrum from a cinema room for 9, but still a beautiful design.

Wild peacock chase

We have been on a wild peacock chase that didn't end up on the high street...

We know you’re not the kind of person who goes round looking in other people’s cupboards - we wouldn't be friends if you were! But if you did look, you would find quite a lot of bed linen in ours. And there’s a reason why that coverlet is still in the dust bag it came in two years ago and has never actually been on a bed. It’s a good reason, too. Really. Just can’t think of it right now...

But anyway, we saw a fabulous duvet cover on Achica a couple of weeks ago. They don’t have them anymore because their sales only last a few days although they do have this rather lovely one from Kingsley

But the one we liked originally was a completely different thing with a very distinctive and dramatic design on it that included a peacock. Searching for ‘peacock duvet covers’ brought up things like this one from Sylvia Cook with a fantastic photographic reproduction of a peacock feather, available from here from Etsy. 

But the one we had in mind was a graphic design rather than a straightforward photograph. And we were sure that the designer’s first name began with a C and the second with an H… Clarissa Hulse  maybe? No luck with a peacock. The closest was this, in a colour called 'kingfisher'. But a kingfisher is not a peacock.

Do you know, she we thought about it, the designer was almost certainly Italian. A search for Italian bed linen didn't take us any closer.  Neither did a search for French bed linen.

Then inspiration struck. Once, when something was unavailable on Achica, we tracked down the same thing for sale on notonthehighstreet.com. And, do you know what? We searched for ‘bedlinen’ and there it was! The very one! The absolute same!

The design is called 'Arrival of the Birds'and it’s by The Lyndon Company, who are based in the UK. So that's why a search for a peacock design by an Italian or French ‘CH’ didn't get us far! 

(Really, if you look at the top, in the middle, there are some peacock feathers. Seriously.)

'At Home' by Bill Bryson

We’re all about lovely things and what could be more lovely than a good book? So today we bring you our first book review! And apologies for it not being a new book - it was first published in 2010 - but it is well worth reading by anyone interested in how our homes have come to be the way they are. 

A much read copy!

‘At Home’ by Bill Bryson is subtitled ‘A Short History of Private Life’ and is based on the idea that history is made up of people getting on with their normal activities, most of which take place at home. So, taking his own home (a Victorian rectory in Norfolk) as a starting point, Bill Bryson explores how our modern domestic life has come about.

For example, in the eighteenth century it became possible for people to have cheaper and brighter fabrics than ever before. It was also possible to produce fabric in greater widths and these advances combined meant more upholstered furniture. Now alternatives to leather, previously the best material for upholstery, were available. However, the custom was that meals would be eaten at small tables set up wherever was convenient at the time - and householders realised that this would lead to spills and stains on their new, fashionable, expensive furniture. The solution was to create a dining room, first mentioned in a dictionary in 1755. 

Maybe - and this isn’t suggested in the book - one reason why people don’t use dining rooms so much now is that spills and stains aren’t such a problem. Furniture is cheaper. We have washing machines, laundry detergent and a whole range of fabric protecting and stain removing products. And leather upholstery is fashionable again!

This book is full of information on many subjects: how domestic fridges killed the international ice trade; how construction methods can dictate room size and therefore use; Thomas Edison’s attempt to design concrete houses complete with concrete furniture… The 28 pages of index show the variety. Best of all, the writing is typical Bill Bryson so reading it is like listening to a clever and amusing friend and that’s one of our favourite things. He would definitely be on our fantasy dinner party guest list, wherever the table was.Available, as they say, from all good bookshops - the local, independent ones as well as the big on-line ones!