It isn’t unusual for me to dream of travel and wish that I was in Paris or Venice but lately it has been happening more thanks to my growing collection of travel related DVDs and surprisingly, home decor magazines. The magazines heavily feature designs from Italy and French inspired homewares and the most gorgeous gardens imaginable. Both the hubby and I like to flick through the pages, marking the designs and ideas we love the most, there are a few things about our house and garden that we’d like to change, some more practical (and affordable) than others. My husband would like to change our front gate, he wants a big timber number, a bit like the doors and gates we saw in Italy, he also wouldn’t mind a front door like some of those we saw in Venice. I think the doors of Venice were magnificent and as you can see, we have plenty of photos for inspiration however they’re probably a little large and not quite suitable for our one-storey, brick and tile home.
I also fell in love with the architecture in Amsterdam and the formal gardens at Versailles and the Boboli Gardens in Florence but trying to replicate that at home seems a little strange and those formal gardens require hard work and commitment to establish and maintain. I guess that in the absence of extensive time and a mountain of money, we’ll have to be happy for the little touches of Europe we have in our home such as artwork from Amsterdam, an old map of Italy, Christmas decorations from Germany and of course, lots of photos of Venetian doors.
Just out of curiosity, how has your favourite destination inspired your home and lifestyle or have you gone all the way and made your home look as though it belongs in another country?
