Medicine Bottles and Flowers

Do you ever have a simple little design obsession that just makes you so happy to think about it? O.k. you probably have a thousand little design ideas going around in your head and this is what makes life pretty when times get tough, escape into the world of gorgeous – for the moment, do not think about … all that troubles you.  Then once you have added a little “bellezza” to your home, things begin to improve.  I understand it all has to do with perspective.

Flowers in a Box

Let's add come color!

Oh how I love flowers in a box.  I just put a couple jars of water in the box to not rot the wood and arranged the flowers from there.

Here is an arrangement I created by for the arrival of my niece, Rosalie I put them by her bedside table as a welcome. I did not make up her name just to fit this floral gone crazy blog post.  I collected the flowers on a bike ride to Spello, resting them in my bike basket on the return home.

Blood Red Orange Color Inspiration

 The Simple Life

Today, just a little color inspiration, I go crazy for the color of Blood Red Oranges.  I feel like it is almost impossible to duplicate for interiors.  I always have clients trying to find the right red.  Yes the juice is very good with Russian Vodka!

7 Ideas To Make Your Home Pretty

    1.  Open your windows. 

      This is a very Italian action.  Italians love to air out their homes, even in the dead of winter, windows are always opened.  The extended light will make your home glow.

     2.  Cover your couch or a big chair with fresh white linens.

It is amazing how this will lighten up the room.  If you don’t have anything big enough you can use a curtain or sheets taped together in the back.

Purple Path

The Simple Life
Today just some inspiration.

If you are looking for your purple path,

it is just ahead waiting for you.

It may have topiaries dusted purple too

and a smooth stucco palazzo.

Or just a purple path waiting for you,

meandering along.

Shabby Chic Bed, Breakfast Crate

I’m going to keep it to few words today (do you believe me?), let the photos speak for themselves.

I do want to show you my Painting Techniques Course.  SOOOOO Fun.

I’ve been working hard and waking up early is painful and awesome I must say.  I am getting so much done, life feels blissful and full of hope.

Here is a bed I did in Shabby Chic distressed mode.  A good tutorial I did you can see just Click Here.  This tutorial of mine is crazy famous on Pinterest, it shows how obsessed people are with Shabby Chic. I used the same process only a different white.

Easter Decorations

I’m on to a new stint where I am going to try to wake up at 5:30 a.m. and see if I can’t kick it a bit more effectively.  I know, what you are thinking that I won’t be able to handle it, well maybe by confessing my plans to you my lovely readers I will be more committed.  “They” say if you want to save money, if you tell your friends, you actually save more money and your friends help and encourage you to do so.  Did you know that successful people wake up early and then get this, they exercise.  I have read studies about it. 

It's Spring Dream Big and Little

The Simple Life.

It's Spring!
It is going to get sweet.

Painted Bohemian Side Table

I must admit that I never liked this little piece of 1950’s furniture that I found on the street.  But we needed it and the girls liked it.

Recently it had been a bit discarded and I thought I’d give it a new look.  I think now I almost love it!  I work so much here in Italy painting stores and homes for clients often in the tones of white, cream, taupe, gray, which I understand is calming to the eye.  Yet, it is making me crave some color and motif.

California Cottage - Gothic Italian Palazzo

My heart is in two places at all times in Italy and in California.  Like a nagging mother I need to remind myself one is not better then the other- both are stupendous.  As for architecture here are some photos I took this morning of our Gothic Italian Palazzo, you can take special note that the chaos and mess of our lives is hidden from these photos and yes it has been a crazy week, but I have been able to work on my Feel Good Homework from the previous post (Here is the Link) if you want to feel good about yourself.  I wanted you to get an idea of the doors and windows and the thickness of the walls.  This is what makes the space so Gothic and Italian.

A Feel Good List

The Simple Life

Good Morning

It’s  March and Monday in Umbria Italy, presently the day is bright and sunny. I’m going to give you some feel good homework for the week.  I love lists and I love to check things off my list.  Last week I had 27 things to do on my list.  I actually accomplished 17 of those.  It was a joy to check 17 boxes off.

Painting My Floor Kiwi Green

Sette Design

I want to ask you to take a deep breath before you continue on, now try not to judge me on the hideousness, the profoundly abusive, ugliness of the before shot my linoleum floors.  If it hurts you to look at for a moment on the Internet, think what it has done to me and my family, all these years.  O.k I’m being silly…kind of.

Houseboats - Alternative Life

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! 

As promised I am going to show you some wonderful Houseboats outside San Francisco, California.  In a little hillside town called Sausalito.

I get all silly headed when I think about living an alternative life.  I think my fantasy has to do with something about beating the system.  What system, you may ask?  Well that is still unclear (I said silly headed), maybe the world of pressure and conservatism, the rat race, paying ridiculously high energy bills (as we do here in Italy).  Becoming trapped by a mortgage.

I love loft spaces, organic gardens, solar panels, making your own things, tiny cottages/sheds, big old rambling houses that need love.   I go crazy for color and I love white and gray and brown too.  I like the idea of living off the grid and then I also want to be able to go to a café and have a good cappuccino, often.

many of the houseboats have names like boats
  this one the ANSWER is pretty great

Houseboats and Mt. Tamalpias

Sausalito, Ca Houseboat

this one is quite huge, because they are all bigger than they look

When I went to Design School in Brooklyn I really wanted to move into one of the architectural masterpieces that were burnt out in that ghetto which was then my neighborhood, Clinton Hill.  I really wanted to be a squatter, but not a homeless type, more of a well-designed squatter.  I was also very scared of the rats I knew would be living in abundance there. I’m not tough.  During that time and even now I know in my heart that I would like to own a pink cashmere coat.  Do you see my dilemma?

this houseboat the roof is a deck garden

I understand that to some our life here in Umbria Italy living in this huge Gothic Palazzo is already a bit alternative.  To me having two feet thick stone walls is still weird.  Interesting that for me girls it probably normal.

this guy is even further off the grid, she has to row out

Do any of you out there know of blogs that seem to be about an alternative life?  I love and follow the blog Soule Mama www.soulemama.com.  Soule Mama is homesteading in Maine and knits and has a garden and makes honey.  She understands the simple life.  I also like the Tiny House Blog http://tinyhouseblog.com.   I am so impressed with these people who can live big while living small.

 

this houseboat has copper panels that have a gorgeous patina

it's a long pretty walk down the dock

this lavender paint job is fantastic,
the color is blinding in it's perfection and hue

My mother lives in a houseboat.  I left my mother's house out of this post to respect her privacy.  I will say that her space has lots of windows and skylights, it is quite modern and airy.  The front door enters into one big room that is the dinning room, kitchen and living room, then the bedrooms are downstairs at water level. 

I love this tiny houseboat full of color

What is your alternative life fantasy or are you already living it?  Interesting that alternative is just a perspective.

Un bacio di Umbria,

Natalie

Joy- Gioia

Joy -Gioia in the new year 2014

Oh ragazzi

Happy New Year


Buon Anno!


Joy - Gioia

This is going to be a year of astonishing joy.

and 2014 =7

I hope you will keep coming back to this little Diario di Design because there will be lots of joy around here, because of you and because we bring it around the world.

Cheers,

With affection,
Natalie

I love Christmas in Italy

Il Vischio- Mistletoe

I love Christmas in Italy.

Today is the day after the Winter Solstice, from now on in our hemisphere the days are getting longer, brighter.

I think this will be our tenth Christmas in Italy and I must say I love it.

Alfredo my park ranger boyfriend found Mistletoe (Il Vischio) in the forest and brought it home to me.  If he had hung it in our short Medieval doorways we would have to crawl under it.  Now we have a chair for kissing under.  Italians believe it brings good fortune.

It rarely snows in our valley in Umbria, as it does in the mountains around us.  We always are hoping for snow.

Hope brings joy.

 

downtown

A foggy Christmas is lovely too.

It makes everything blurry and the colors soft and bright.

 

Christmas in Italy

Here is proof we really do live the simple life.  Just bliss pushing the tree home on the bike with gloves on and sucking on candy canes.  Ellie my little one refused to let them rope it up, as they like to do here in Italy.

 

Medieval wall, bike and Christmas tree

Since our living room is my paint studio this means the Christmas tree is in my bedroom. It’s pretty fantastic to snuggle in bed with the Christmas tree a glow.

Christmas in Umbria

I saved a baby sock from when Lucia was a baby

some of our ornaments are from my childhood
MANY years ago they are antique now!

I recommend it.

This year we had a party with Elisa and her-ten-year old girlfriends.  They made cookies with mashed up candy canes inside.  The hammering part was fun!

mashed candy canes and dough from
a chocolate chip cookie recipe -YUMMM

Pink roses and a red candle.

crazy yellow ring on the candle

The girls seem to check on an hourly basis to see if more presents are put under the tree.

Art in progress, books to read, cyclamen and vintage Christmas balls.

art in progress

I hope you are all happy and warm and savoring every moment.

Cheers,

Natalie

I'm linking with:
Between Naps on the Porch

Napa Valley Winter Garden

The simple life

I’m back in Umbria after our trip home to California.  When we arrived to our city there was thick cold fog socked in deep.  It was so pretty, I thought to get  fog in San Francisco and didn’t and it made me feel so happy and that Christmas was on it's way.

We got the heat on right away and it lasted a couple hours, then broke down.  It had been left off for three weeks and let me tell you if you have any romantic ideas about how we live in this Italian Gothic Palazzo that is 800 years old you can give them up, because Gothic equals bone chilling cold, two feet thick stone walls are very good at keeping the cold in. Those Medieval princesses suffered in more ways then one.

 

persimmons and a candle

The heat is now fixed I have a glass of red wine by my side and a few candles lit and I am ready to show you the Napa Valley Winter Garden that I talked about.  When you think of Napa Valley you probably think of the grand rich wineries or fields of grapevines and mustard flowers.  Since I love the simple life I just want to show you some of what I consider to be peace.

A winter garden brings peace because often there just isn’t much work being done.  Bareness can also feel peaceful and sleepy.

I love how persimmons remain on the tree while the leaves fall off.

A t-shirt drying on the line is hoping the sun will come along.  Plus I think that is the compost pile.  I saw a funny sign on the gate in another town outside S.F. that said, "trespassers will be composted".

My nephew is Walker Ryan and he is a professional skate boarder, they stuck the old decks of his skateboards onto the garden fence.  I think it is a nice tribute to all the hard work it takes to become a professional athlete.

I like the one blue tile as a step into the shed and that it isn't in the middle.

garden shed in Napa Valley

Inside the shed the walls and ceiling are painted Pompeii red. 

 

corrugated tin roof and Pompeii red door

I absolutely love a corrugated roof.  It makes me knees weak.

I know my painting studio space here in my home is fantastic and I do appreciate the space, but I have always had the fantasy of having many sheds that have different purposes.  If I had property and I lived in the U.S. (because you sure couldn't do it in Italy) I would love to build sheds all over the garden and make guest bedrooms, a paint studio, a music room shed, maybe even a library and one big cozy chair to read in.

A simple tribute to life in Napa Valley is an old dried grape cluster draping a birdhouse roof.

Cheers,

Natalie

I'm linking with these lovely parties:

The Shabby Creek Cottage

French Country Cottage

Romantic Home

Between Naps on the Porch