If Walls Could Talk

As we think, and talk, about moving a few people have said, "Oh, it will be fine. I know you love your house, but where ever you go you will make it great."

But it doesn't work like that. Some houses are just great. The architecture is beautiful and the scale is just right and everything has been beautifully calibrated. Houses like that are not within my reach.

But the houses I will see, far less grand, will either have soul or they won't. Houses have soul. I've yet to see someone inject it; it's there or it's not regardless the wallpaper or paint or linoleum.

As I came up the walk of my current house, toddler in one hand, baby carrier in the other, I thought, "This isn't it. Darn. A waste of time." A sort-of Tudor, seemingly smallish from the street, sure to be full of awkward rooms and nooks and crannies that a symmetry-and-space-loving woman like me could never appreciate.

And then I stood on the threshold of the front door, and, as it turned out my next ten years, and its energy washed over me in a way that the scent of baking cookies could have never conveyed.

Images courtesy of Vendome Press from Lars Bolander's Scandinavian Design by Heather Smith MacIsaac, photography, these images, by Staffan Johansson. The book is beautiful and brings to life the philosophy that country does not mean kitsch. The rooms delight and while distinctively Scandinavian, provide inspiration for anyone interested in using that soothing mix of formal pieces, informal fabrics and wonderful color.