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A House Party in Tuscany | Villa Arniano

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I recently got my hands on a new book called A House Party in Tuscany and was reminded of just how much I love the interiors and gardens of Villa Arniano, interior designer Camilla Guinness’s farmhouse in Tuscany. Have you seen it? A House Party in Tuscany – Recipes, Stories and Art from Arniano was written by Amber Guinness, Camilla’s daughter and a self-taught cook, as part memoir, part cookbook and part love letter to a family home designed around beautiful things, gracious people and delicious, Italian-inspired, cuisine. Stunning interiors and mouth-watering recipes… Does it get any better than that?

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Last Week’s Finds

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Happy Monday, friends! Hope you’re well! Despite a particularly distracting weekend, spent mostly outdoors drinking copious amounts of apple cider and sampling one too many cider donuts, I haven’t forgotten about last week’s finds and how they were supposed to go out to you in a blog post yesterday morning. Oops! Thanks for understanding! Here are a few things I found interesting, design stories & decorative items, that maybe you too will find appealing: video tours of stunning homes designed by Caroline Gidiere and Bunny Williams, a new cookbook by the incomparable Ina Garten, and a couple of pretties for the home thrown in for good measure. Enjoy!

Inside Caroline Gidiere’s Birmingham Home – a video tour:

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This Week’s Finds

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Hi friends! I hope you’re enjoying a peaceful weekend, wherever you are! Here in the States we’ll be observing Columbus Day (and now Indigenous Peoples’ Day ) tomorrow and so far we couldn’t have asked for lovelier Fall weather. The temperatures have been soft enough during daytime to allow pleasurable nature walks and some light gardening activities. Yesterday we took a stroll in town and I managed to photograph one of my favorite houses near our public library (the first image below). We cheered for the Amherst College Women’s Soccer team, and the ladies brought home victory against Wesleyan. The Men’s Football team, although sadly not as triumphant, was just as entertaining to watch. But aside from surviving not one but two sporting events in one day, my biggest triumph this weekend was getting my last batch of daffodil bulbs in the ground, just in time before the first frost of the season. When the garden is bleak and empty at the end of winter, I find daffodils to be the silliest, most uplifting flowers to see blooming. They also naturalize well and are deer and critter resistant, a must if your garden is under constant squirrel attack, like ours is. They are relentless, especially this time of year. How are things going in your neck of the woods? Have you planted any cheerful spring bulbs yet?

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An Unexpected Fabric Source

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As decorators and homeowners, we are used to reconciling a variety of styles, opinions and budgets. Clients often have partners or family members who weigh in during the decision-making process, and taking everyone’s needs into consideration becomes a delicate balancing act.  Over the last year and a half I’ve been helping clients across the country decorate their homes, and I’ve been loving every minute of it.  Aside from meeting the sweetest people, the problem-solving aspect of decorating is what keeps the process interesting & fresh for me. Each project comes with its own set of restrictions and challenges, and budgets are often at the top of the list. In an ideal world we’d all have tons of loose cash laying around, waiting to be spent on lovely things for our homes, but for most of us this is not the case. The good news, however, is that reconciling budgets (or any other set of constrains) often forces us to think creatively, and arrive at original solutions we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

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This Week’s Finds

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn a commission on all qualifying purchases. Thank you!

Another busy week has come and gone, and with it we’ve had much needed rain, which made our thirsty plants quite happy. Sadly, a thunderstorm earlier this week felled one of our larger trees, blocking our street and requiring several police cars and a late night intervention from the town’s tree removal department to clear away. Losing a tree that’s probably been here for decades made me sad but there was nothing we could do to save it. Thankfully, the damage was minimal and no one got hurt.

The skies cleared up on Saturday when I managed to snap this on my neighborhood walk
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