YOU MAY HAVE seen the work of Amber Lewis here before⏤snippets from her Instagram page, @amberinteriors, with wonderfully calm rooms in neutral tones mixed with beautiful textures such as marble and rough-hewn wood, plaster and linen and rattan ...
IT'S STRAWBERRY SEASON and Wimbledon, which can only mean one thing: strawberries and cream. Have you been watching the tennis? Also, Summer Solstice was just a couple of weeks ago and we said a bittersweet good-bye to the longest day of the year. Here is a little of our lately: homemade gazpacho and June rose; pints on a sunny pub terrace and wildflower meadows; friendly llamas and gin and tonics and so much more...
ON AN ESPECIALLY grim day around here, there will always be someone who mutters well you don't live in Britain for the weather. And while that may be true, it's definitely cosy when you're sitting in someone's home for tea where it's bright and warm.
BY PURE COINCIDENCE, I recently watched both It's Complicated, the 2009 film with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin; and Father of the Bride, the 1991 film with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton. Now everyone knows that when you watch Nancy Meyers films, the interiors nearly steal every scene (remember the charming cottage in The Holiday?), so when I came across the writer-director-producer's redecorated Los Angeles home, of course I had to have a peek, especially since she worked with LA-based interior designer Mark D. Sikes, whose work has been featured here many times.
BRIE AND PEARS at a picnic by the seaside at sunset; wicker lamps and wicker bags and sun umbrellas flapping in the breeze; Lisbon kitchens and wide-legged pants; summer sweaters with city shorts and trolleys full of lemons... These are the things of far-flung places but also of summertime, our very favourite time.
NOW THAT WE'RE updating the TIG Instagram a lot less, we thought we'd begin posting our favourite snapshots here, like we used to. Just because we're not using our social media platforms as much as before does not mean we've stopped making beautiful memories or taking beautiful photos, and since this is, in essence, the scrapbook of lives, why not here?
WE'RE TRYING out one of those food services that deliver a huge box of fresh ingredients to your home⏤enough to make five different meals from scratch, all packaged in separate numbered paper bags with recipe cards for each. It arrived on Saturday and the first meal we (actually just P) made was Cauliflower Mac and Cheese with Blue Cheese Crumb and Sriracha Drizzle. It was actually really good.
THIS BANK HOLIDAY weekend we saw The Batman. We're not normally into superhero films, but this one is with Robert Pattinson, so we made an exception. It was really long⏤nearly three hours! And maybe a little on the slow side? It began very promisingly with the gritty cityscape and a voiceover and Nirvana's Something in the Way drifting through the air but then lost its way ...
THEY SAY all good things must come to an end, and that is now true of our bestselling Windsor Bamboo Top Handle Wicker Handbag. Introduced in 2018 while we were living in Spain, and it has been a runaway bestseller ever since. Like many of our other wicker and rattan items, the Windsor is completely handmade by artisans in sunny Spain, about an hour by train outside of the city, past acres of sweet-scented orange groves and a castle ruin nestled high in the side of a mountain ...
THE BIO ON Deborah Needleman's Instagram page says, "Baskets, flowers, other people’s houses, the occasional dog, things like that". And for the most part, that's true, except that recently, she began posting images of her own home, a country house in Garrison, Upstate New York, which was published in Architectural Digest about a week ago, and we couldn't help but be absorbed with every last detail.
THIS WEEK'S DÉCOR inspiration is furniture seller-turned-interior designer Juniper Tedhams's Chelsea townhouse, located in the lower two floors of an Italianate-style building dating back to the 1850s. The ground floor used to be her shop, then her interior design office ...
IT'S THE FIRST of March after a long winter and the sun is streaming through the windows. The brighter mornings and longer days are calling us outdoors, even as we type away at our keyboards. The sounds of cars driving by, people rushing along to shops and appointments, and it feels like a new beginning ...
THE LAST TIME we featured the 1928 Hollywood Hills, California home of interior designer Mark D. Sikes was in 2016 (see how it looked here). It was the second iteration of the place, we believe? Three years ago, in 2019, the designer embarked on a third redesign that was featured at Architectural Digest that we only discovered now, and quite a lot has changed. New fabrics have been brought in, most notably the blue white Brunschwig & Fils check that ensconces the dining room from floor to ceiling. ...
ON FRIDAY WE travelled to a seaside village about an hour from here to celebrate something special. P had made late lunch reservations at a new restaurant that has only been open for less than a year (and much of it during various lockdowns) and we'd heard that it was supposed to be good, locally grown produce and all that. It's one of those charming places that have several roaring fires and wood-burning stoves and promised to be cosy ...
WE CAME ACROSS the beautiful kitchen of designer Jasper Conran's vacation home on the island of Rhodes on Instagram and instantly fell for its rustic charm. Nothing looks too perfect, and yet everything looks perfect. There are stacks of old pots and pans on lower shelves and large terracotta platters displayed casually above, a pebble mosaic floor (something we had never seen before), irregular white plaster walls and a thatched ceiling. We, of course, were intrigued to see the rest of the home, which once belonged to Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte von Rezzori.
