Our interiors can be dark during the day. We have plantation shutters, and follow the Tuscan practice of closing up the house when the heat starts to build in the early hours to trap the cooler air, and to ward off the high temperatures. We don't have refrigerated air. Evaporative coolers work well enough here in New Mexico, and a well placed fan can go a long way toward making one comfortable in the desert heat.
I'm eccentrically philosophically opposed to frigid interiors in one hundred degree heat. But it still amazes me to think that I grew up in this town with nothing but shade and a window fan to cool off. That, and a good run through the sprinklers! I know it's not 1955 anymore, though. I aim to keep my guests comfortable in all kinds of weather.
I'm also aiming for a lighter and brighter look inside to balance things a bit. I'm sort of known for decorating with white, but I own a ton of dark things, both collected and inherited, that I love. I'm always trying to integrate them into a liveable combination. But then the season changes, and I have to rework everything again!
I have a wonderful old oil painting of Venice in blues tones that I am trying out in my sitting room. Its sea theme, adjacent to Stoddards's Lectures and a few seashells, lends a summer travel motif to the semi-cloistered room. The reknowned nineteenth century travelogue volumes are an inherited set, and have been displayed pages out to lighten up the look of things, but today I want to see exotic travel destinations from my armchair. . . .
Before
The blues loan a nautical look to the scene, but I can already tell that there is too much of a "sixties professor's library" look to the colors and the picture frame for me, and that I won't live with it long. But strangely, I already feel a little like I've been away somewhere for awhile. . . .
Nice to have you along for some armchair travel!
Ciao! for now!
Jacqueline
And join me again at
