For years I have bored with tales of my early beginnings, the child collage artist and scrap booker pouring and pondering over mags and catalogues….to the point I began to wonder if I was making it all up. But I knew those little folios I began as a child had existed, and strangely they appeared deep under a cottage bed this summer!! God how amusing.

Now I’m trusting you not to judge me too harshly on my ‘taste’….and it was the 70′s after all. But there are a few threads that have carried on! I still love a rainbow, and fur, AND shag for that matter.

…and integrated spaces. While I may have grown out of monochromatic colour schemes….I still can’t shake the stripe addiction.

and no, I wont be cribbing this anytime soon…but I’d like to think (pretend) it was only the dry-scrubbed floorboards that drew my attention to this VERY Canadian interior.

Well, it was a start wasn’t it……

And January 2012 is half over and we are NOT caught up yet!! In fact, lots to tell you about holiday adventures and snoops…so let us begin. Barbados again…what can I say. Thank goodness for its aesthetic generosity and all that oh-so-pleasant decay to amuse us.

This particularly chatel house had Nicky slamming on the breaks, children flying across the seats, cars swerving…a silver box, bathed in sea salt, weathered and worn.

Oh so pretty in its simplicity, oh so pretty in its shab.

Shwitter would have adored this don’t you think? A merzbau fit for a mermaid?

Damn it all, just when you think you’ve talked books until everyone was fast asleep….along comes another literary light so bright i have to return to the subject.

How delicious is this idea…a book bed, found on www.oddee.com.

Well for someone like me, who wears shirts with Proust badges on them…this is utterly regressive…

To get lost, to live in a book is one thing but to sleep and dream within its pages is almost unbearable.

Of course Nicky and I both happen to spot these incredible parched leaves peeling of the palms…I had tucked some away thinking they would make great mermaid tails…and unbeknownst to me he was tucking them away thinking they would make great Fortuny tops……alright so lets do both!!!!!

WITH…a bitta Carmen Miranda thrown in of course!!!!!!!!!!

Just because we are on vacation doesn’t mean the snooping subsides…quite the contrary. But the joy of doing so on the islands is that like the good ol’ 18th century, if you look presentable, there stands a chance you might get invited in!! As we did when we crept around this crumbling GEM built in the 30′s.

‘Oh gosh, so sorry, pardon us’ we begin our apologies for trespassing ‘ it REALLY just IS such a fabulous house we couldn’t resist a better look’! And the kind faced, kind hearted Grandson of the builder/owner invites us in for a proper look around. This is a real treat, for as he rightly laments, the sea really IS eating this house alive from the inside out.

‘The Risk’ (yes strangely aptly named), was built by the grandfather, an amateur architect, who typical of his day built with rebar (now rusting) enforced local concrete, most of which was carted from the beach and is full of salt. The salt thus corrodes the internal structure creating an irreparable situation where the building is decaying from within.

Even in our wildest romantic heat stroke of a genius we can see there is no way this terrific house can be salvaged and its days are very numbered.

Little fern peeking out of the pink concrete…..a little touch of Elsie I think to myself with an internal grin. She would have loved this house I think.

Anyway, no one is shedding any tears here…just great memories.

We’ll be back next year to say hello.