My first day in Paris was a long, but worthwhile whirlwind. After traveling for 16 hours, including flights and layovers, I arrived with several other members of Trafalgar tour group. I had just enough time to drop off my bags at the hotel (and try to convince myself I really was in Paris) before heading out to acquaint myself with the city.
This weekend I’m embarking on my first trip to Europe and I’ve been struggling to find the words to describe how I feel. If you can somehow squash the words excited, anxious, happy, and elated into one adjective you may begin to understand where I’m at.
One of the most vivid booths at this year’s Interior Design Show belonged to Decotec, a Paris-based dealer of eye-poppingly brilliant bathroom fittings. With Decotec now available in Canada through a Quebec location, I just had to share my fave find from their colourful collection.
This piece, the Malles des Indes, is what Decotec is calling their “Bohemian bathroom”. So cute and compact – everything just folds into an attractive cabinet when not in use! The ultimate design solution for the teensy weensy bath? Euro-faboosh!
Decotec Paris Inc., 450-455-2559; decotec.ca.
There are pros and cons to working on the same floor as the Canadian Living magazine’s Test Kitchen. Although it means the Style At Home crew are often well-fed — they kindly let us indulge when sampling new recipes (Or maybe we’re their guinea pigs… Haven’t worked that out yet…) — it also means that the aromas of their latest concoctions inevitably waft through our office. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but sometimes you just don’t want to be engulfed in a cloud of garlic and onions at 8:30 in the morning.
Instead of kicking up a stink (sorry, couldn’t resist), I used the opportunity to test out a few home fragrance samples that just came by my desk. Dans Un Jardin is a Boucherville, Quebec-based company, originally founded in Paris in 1976, that specializes in the art of parfumerie for bath, body and home. A few hits of Dans Un Jardin’s “Buds & Leaves” home fragrance mist, and those cooking smells are replaced by the ambiance of an English garden: very clean, fresh notes of sun-ripening tomatoes, lemon zest, greenery and musk. Delightfully fresh, and surprisingly gentle — a number of my colleagues are extremely sensitive to smell, and they all commented on the subtlety of this spray. Love it!
7.5 oz Buds & Leaves home fragrance spray
Price: $6
To order online or find the closest retailer: Dans Un Jardin, Boucherville, Que., 450-449-2121
Médias Transcontinental
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