Decorating with light

In the UK it's hard to imagine that someone would build a house with deliberately shaded windows, but in the south of France that's a traditional building style which still makes a lot of sense - our house is a haven of cool on a hot summer's day...

... but seldom light and bright, especially in January and February. It was Ben's idea to start dealing with this by building up a collection of mirrors, but I think my collecting drive has kind of overtaken his... he bought me the carved bone one on the left, which is a great shape, and I carried the middle two back from Edinburgh trips (the left middle mirror is a secondhand Ikea find, while the right middle is genuinely vintage, blogged about here). I found the final, 'feminine' mirror in a Vide Grenier - it's French and dates from 1964.

In front of the mirrors are an earthenware chipmunk, one of a pair my sister and I bought our mum in the '70s, a miniature portrait which I've always loved, also inherited from my mum, a silver gravy boat which was a wedding present from an antique dealer uncle and another wedding present, a modern decanter which reflects the light most beautifully.





It's what's UNDERNEATH the mirrors that's a bit surprising... I was in the utility room looking for anything reflective, when the gleam of a coffee tin caught my eye! We save all the coffee tins (our Fair Trade decaf comes in tins, there's no alternative) and we use them for all sorts of useful things, particularly seed storage, but I'd never thought of decorating with them before. But one of them gleamed at me, and, well, why not? The light is bouncing around the dark entrance area like it's never done before, and the coffee tins will stay there a while...