Sunday Style File: The English Country Home
On the coffee table in our living room at home, my mother has stacks upon stacks of The English Home magazine. I never used to be that interested in them; I found them boring compared to my even larger stack of British Vogue issues I had up in my study, but before I left for America some evenings in front of the television I found myself flicking through them. I think Pinterest has to be to blame for my sudden love for all things to dress and adorn the home, but now I find myself quite literally a million miles away from home, I think I have fallen even more in love with the aesthetic I know I will be coming home to in a couple of months time.
Though I can only hope to have a house as beautiful as this sometime in the future, when I return to England and have my own space to move into (hopefully in London for my final year at university fingers crossed) I’m sure I will be scouring the web for the odd promotional code for House of Fraser to try and bring a bit of the home I grew up in into my home, if that makes sense? I will also try searching for things like Ocado vouchers, as I seem to spend way too much of my time grocery shopping when I could be making Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownies. Which are much more important. Obviously. (Incidentally, if something a little bit more modern is your cup of tea you could look for voucher for Made.com instead!)
Anyway, back to The English Country Home. I love the idea of having lots of smaller hydrangea pots by the back door; it breaks it up a bit in a way you can’t achieve if you just stick them all into one big planter. They are one of my favourite flowers, and they remind me of my home in Northern France where they grow in abundance by the roadside and peoples front gardens. We’re not onto the garden stage of our place yet, but I hope my parents realise I will be insisting on us getting at least a couple of bushes of them!
My favourite things about this kitchen is the Aga. For those of you who don’t know what an Aga is (which means you probably did not grow up in the English countryside) it is basically a permanently warm cooking stove with at least a main oven and a warming oven (sometimes more) and two very versatile hot plates, one with full heat and one which is a simmering plate. I learnt to cook on one and when I am away from the lovely navy blue one in my parents kitchen I miss cooking without it. This is in spite of how easy it is to burn yourself taking something in and out of the oven, the still yet to face scar on my arm from Christmas Eve 2011 is there to prove this point. While some girls are the type to plan their dream wedding, I spend time planning what colour Aga I am going to have in my home (this is a bit like the oddity where Rose is the only other person I know who gets excited by kitchen gadgets in her Christmas stocking.) I’ve decided cream or duck egg blue, depending on the colour of the rest of my future kitchen, in case anyone wanted to know!
One thing I do love and my mother has in our drawing room, yet I won’t be having in my dream home when I grow up are these beautifully full curtains. I know, they look fantastic and add something to a room that would usually look a bit sparse with painted panelling but do you know how difficult it is to hoover around the bottom of these where they are sitting on the ground? They also like to gather dead flies and more bits of fluff than I ever thought possible at the bottom of their folds.
What sort of home do you aspire to be eventually living in? Will it be anything like the home you grew up in, or do you want to go off in a totally different direction to the aesthetic your parents went with?
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