To Victoria, with Love

It was a day of mismanaged expectations and mysterious chocolates.

In other words, if you ever see me at Bernard Callebaut and I’m about to put five packages of ganache cream chocolates in my cart, please stage an intervention right there in the aisle. Thank you in advance.

I was there to style, source materials, and all be an all around design genius for my client’s newly purchased condo. Looking like forty miles of rough road, in that I had to be up at 5 am to catch the first bird out, I was greeted graciously and soon whisked away for nourishment.

Victoria is a city of gourmand and visual delights set against a background of sea and sky, peppered with shops to engross the most skeptical and reticent shoppers.

Sprigs of new growth shoot up intermittently through damp soil, paired with tentative, brave blooms, the rest waiting, timorous of another hit of snow.

The textures and nuances of green overwhelms! Mosses, evergreens, foliage. They revive, restore and renew – nature’s neutrals.

 

Any Canadian who drops in at this time of the year elegiacally resists perusing the real estate section of the local paper.

Given I had a multitude of days to complete my assignment, we decided that our sole purpose that day would be to purchase a few scant provisions to augment upcoming meals.

But true to form, we soon got on a tangential course sidetracked by the usual.

…a clothing store filled with a cornucopia of jackets and shoes. (Yo’all know how I feel about shoes.) Yup, bought a pair…and a pair of vintage gold earrings and almost a jacket.

Next door a bookstore, which took another hour, and then…how is it possible to walk by the storybook wonder of Murchie’s Tea without buying a package and imbibing in a piece of passion fruit chocolate cake?

We then came to the most fabulous Goodwill store in the world and fell in love with two chairs that were aching for a bold upholstery fabric. We hauled them down the street to an upholstery shop and pursued books of fabric samples until we found the perfect one. They’ll be ready in four weeks.

And the masses and abundance of fresh flowers! Between you and me, I think there should be a law against plastic flowers in Victoria. It’s scandalous.

We then purchased tickets for a play for that night, took photos of totem poles, slipped into a delightful coffee shop to sip a cappuccino and share an almond croissant, unearthed an antique train set for a son-in-law, and finally an art gallery where we settled on a small oil and a felted rooster for the fireplace mantle.

We were back home when we remembered that we forgot to buy the food.

So I called my five days in Victoria, The Art of Carefree Timelessness (time spent together without an agenda). Any relationship thrives when this is done on a regular basis. Nothing is to be gained by hurrying, the sure mark of an amateur. And most everything is to be gained by its converse.

There are so many trying to get somewhere, to get something done. They have longer to-do lists that time for the people that mean the most to them. And the time passes, the day never to come again.

The Danes know a thing or two about living life well and it starts with one small word: hygge, which roughly translates to ‘cosiness’. It just might be the recipe for a better lived life. 

Hygge is more than just a decorating philosophy, it is about creating an ambient atmosphere and enjoying the good things of life; some material, some more important. It is a philosophy for the Danes that enables them to also understand the importance of simplicity. It’s prioritizing their lives with time to unwind and slow down with good people, camaraderie, and general well-being.