I absolutely love to travel, I find that travel broadens my mind and files experiences and memories into my heart that I can refer back to on a blah day.
When I am sitting here willing the snow to disappear I can remember floating in the azure waters of the Caribbean drinking rum with my friends and co-workers.
It is easy to drift away in your mind and recall lounging by a pool in Vegas as the warm sun shines on your face even when driving to work in a pounding blizzard. These deposits in your memory are what help us soldier on through cold, bleak days.
If you are fortunate to travel, take care to bring elements of that experience home with you.
Of course we can’t have the ocean in our back yard but small elements of colour and scent can be brought back from any destination.
Observe components of your retreat that make the experience extra special; the colour of your hotel room or the feel of the sheets and towels may be replicated at home.
I am a bit of a ferret when it comes to lotions and soaps that are left in hotel rooms, not only are they the perfect travel size – the scent immediately takes me back to that specific location even if I use the lotion months later. It is a delightful sensory rush, like opening up your first mandarin orange at Christmas.
Last year I helped a wonderful couple with their bathroom renovations. They had two bathrooms to finish and each of them came with a separate and distinct style for each room.
I generally discourage using such different styles in the same house but this was definitely a ‘his and hers’ bathroom dream.
One was ultra modern and the other was country chic which she had experienced in a cabin retreat in Canmore. She was so inspired by the bathroom in that lodge that she took pictures and showed them to me asking me to replicate the entire design. It was her way of keeping the experience of that restful vacation with her every single day.
The wood tone, tile and accessories gave her that restful cabin feeling every time she entered her bathroom – a mini vacation every single day!
You can bring any aspect of your favorite vacation home with you, whether it is the style of the resort you stayed at or the sights, smells and atmosphere.
You can incorporate vacation elements into your everyday life to help you dream away the days until your next getaway.
We take great care and delight in decorating our children’s rooms with whimsical themes and colours, why not bring that creativity to our grown-up spaces? What would be wrong with replicating your dream vacation space in your home?
Why not string a hammock in your basement and paint a corner of the ceiling blue to encourage you to sway and remember that amazing trip to Belize?
Go ahead, take the bathrobe or the slippers from your resort and wrap yourself up in the memories every morning while you enjoy that cup of rich Columbian coffee (that you brought back from Columbia!)
Bring your vacation memories home with you in more creative ways than just pictures and please…pay for the bathrobe before you stuff it in your suitcase!
Kim Wyse is an interior designer with Carpet Colour Centre in Red Deer.
