BW Boutique Hotel

Archive for May, 2010

The fuzzy feel of the U-shaped rug under your bare toes on a chilly morning? The inviting lineup of pastel soaps on a pretty shelf above the sink? The feel of hot water pounding your back after a full day of work? Maybe you like saturating your clean skin with moisturizer and your clean hair with satiny conditioner.
My favorite part is tuning out the world in the rush and splash of a full-on shower. Working from a home office, I often take midday showers as a break from the shoulder and eye strain of sitting at a computer hour after hour. Sometimes I enjoy a shower just before a yoga class or before meeting a friend for dinner. At other times I shower in the morning as revitalization for another day of writing and editing or late at night to warm up before jumping into bed in a wintry cold room.
In any case, I never take bathing for granted. Surrounded by the warmth of a lovely room or in a cold-water concrete shower in a camp in the Middle East, bathing has been and will continue to be for me a special space in the day. The bathroom remains a place for me to be enchanted with my own body and a reminder of my connection to what the human race has always known—that cleanliness is relaxing and healing and that it purifies my soul as well as my flesh.

Smart. Understated. Forgiving. These are words some designers
use to describe interiors that maximize livability. How can you
create rituals at home that invite you and your family to rejuvenate
a holy sense of place? Here are some experts’ ideas to build on.
• Seek serendipity. Welcome unexpected experiences as Sarah welcomed strangers to her home.
• Attend to details that amplify ambiance. Spend time setting the scene to get people in the mood.
• Play down unnecessary drama, Ignore unwelcome intruders such as grumpy moods or overindulgent expectations.
• Define the cathedral quotient. What helps your family members feel loved by the others? Brainstorm ways to make those connections.
• Get the most bang from your “construction” buck Invest in rituals that improve with age. Go for what’s interesting over what’s traditional or trendy. Find out what your kids love and do it!
• Create a lavish focal point for limited time together Play it up with things you know will generate pleasure in the experience: games, food, physical interaction, ambiance.

You probably already have everything you need to create the look and feel of a house-becoming-home The rule of thumb in using what you have is this: See everything in a new way can the objects stuffed away in your closets be used for a different purpose, in a different place, or with a new disguise? Try on these ideas.
• Turn an object upside down or on its side. Try placing anything in an unusual setting and you’ll see marked changes.Things you may have grown tired of suddenly become eccentric bookends, candle holders, or conversation pieces.A vase you inherited, turned upside down, is a pedestal for a photo of the great aunt it belonged to. A garden angel, predictable on the front stoop, might be urban kitsch on your armoire. Books can be turned on their sides as bookends.
• Point things in various shades of white. Almost anything metal, wood, or plastic can be updated and freshened with a coat of cream or wash of pearl. Worn furniture or accessories look totally different with a whitewash. Update with a bowl of seashells in summer or a photo of last year’s ski trip in winter
• Mat, frame, and hang kids’ paintings in unexpected places: on a bathroom wall, beside a grand mirror beside school photos in the kitchen, inside the hall closet.
• Go sugar and spice when painting flea market finds. Mix bright reds with white and sand colors.Think Cajun and crème. Blend anything brass and bronze or copper for an earthy zest against neutral walls or fabrics.
• Modem family-friendly objects come into their own among inhented pieces pulled out of storage in the attic or basement. Mix country with urban!techno style to get a trendy eclectic appeal.

Powder your nose? Freshen up? Visit the restroom? Draw
your bubble bath? Take a shower? Isn’t this chamber we call the bathroom, necessary room, comfort station, or
water closet brimming with odd and eccentric images? It is the place of our most intimate daily or hourly rituals. Its symbolism embraces both our primal and civilized instincts. It is a place that may both enhance our personal sensuality and remind us that we cannot escape our physicality.
For the woman always seeking the aesthetic, the bathroom is a good clean challenge. It is the place where a girl looks herself in the eye first thing each morning and last thing at night, encompassing all that may mean. Here she may cast a critical glance at her body or lavish it with personal indulgences: soft plushy towels and hands-on caresses with scented oils, soaps, and lotions. For no other room is there more specialized, intriguing, and inviting ways to create the daily “spa—aah!” effect.
The spa—aah! effect is much more than rituals for hygienic feeling good or looking good. It’s an emotional and spiritual makeover too. The body and mind are things, after all, that every woman updates daily. She may begin with her morning bathing routine, but the spa—aah! effect expands as she moves through the different rooms in her house. The effect goes on to encompass the way a woman lives in the wide, wide world; it includes the visual impact she brings to other people, her sensuality; emotional bearing, and spiritual influence.
The spa—aah! effect is mystique from the inside out. A woman uses her mystique, her sense of personality and femininity; to touch and bless the people in her life. Creating the spa—aah! effect is to follow the wisdom of Christian Dior by remembering that zest is the secret of all beauty

The bathroom is the most enigmatic of rooms, riddled with ancient and contemporary ritual. It is connected with cultural superstitions as well. According to the Celts, for whom water represented a reunion with the womb, a few silver coins in the bath ensured good luck. Adding the first snow of winter to the bath brought good health. Sage wisdom has it that roses in the bath bring love; lavender, happiness; rosemary; creativity; peppermint, revivification; and eucalyptus, freedom from pain. A recipe for romance calls for oranges and fresh mint leaves added to the bath and rubbed on the body—then allowed to air-dry Do you want beauty? Would you be willing to go to the extremes Cleopatra did? She is said to have bathed regularly in asses’ milk.
Bathing involves a religious significance in many cultures. For Muslims and Jews it is associated with purification and holiness. The complex bathing rituals of the Japanese are meant to facilitate mental clarity. Instead of seeing bathing as just a way to get clean like we do in the West, Eastern cultures get clean in separate quarters so that they can bathe. For Native Americans sweat lodges are used to facilitate healing of illness (everything from influenza to pleurisy) as well as to revitalize racial identity In Finland the sauna is a national institution. It is said that prior to the 1990s there were more saunas than cars in that country.