• Home
  • About Penny
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Subscribe
  • About Penny
  • Contact Penny
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation

McCormick Interiors

Penelope Bianchi

  • Home
  • About Penny
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Gallery
  • Press
  • Subscribe

roses

French Lavender Oil

May 12, 2013 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 21 Comments


When we were building our house;  we went on several trips to Provence.

We stayed on one trip at a wonderful hotel in Aix-en-Provence called La Villa Gallici.

http://www.villagallici.com/en/hotel

It smelled absolutely divine;  so I looked everywhere for a housekeeper who spoke English!

I found one and asked her what on earth smelled so good!

She explained that they used drops of pure lavender oil on the carpets and rugs throughout the hotel!!!

It is a natural insect repellent;  it is a anti-anxiety treatment, and I have been using it at least 4 times a week ever since!

This is a big bottle;  but to use it on our rugs, it is convenient to have it in small bottles that release just drops at a time.This

bottle is to refill the small ones!


photo 1

photo 2

I don’t know how to make it!  I do make sachets out of our lavender!

Surprise!

  

chichoto

And our little hen hatched 5 baby chicks just in time for Mother’s Day!!!

I transported her chicks to the “maternity ward” coop in this basket!  She is taking great care of them!

Ichicks

Happy Mother’s Day!

French Lavender OilRead More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Family, Gardens, Landscapes Tagged With: baby chicks, chicks, lavender, lavender oil, mother hen, Mother's Day, roses, spring

The Secret Garden!!!

May 26, 2012 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 21 Comments

My friend Bonnie  lives in the neighborhood

where Ty Warner (beanie babies) built the most enormous house in Montecito!

He bought 5 houses on a bluff overlooking the ocean; tore them all down;   (all of them multi-million dollar houses)  and built an enormous “Venetian” Palazzo.

Bonnie called me and said….”Penny;  You absolutely have to meet Renee!  You are ‘soul mates’!”

 “And I want to be there when you meet her and see what she has created in our neighborhood!  You are going to have a complete fit!!!

 No one knows it is there.   She has made the most amazing creation out of some former “stables”!!!”   She said, “until 12 years ago, there were “hippies” camping out on this property!”

Originally, there was a Country Club on this entire bluff.  Around the turn-of- the- century , these stables were to house the horses for the carriages who came to  play golf and visit!

Renee, by the way, is a landscape designer who also has a “Greek Revival” house in New Orleans .  (that explains a lot)

The first hint of what was to come!  What a mailbox!

I have been by here so many times!  It is right across the street from the Music Academy of the West;  and just the week before I had walked by this mailbox with my grandson, and not noticed

it at all!    I was focused on my grandson;  but usually I notice everything……(good or bad..a blessing and a curse!)

 

How had I possibly missed these gates!!

I have been by here so many times!  It is right across the street from the Music Academy of the West!!     And these magnificent gates!!

 These are  most beautiful gateposts and gates I have ever seen here!  When I met Renee she said;  “Oh we were in France when I started here!

I left the “Chateau”  there;    and I bought the gates and posts and the paneling and brought them here!”

 See those grapefruits?  There was an orchard here that had also been part of the Club.

Lovely nasturtiums  sprouting out and about !

This little “moment” just inside the gates!

Following the wide path to where????

When I saw these rusty arched french doors with the beautiful roses climbing on them;  I had an even better idea of what was coming.  However, nothing could have prepared me for what was to come !!  I wish I had Steve Giannetti with me.  I’m just not a great photographer;  but I have done the best I can!!

 

Look to the left;  raised beds surrounded by boxwood! The sweet peas are climbing up a French “tree guard”!

gorgeous roses!

Some charming fencing to help the roses climb!  No house yet!!!

Coming around the bend….a one story house with an astonishing trumpet vine going all the way around it!!

Right next to the house,  an old pergola (original ) covered with wisteria.

Yikes!  Two separate  houses!

One separate house is the bedroom and bath.  One house the living, dining kitchen! The larger house was originally  one room!  I’m posting the interiors in my next post!

A clever way to hide the meters and things!

The outdoor dining terrace with the most charming barbecue I have ever seen!  It was foggy; but the view from here is across a rose parterre garden belonging to the house next door;  and then the ocean!!  That “view corridor” is protected!  Renee raised the terrace two feet so the view was over the hedge and through the rose garden to the sea!

Talk about a “borrowed view!”

Renee brought her stone sink from her Paris apartment to use outside!

she lets the alyssum sprout where it wants!

This is the path between the “living” and bedroom areas.

 

This is between the two buildings this  chandelier is here!  Outside……..totally charming…..(I have to keep adding)  it is just too much to do in one post!  even the outside!!

This is the view from her husband’s desk in a corner of the “bedroom cottage”.

This is a little corner with things “in progress”!  Nothing;  and I mean NOTHING is “staged”!  This is real……real living!!

This is the chimney of the fireplace in the “living cottage”;  and evidence of this trumpet vine that goes all over the entire two buildings.  If someone made me pick my favorite thing in the entire place;  I would pick the next picture.  It is the trunk of the  120 year old  trumpet vine INSIDE THE FRONT DOOR!!!  It is a miracle beyond that it has survive intact!

It had a “guardian angel” protecting it.  Nothing like this whole stable, the pergola…….the trumpet vine……nothing like this has survived here in Montecito……or any other enclave with wealth….and the ability to change.

This reminds me so much (first thought in my head……Tara Dillard…..and the “Poverty circle.”

That makes so much sense;  I believe it it……..how on earth did the poverty circke

This slays me!

When she barbecues she “just moves the vines away”…and then puts them back when it’s all cooled off”!

The top of the barbecue chimney is the top of a dovecote found at a “brocantes fair” in Provence!

This is a glimpse of the lovely house next door which owns the rose garden!



 Renee just raised the floor of the pergola;  now the view is over the hedge and to the rose garden.  She cautioned the gardener not to trim that “leggy branch” of lavender going across the steps!
Another view of the next door property.
These are some of the old shutters all over the inside and outside!
I explained to my assistant and my grandson;  in the hands of most people, this would all turn out looking like a “junkyard””
Renee is a “magician”, in my opinion!!!
By the way, my friend Bonnie was treated by my having a complete fit the entire time!
It must have been like watching a trained seal perform!!
I could hardly breathe I loved it all so much!
Next comes the inside!
You really couldn’t take it all at once!!
The real miracle is that these once “derelict” buildings and this astonishing vine survived until 12 years ago!  They were awaiting rescue!
How often does that happen?  Not enough, if you ask me!
What a treasure preserved!!!
I hope you enjoyed it!!

Oh!  I forgot to tell you that after I saw this house and garden with Bonnie;  Bonne and Renee came over to my house and garden!
She threw the same conniption fits that I did at her house;  so we had a lively discussion about which one is more ingenious!
Bonnie calls it a “draw”
It was so much fun for me to meet such an incredibly gifted and imaginative “soul mate”!!
There will be more coming from this source!!!


The Secret Garden!!!Read More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Gardens, Landscapes Tagged With: beautiful barbecue, borrowed view, brocantes, charming garden, chateau gates and posts, landscape, preserve, protected view, quirky garden, rescued treasure, roses, trumpet vine

Spring is Springing in Santa Barbara!

April 15, 2012 By //  by Penelope Bianchi 28 Comments

I posted the very beginning of Spring a while ago.  Some people say we have no “seasons” in Southern California!”

Yes we do!!  Spring is in full swing!!

DO WE HAVE SPRING???

YES!!!!!

We have a handsome new deer trophy!  (wrought iron)  in a proud position!

The house is fully cloaked with ivy!  (People ask me why I bothered to pick a color of the plaster!)

You can see the plaster in the winter;  all the leaves turn colors and fall off!

I found a wonderful “dovecote” from the estate of the wonderful artist, Jack Baker!  I’m hoping doves will make nests!

The arbors are covered with different roses!

This giant azalea is as old as I am!  There are pictures of me as a child next to it!  It is in a big pot!

These roses all came from the wonderful place “Rose Story Farm” in Carpinteria!  They only have old roses;  and roses that have fragrance!!

(I learned there  that you have to leave your nose smelling for a full ten seconds to get the fragrance!)

This is the stupendous  (I think!) view from the window by my husband’s desk in his office!!

“The maternity ward” has a hen with five chicks!

They are so fast!

Can you see the wisteria in the tree?

Our grandchildren’s clay art works are displayed on this table!  It’s their “Art Gallery”!

This is the “olive allee” with its focal point of an Anduze pot we bought in Provence!

and our lovely “faux bois” bench from my friend Janice who owns “Janus et Cie”!

 Our proud “trophy “!

I

at night….I learned from Tara Dillard!!  Pretty to see in the windows!!!

Another angle!

The roosters are so happy to have their tails back!

I love the damp and mossy stuff on the pots!  and the other rooster!  (I AM SO SO lucky to inherit pots !!)

Tara says to buy pots and garden accessories that people will “fight over, at your estate sale!”

A happy rooster!

We really do have Spring , Summer and fall in Santa Barbara!

The only thing we really don’t have is “Winter”!  I must admit!

I almost forgot!  Here are the “Spring slipcovers”  They go on the first day of Spring!!!

A lovely little bird took a tuft of our cat’s fur (I put it on the bushes when I brush her) and flew off to put it in her nest!

I’ll do another post  about the garden when it’s Summer!

And we have a mallard sitting on at least 8 eggs in the floating duck house!  I will show you right away when they hatch!!!

HAPPY SPRING!!!!

Spring is Springing in Santa Barbara!Read More

Filed Under: Blog, Design, Gardens, Home, Landscapes Tagged With: Anduze pot, arbor, baby chicks, bantam chickens, Boston ivy, cat fur in the bushes for helping birds make nests, dovecote, duck house, ducks, faux bois bench, focal point, fragrant roses, gravel, Janus et Cie, old roses, olive allee, Penelope Bianchi, Provence, Rose Story Farm, roses, Santa Barbara, slipcovers, spring, Spring in Santa Barbara, spring slipcovers, trophy deer, trophy deer heads, vines in trees, wisteria, wrought iron deer head

  • About Penny
  • Contact Penny
  • Gallery
  • Press

Site Footer

Search

Copyright © 2019 · McCormick Interiors ·: Designed & Maintained By: The Blogging 911