A Blank Canvas

There is a big bit of me that rather thinks it would be bliss to give away all my possessions: all the tchotkes, ornaments and pieces of hard won, much loved furniture, and start all over again. To obliterate all my yesterdays (for don’t they so very bossily, dictate all our tomorrows?), and whitewash these four walls. To create for myself the kind of blank canvas thats says, come now, be who you want to be, without compromise or personal nostalgia.

But alas, my heart will not let me: for isn’t it emotion, not money, nor time, that binds us so drastically to our own history- emotion, that will not let us part with the proof of how we got to where we are? Each candlestick, every trinket, all those books, that say “remember?”

It is so.

Which is why it is fun to play. To fill pin-boards full of inspiration for rooms we might never re-create. Swoon over magazine images of interiors more daring than we could ever dream up. Create collages full of possessions we can only dream of owning and seek out blogs that fill up our rss feeds with rooms so beautiful they make us want to cry into our chocolate muesli.

Today Home and Garden magazine, in association with the oh so terribly English fabric and wallcovering company, Sanderson, is offering us the very same kind of opportunity to play and in the process win £1000.00 to spend at Sanderson. The competition involves creating a scheme for the room in the image above, and should you be lucky (or clever!) enough to create something heart-stopping, have it featured in the magazine in 2010.

While the likelihood of me getting around to entering is slim, the competition got me thinking this morning about decorating my living room, something I suspect I have been boring you with for the past three years. My hearts desire includes white walls and a high-backed, winged armchair in which to sit and read, a wall full of junk shop art and floor to ceiling bookcases.

Tell me now, if you could start again, what would your dream room look like?

P.S: Last night I fell head over heels in love with An Aesthetes Lament, one of the quirkiest, loveliest decorating blogs on the net, not only because of it’s authorative, knowledgeable tone, but also because the writer and her husband have set about cooking every recipe in Elsie De Wolfe’s “Recipes For Successful Dining”…