The
Internet, at it's best, helps one discover how other people live. A
few years ago, while searching for a special shampoo, I found Mjolk, a
wonderful combo Scandinavian/Japanese lifestyle and furniture boutique
in Toronto, CANADA. The owners are John Baker and Juli Daoust, a
remarkably creative dynamo who, in their 'spare' time, renovated an
exquisite countryside cottage, the loveliest of places for their two
children and awesome Irish wolfhound.
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| Grandmother Sophia's fruit bowl |
The photo below is of their cottage decorated for Christmas, as depicted on their website blog https://www.mjolk.ca/blogs/mjolk/. That sweet hob-nailed amber bowl in the lower left of center foreground caught my eye, enchanting me.
I've looked high and low in northern Virginia thrift/collectible shops for anything remotely similar, to no avail. Then, in a sudden flash of insight, I realized I have a lovely Depression glass bowl too, that my mother gave me, one of two heirlooms from my grandmother Sophia. Tucked away in a safe drawer, I have been too careful to use it.
This
reminds me of the first friends we made when we moved to Grand Forks,
ND, Bob and Toni Olson. They did not have children and foresaw none on
the way yet Toni had grown up in an enriched home, full of classic
children's books, which they'd moved from San Jose, California to
Montana then ND. "Books are best when loved and read, not tucked away in
a corner of a bookcase," she said when she gave them to our oldest
daughter Anna, then six. I now understand what she meant.
