Our families, ever a source of unconditional love, need not be sidelined on Valentine’s Day. Designing as we do for living beautifully ensemble, we offer a recipe for celebrating as a crew with a dinner inspired by a rouge palette.

As backdrop, play up your tablescape with fuchsia blooms such as tulips or anemones and fold classic crimson bandanas as napkins. Ever a crowd pleaser, Elisa’s recipe for Bolognese sauce manifests the cozy warmth of Cupid (sans saccharine sentimentality). She serves it over Rummo’s gluten-free pasta (“their penne and rigatoni are superb!”), which always comes out al dente, i.e. delicious. Get ready for your family to swoon!

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Bolognese à la Elisa

serves six

Ingredients

6-8 cloves of garlic, diced

1 yellow onion, quartered

½ teaspoon fennel seed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound organic ground pork

1 pound organic ground round beef

2 large cans (28 ounces each) San Marzano plum tomatoes

1 can tomato paste (6 ounces)

2 tablespoons Italian seasoning

1 cup half and-half

1 cup water

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

1. Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil until the onion becomes translucent. Add pork and beef and cook with Italian seasoning. Salt and pepper to taste.
2. In a blender, purée the canned tomatoes and pour into the sauté pan with your meats. Add the bay leaf. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add tomato paste with water. Stir and re-cover pan. Simmer for 3 hours on low heat, stirring periodically. As soon as the timer sounds, add the half-and-half and continue to simmer. Sprinkle in the fennel seed to cut the tartness of the tomato and continue to slow cook for several minutes. Finish with more salt and pepper to taste. Once you’ve achieved the perfect spoonful, serve.

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Bon appétit, mon amours!

It’s time to thrive. Done with coping, we bound ahead into 2022, keen to imbue the interiors we design with boundless possibility and potential. Seizing the day (or year), we ask ourselves and our clients: How can a space empower us to live our best lives? How can a house inspire our highest functionality?

In 2022, we expand the notion of home beyond a site of resilience, embracing our walls as sources of catalytic inspiration. “A well-designed home should not only enable you to live beautifully, but also encourage you to grow,” Elisa Chambers says. When she started Snake River Interiors 22 years ago, Elisa began with the profound principal that in order for people to live beautifully, their homes must function beautifully. Then as now, she empowers such integrated living by listening and leading. “We get to know our clients. We get to know their rhythms and their routines, their wants and their needs,” she says. “We earn their respect and practice open communication, which often includes highlighting when certain aspects may prove unfunctional.”

Connection lies at the core of our work: connection with place, with space, between people. Connection physically too: How do we flow through rooms? How do we flow into different modes and operations? Through design, we enable greater forms of connection and expression. Personality becomes concretized. Vision leads us to imagine future utility that builds upon current use. Ever educating ourselves as designers, we approach interiors with both optimism and realism; we know what works and we listen to what inspires. No matter the scope or scale of project, we ask: “What will make you thrive in this home?”

True to the roots of our name and our wild and free county, let’s embrace twenty twenty two as our year—a year ripe for discovery and creativity. Recommitting to our hearts and our homes, we wish you love, peace and perspective in the new year.

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

– Audrey Hepburn

To garden in Jackson, the hope for summer springs eternal, even though locals know the April showers—May flowers paradigm doesn’t quite relate to the Tetons with blooms biding their time until June and July. To kickstart summer gardening, we turn to planters as (relatively) foolproof forms for early flowers. Even if freezing temps continue to cloak our nights, most container gardens can withstand some flux with flying colors.

Planter Picks

Because we are in the object business, we always begin by choosing our planters. When considering a vessel, think about the site conditions: clay, plaster or terracotta containers can break with consistent freezing and thawing, though they should last through a wily Jackson summer. Concrete or cast iron are more durable, capable of being left outside in all sorts of weather, though they weigh more and therefore planting should happen in the precise spot where you’d like the planter to live. At Twenty Two Home, we carry a coterie of one-of-a-kind antique planters that we individually source from France ranging from: A pair of 1920s cast iron vessels, each one a palimpsest of paint from a green layer to beige and white flecks; a show-stopping set of square plaster planters with sculpted handles by the incomparable Willy Guhl; a 1960s tapered plaster piece with side indentations as hand holds; and a green-rimmed plaster gem perfect for a petite sculptural planting.

Planter Curation

We love the impact of a planter brimming with a single species—think rosemary, lavender or a variegated ornamental grass. That said, we always applaud collaging textures. With mixing in mind, we turn to the Good Housekeeping adage of including “a thriller, a spiller and a filler,” which translates into a focal-point plant (coleus or geraniums) paired with several varieties that spill over the edge of the planter (petunias or creeping zinnias), and finally, fillers—plants with smaller leaves or buds that creep into the crevices of your arrangement (salvias, verbenas or herbs like parsley). We swoon the notion of melding form and function by blending flowering plants with edible herbs to enliven eyes and appetites. For a fourth dimension, explore height with a fountain grass or a trellis to support a vine. All told, Good Housekeeping recommends five to six plants per 18-to-24-inch container.

Planter Placement

Front entrances are one of our favorite spots for planters, whether arranged in a pair on the threshold of a front porch, flanking the front door or one-per-stair. Decks and terraces are also excellent locations for planter placement, underscoring the meteorological invitation to migrate outside for all meals. Asymmetrical clusters add visual intrigue and variety. As Oscar de la Renta once said, “Gardening is how I relax. It’s another form of creating and playing with colors.” We couldn’t agree more, so thus inspired, go forth and color play!