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Whenever I prepare our guest cottage for new guests arriving, I invariably think about my grand mother. An elegant lady and a fine housekeeper.
When as a little girl, I stayed with her, she always placed, on my bedside table a tiny vase with a handful of blooms from the garden. I loved this attention to detail, a sweet welcome, an accompanying gesture that made me feel cared for.
So today, as I tidied the cottage, and made up the beds, my last task was to pick a few flowers and pop them into vases. Some for the kitchen, some for the living room and some – of course – for the bedside table.
How about you? What is the special thing you like to do, to make guests feel welcome? Or, alternatively, what is the thing you most remember, that a host or hostess prepared for your visit?
26 comments
I love daisies!!! and always welcome a nice vase with handpicked flowers … the wilder, the better. I'm always drawn by your beautiful garden and your flower arrangements.
Your guests are so lucky to be staying over at your home.
Have a nice weekend!
Very pretty flowers Sharon. For our guests flowers in the bathroom as well as by the bedside are a must. I also fill a bowl with fresh fruit and the small refridgerator with a few special snacks.
Love the first simple arrangement, very pretty.
Is that fresh mint in with the roses Sharon?
Paul
I leave the latest travel book I have read and some foodie magazines by their bed for some escapism.
Also some sprigs of lavender from our farmhouse garden to scent the room
Nicole
I prepare a jar of home made jam for the guests. Every year I make extra jams for the guests in the coming season.this summer I do my plum jam with lavender, last year they found in the cottage stawberry with mint.Love from the hot Plain Hungary. Dorka http://www.dorottyaudvar.co.hu
Lovely! I also pick small flowers and put them in a tiny vase for the guest. I also use a serving tray, and fill it with a bunch of various things like a small gorgeous carafe/cup with good water, a magazine, a candle lit lantern, a gift personalized to them and lay the tray on their bed, and I spritz the sheets with lavender essential oil. Its fun. blessings. lady
All I can say is I wish I was going to be the next guest at your cottage…So cool, fresh, crisp, and peaceful looking! The flowers are BREATHTAKING!!! Thanks for sharing!
LOVE the flowers by the bed! I too love to make guests feel welcome. Fresh flowers from the garden with a "welcome" sign in the room, water and glasses, fresh towels and a gorgeous cake of soap, sometimes a tray with a kettle, mug, and tea, or a basket with favorite books and magazines. These are the things I like to do for someone.
One of the best hospitality experiences I had was at a b&b; in Scotland. The hostess prepared tea and homemade sweets for us on arrival and made us feel so welcome. I often think back to that time when I am getting ready for guests. It was an inspiration.
Oh I think fresh flowers in a home really brighten up a room! Lovely!!
You read my mind. I do the same with bottles of water at the bedside in a special wire basket, beautiful wrapped soaps and fluffy towels in the bath.
Lovely!
xoxo, Chris
Oh you are a gal after my own heart. Flowers arranged in all the rooms are what I love the most.
When I was a child I'd pick daisies and pop them into a tin can and place them in my outdoor play area.
Today it's home grown roses in vases from crystal to pottery or glass sealer jars.
Enjoy your guests sharon.
Sounds like great minds are all running alike…I add a few books (especially if I know the guest's tastes), bottled water, new towels with unopened bars of soap on a chair in the bedroom (because we have a son living at home who shares the bath) I also leave a mug in the bathroom with a new toothbrush and a toothpaste I picked up in Italy. Sometimes it's just fun to try something new! Love your blog!
I like to leave a bottle of 'San Peligrino', a few luxury travel soaps, some fresh clean towels & some wonderfully scented flowers, like lilacs or sweet peas! x
I put a few magazines (the ones I think guests will enjoy)out, flowers and a scented candle. Reading the comments above, I'm getting more ideas!!! Thanks all! btw, your flowers are gorgeous, I sure wish I could travel oversees to your land of beautiful!
I used to own a B&B; so that attention to details runs deep in me. I always try to have fresh flowers or greens if blooms aren't available. If family, I like to try for a fun photo of them and always spritz the sheets and fluffed pillows with a fresh linen spray. As I see your blog, I am so glad I do…because it makes a difference. Yours is beautiful!
Flowers are a must – they have a way of making guests feel special, I think. The other posters have included some great ideas as well.
Your guests are so lucky!
What lovely little country bouquets! I always put bottled water, little chocolates, and a selection of bath products out for my guests. I love preparing the guest rooms for company!
Dear Sharon….How funny/odd to read this posting, just after (as in yesterday) reading a letter from a woman of whom I'm not particularly fond, but whom I've known for about fifteen years. Don't bother asking why I correspond with a woman whom I don't like; the fact remains that, having initially met me as a client, she's obviously (and for a surprisingly long while) decided that I'm her pet writer/artist. So, she occasionally writes, and I invariably respond. This has been going on for years.
In any case, her most recent letter described, among other things, her recent stay at her daughter-in-law's parents' house.
All too obviously, she doesn't think much of the couple (or her daughter-in-law, for that matter). They are (and I quote) "predictably middle-class".
I read that, and I thought "Well, duhh….given that about 75% of Americans qualify as 'middle class', you don't have to be a genius to find their class 'predictable'….". You do, of course, have to be a singularly unpleasant person to phrase the matter in her terms.
Then, I read her description of the guest room which they'd prepared for her. I was genuinely taken aback and grimly amused to read "The entire room resembled a tacky B&B.; Obviously, they'd tried their best. At least I was spared the affectation of a carafe of tapwater."
What? Leaving a carafe of water and a glass is an "affectation"? I read that, and I thought "God…this has got to be the UNHAPPIEST woman I know….I'm so glad I'm not her…."
Two of the loveliest women I know (one is an elderly friend in Virgina, and the other is my teen-tiny, French mother-in-law) have, coincidentally, a marvelous/delightful mutual habit. They both (and they've never met, of course)keep file-boxes for friends and family members on their desks. Into those boxes go random clippings from newspapers and magazines, chocolate bars, funny advertisements….all the things that made them think of you and which they'd simply hand to you if you lived with them. Both of them declare that this system is much more efficient than trying to remember to go to the post.
So, when I arrive, there's always a box on the bed in both of those old houses, filled with various amusing clippings and small "this made me think of you" presents. It's really quite a lovely, openly sentimental practice.
Nor am I "spared the affectation" of a carafe of tapwater. I happen to greatly appreciate this, since the kitchen in both old houses is a circuitous hike away from the bedrooms.
I may have told you that this "new", 220 year old house of mine was expensively renovated and turned into a B&B; back in 1995 or so.
Yesterday, I had fun arranging and hanging (as you might guess, I have many, many pictures) the upstairs guest bedrooms. Oddly enough, none of them communicate with each other. They all have tiny, separate staircases. Originally, they were servants' rooms. My assumption is that the original family was markedly paranoid about a midnight revolt of the staff if they were allowed to talk with each other.
In any case, I finally went through the hundreds of fancy soaps (and other de-luxe toiletries) that Herve collects on his constant and far-ranging travels for work. For better or worse, we're both allergic (how "predictably middle-class" of us) to scented soaps, so these tend to pile up. As of last night, each guest room has a big, glass fishbowl sitting in the bathroom….filled with fancy soaps from luxury hotels in Beijing, Paris, London, etcetera.
I got those all together and thought "Oh, folks are going to love these when they visit"….particularly when I tell them to PLEASE take as-many-as-they-want home with them in their suitcase.
—David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
P.S. (and I should stress that it's only 7:22 in the morning hereabouts…I will, eventually, get down to working)….
….As for the WORST guest-room "welcoming touch" in history? A friend of mine, having arrived for a weekend stay at the house of friends in the Virginia countryside a few years ago, was taken upstairs to her room……where she and her hostess screamingly encountered a severed deer's head, antlers sawed-off by a poacher, lying gorily on the bed. Too early-scene-from-"The Godfather" for words….
It was a bloody-bloody mess-beyond-belief. Obviously, the household's two, very large hounds had found the head and dragged it upstairs where they could enjoy it in peace. Any domestic outrage Your Gibson has ever committed must pale in comparison.
The husband disposed of the deer-head and, to her credit, my friend rolled up her sleeves and introduced herself to the laundry room while the hostess got on to cooking dinner.
A true, if appalling, story of gracious, rural living…..
Amusedly yours as ever,
David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
I always turn down the bed in the evening for house guests, and put a fresh carafe on water with glass by the bed.
Très jolis bouquets. Bonne journée.
Lovely comments by your readers…
In hysterics reading David Terry's posts. I pray he writes a book. Will be a best seller!
Personally, lovely mags on the bedside table, with a small chocolate, a few springs of lavender in a vase, tissue box and a generous sprinkle of talcum powder onto the sheets. Oh yes, and an electric blanket & a mohair rug on the end of the bed (terrible being cold in someone elses home). xx
David Terry – what a hoot! I leave the Sunday edition of the New York Times, flowers or vines by the bed, a small floor rug (wood floors can get cold) and an extra blanket. Also, I place a pretty tray on the dresser top to organize their stuff, and make space in the dresser drawers and closet for their clothes.
Hi Sharon
The fresh flowers are a beautiful thought. The room looks perfect and so inviting.
I like to leave a basket of fruit, a carafe of water and candies. If I know my guest's habits, I will often serve them, room service, a continental breakfast.
Helenx
fantastic post and Thanks for sharing this info. It's very helpful.
B&B; in Jaipur
Sharon, Thank you for everything. The details were amazing and I felt exactly the same you felt. These details and flowers were not missed. I inmediatly realized the book was left for us! and this made me feel so home. I love to receive friends and I always watch on these kind of details. But this time was different… this was just for us! thank you very much, for everything. Also for the flowers on the breakfast! we love staying at your cottage, kids are missing the place, you and the dogs already! and us too! Love, Lore