This was my 2012 Christmas present! It's a bag, bought in Cuneo under the portegi, some little store on Corso Nice. I fell in love with it mainly because although it IS an animal purse, (I've always admired them but never owned one, their always a bit too much in my mind.) it isn't obviously an animal purse. This one kinds of hides it's little metal face away until someone finally notices it, only than do I hear the oohs and ahhs. In other words, it looks like an ordinary purse until you really look at it. It's a Ricci, hedgehog in English which are of course native to Northern Italy. Now I'm pretty sure this was not made here in Italy, but the Italians thought it was cool enough to offer in their stores, so good enough for me!

It's actually a pretty big bag that can hold lots of daily items or maybe a few of it's live brothern inside. What do you think? Could you carry this off? The spikes are kind of cool too....

So, to continue on with the Italian idea of door and window treatments, my last discussion being about Tapparelle a couple of posts back, let me give you an idea of how we do our inside window treatments.

You will see curtains like rods that mount on the outside of the wall so that the curtains hang over and completely cover and hiding doors and windows, but usually you will see a simple set up like this.

Tipically you'll have very thin and short curtain rods that mount on the door frame above the door panel itself. Here I have to different ones together to create a two toned effect. What you are looking at is the standard size for Italian construction in apartments and small homes. So the curtain sizes come standard as well, although you may have to cut the length some times, the width is always the same.

This is my son's bedroom, don't ask about the barbeque bomb.., sigh

The little dots on the curtains, inventions I love, are simply flat disks of fake marble in white. On the backs of these disks are magnets and a length of ribbon connects the two together. You put one magnet on the back of your curtain, the other on the front and let the curtain fall and drape as you like. Because of these doors and of course the terraces beyond, an Italian home is always light and breezy, well on warm days that is!

Here's a pic of the little magnetized ribbon disk that holds our curtains so perfectly!

A word about the door mechanism itself as you are probably wondering how the heck do these things lock.

The handle itself twists 360 forcing a bar located inside the door up or down, oped or closed.

The bar slides up into a top piece mounted on the door frame and the door is officially locked. It seals very well too preventing drafts and chills. You can see the tiny curtain rod as well, just mounted on an L hook.

And there you have it! Brilliant, charming Italian door and window treatments!  I think we need them, AND the terraces, in the US too.