It began when we purchased an olive orchard -- accidentally.  The trees covered the hillsides, but during the buying process our attention was focused on the house rather than the surrounding landscape.  Even so, it's a little emabarrassing to admit that we somehow overlooked nearly 200 olive trees. We moved in over the holidays in 2010.  Not long after, Kyle announced the "discovery" of our orchard to a less-than-enthusiastic wife.  It took us years to learn the rythms of pruning, tending and harvesting.

The orchard became a place of both hard work and restoration.  For years, we made weekend trips from Seattle to tend the trees.  We spent long hours working outside and even longer ones around tables with family and friends, watching the sun disappear behind the hills.  Somewhere, along the way, we realized that the life we were building there felt simple, satisfying and worth holding onto.

        We found ourselves drawn to that same feeling in France.

We traveled there for years, but over time visiting became something closer to living.  Early mornings at markets and brocantes. Long lunches with friends.  Slow evenings around a table or sitting on a terrace long after dinner should have ended.  And, inevitably, we began to bring things home.

Old linens, silver, paintings, glassware and useful objects with evidence of the lives they already had lived.  We became as interested in the people selling them and the stories behind them as we were in the objects themselves.  What began as collecting for our own homes eventually became the Bel Lavoro Atelier.

It may seem an unlikely collection -- olive oil, old French linens, tea, a portrait found at a brocante.  To us, they belong together.  They are all part of the same idea:  pay attention to what is already there, care for it well, and make it part of your everyday life.

That is Bel Lavoro.  The beautiful work.