Lake of Bays July 25, 2019
Cottage host gifting is all about largesse.
If someone is lending you their lake house this summer, or you’re lucky enough to have cottage-owning friends or family in your ‘bubble’, this year’s essential gift is not a sold out Provençal rosé, but rather hard-to-find Lysol wipes. (I recently got some at Dollarama. Go figure.) But that’s only your opening gift salvo.
Bring snacks (healthy and otherwise) as well as all the components for one very nice dinner. Throw in a special bottle for the host to enjoy later, apart from what you’ve brought to consume during your stay. And if you are positively giddy with the thought of leaving the steamy city for a cool, quiet lake, then add a gift so nice and unexpected that every time your hosts look at it they’ll think, “oh, we must invite her back.”
And don’t forget to sweep up the bunkie on your last day, strip your bed (or even better, bring your own sleeping bag so you’re not sticking them with laundry) and maybe leave some gas money if they took you out in the boat for a tour of the area or wake surfing.
Enjoy your stay!
Images clockwise from centre upper right
• If your hostess was a bookish young girl in the 1970s, The Long Secret is a trip back in time. The darkish 1965 sequel to Harriet the Spy spoke directly to outwardly polite girls with hidden reserves of intensity. And it takes place in Water Mill, on the south fork of Long Island, New York, i.e. the Hamptons before they were “The Hamptons”.
• Hand sanitizer is part of our daily lives now, so make it pretty. Vancouver’s own AG Hair’s Hands Free Clean Hand Sanitizer Gel, $13, in a sleek pump bottle, looks chic on an entry hall table and its 73% ethyl alcohol formula is effective, while aloe and glycerin calm skin and restore moisture. AG Hair has donated 5,000 bottles to BC area frontline and health care workers.
• A family sized bottle of Bioderma Photoderm SPF 40 High Protection Spray sunscreen, $37.90, contains almost half a litre of sunscreen, with a trigger sprayer that makes it easy to keep the entire brood protected.
• Draped over the back of a couch during the day (cannily hiding that patch that the cat destroyed) and over your shoulders on the deck on chilly nights, The Bay’s 350th anniversary sterling wool caribou throw, $170, is a monochromatic take on the classic multi-hued Hudson’s Bay point blanket and its subtle gradations of pale to dark grey stripes will elevate any room.
• If those tubes and jars in the cottage bathroom have Zeller’s price stickers, they’re probably pretty old. Restock the medicine chest with Canada’s own Zax’s Original brand natural remedies like arnica-based Bruise Cream, $19, and soothing Bug Bite & Itch Cream, $16. (Zax’s is donating twenty per cent of online sales to the Red Cross in support of Covid-19 initiatives.)
• Saje x Jillian Harris Aroma Carve ($94) diffuser’s fluted cylindrical cover looks beautiful on a shelf. Too many diffusers just look like diffusers and that utterly defeats the point. Include Saje Deep Breath Diffuser Blend, $16, a mix of eucalyptus, peppermint, and lavender that is not only calming and invigorating, but also refreshes musty cottage and cottage bathroom air.
• A French market basket can corral towels indoors or get loaded up to stylishly transport a picnic lunch to the beach.
• Nude’s Glacier Wine Cooler, $118, is so elegantly sleek and unfussy that your hosts might even decide to bring it back to the city. Include a fresh bag of ice from the gas station en route and be the cottage hero.
• Sure you can bring the ingredients for a summer cocktail (Remember Greyhounds? I would like to bring them back) but a modern classic like Cave D'Esclans Whispering Angel Rosé is always a crowd-pleaser.