French la Vie

Color lives here. Texture has a voice. Every surface, every shelf, holds a conversation waiting to happen. Arnelle and Roger have spent their lives gathering beauty — gestures, meanings, moments.

When I was in California, I visited my dear friends in their San Francisco home — a place I had only heard about, but somehow already knew I’d love. And I did. I knew I’d be taken in, I knew my eyes would widen, I knew I’d pause mid-step, and every one of those things happened. Their home, like them, is full of presence.

They lived in this home as young renters, long before careers took them across the world. Work that mattered — working alongside artisans, supporting communities, then, years later, they returned. The house they once rented came up for sale, and they said yes to it. It’s been theirs ever since.

Nothing happened all at once. Every corner, every detail, carries the certainty of time well spent. As Arnelle once told me, “what you see here is years of collecting, of becoming, of being.”

Roger’s work with textiles carried him across countries, into workshops and markets. The house feels shaped by that experience — by a life spent listening to craft and culture with intent.

They have built a home from memory, from instinct, from trust in what they love. It doesn’t follow trends or rules. It follows them — their shared history, their individual voices, their long conversation with the world and with each other.

And truly, that is what you feel most in their space: the presence of lives fully lived. Generosity, curiosity, wisdom — it’s all there, tucked into corners, hanging on walls, wrapped in fabric, shining from hand-made pieces carried back from places that changed them.

Being in their home is being invited into something ongoing — something open, alive, and deeply thoughtful. You don’t walk through it. You listen.

Arnelle’s hangs art not by price or provenance, but by feeling — placing a cherished flea market find beside a museum-worthy piece, and letting them talk to each other. Her collection is wide and unexpected, a true reflection of a life open to discovery.

Before Arnelle became an interior designer, she was a caterer — and it shows. Not in fuss or flair, but in how everything in her kitchen has a purpose. Utensils, pots and pans, dishes, linens, napkins, cookbooks — each piece chosen with intention, and more importantly, used.

So many of us have things we never touch. Arnelle touches everything. There’s no “saved for later” in her kitchen. That tiny fork? It gets used. That linen? It’s been washed a hundred times. Even the cookbooks look like they’ve been in the middle of something — and they have.

And then there’s the tile. Floor tile. On the wall. Huge, bold, and completely perfect. The kind of thing you don’t expect to work — until you see it, and then you immediately start wondering how hard it would be to rip out your own backsplash and start again.

Arnelle makes you want to cook more, live more, use the good stuff, and stop waiting for a reason. “Live- it” is the reason.

Can you imagine knowing each other since you were teenagers? Growing through countries and causes, and then returning, together, to a place that once held your younger selves — to now shape it into a home that carries every place you’ve been, and all that you’ve become?

I met Arnelle and Roger through my blog many years ago. They’ve become like mentors — not in any formal way, but in the way they live, the way they speak, the way they see. I’m always learning when I’m with them.

It’s something, isn’t it — how friendship can do that. Quietly, steadily. My admiration is theirs.