It's great to be eight

Yesterday was Marie-Kate's 8th birthday and also the first round of the presidential election which didn't please Miss Eight one bit.

After our run (with Alexis) and then voting (after shower) we spent time preparing MK's birthday lunch that she had chosen and baking her birthday cake.

She had a 3DS from us, two games (mamie & papy and grannie), some pretty clips from Gabrielle, books, a watch and a archery set from us too.   

Local(ish) Library

Marie-Kate's apple and salted *butter caramel crepe

We live in a small village outside Paris.  In the village, there's a town hall (like everyplace in France), a nursery and primary school, a 12th century church that was partially destroyed by the English in the hundred year war and a couple of parks, tennis pitches et cetera... My bugbear is that there's isn't a baker's shop, and how I love French bread...So we make it most of the time or go the nearby town that has at least  six boulangeries! That's another story though because there's a place I like to go often and always have and that's libraries. There's one here in our bakerless village and it's really great but is only open for two hours on a Wednesday and a Saturday, so I hardly get down there.  However nearby, over on the other side of the Seine there's a mediatheque and this place is amazing and beats hands down our old media library in Sanary.

My dandelion (pissenlit..love the French word for this) jam crepe

It's got everything Sanary has and more, because here there's a creperie/salad bar and tea shop all in one. It's a great incentive to get the children to read books.


Talking about books, you can borrow up to twenty five books at a time on one card....enormous.  We bought sixteen books back for everyone but Charlotte and Marie-Kate is ready to go back again this weekend.


*salted butter caramel crepes here are to die for...the dandelion one was great too but I love love love anything caramel.

Three(eight really) French Hens

While in London, we found and bought a  lovely book(signed too) for MK for Christmas titled The Twelve Days Of Christmas by Jane Ray.  The illustrations are just beautiful and the girls were inspired to paint their own hens

 Here's a crazy hen

And even a picasso hen

There are more to finish and after I think they'll look fun in the kitchen

Scary/Messy Mudroom and basement, so embarassin

 This room is so untidy and dirty, I really hate it. 
There's a window that looks out on to the garden, one door that leads into the entrance hall  and another that leads you outside (under the studio) next to the where we park. See the horrible wall, well after cleaning it up, I'm going to put tongue and groove over it and then paint it in skimming stone.  We haven't yet decided if to make a  fitted shoe storage system with bench or just buy an Ikea room divider and pop it against the wall.

 Oh yes, nearly forgot, there's a third door that leads the way down into our basement.

 There are three rooms down there.  One is a wine cellar (messy), one a children's toy stockage room which is very big and has a window which looks directly onto the street (small and full of cobwebs usually, but the room is tidy) and a third room which is where Alain keeps all his power tools. 

 At the bottom of the stairs it's bad too, bags everywhere, books to give away too. I did manage to give all of my Gordon Ramsay and other cookbooks I hadn't used since we've lived here to friends (thanks Cedric and Cecile) so just a few hundred books to go.

Corners of our almost tidy bedroom

 Our room is seldom tidy, but it's tidier than our five children's bedrooms.
 Amazingly,even though only slept about 3 hours last night(Saturday night), due to a gremlin alarm problem on my phone, I still managed to tidy one corner of our bedroom and half a wall.

 You see the small pile of books, well there are piles more here and there around the house to add to them...so many books to read and now a tidy corner and some spare time (hopefully) before Christmas, so who knows, I might just attack that pile as of today.

I started Christmas shopping a couple of months ago, especially after seeing these cool posters via Door Sixteen that I ordered from Pop Chart Lab.  We have already a couple of their posters (the beer  and the super powers posters) and now we have three more for the children  for Christmas...I'm waiting for the Candy Bar one for Gabrielle, which hopefully will arrive this week and the Monsters poster for our room and finally a beer ti-shirt for Alain.

Nutella and a book and our old house

Charlotte 15(almost 16)  who adores shopping, loves eating but doesn't cook much anymore, nor does she pick up a book often has been making an effort this past week... she kind of baked (made) her nutella special that consists of smothering nutella all over bread, then pouring over a eggy mixture and then spooning even more nutella over the top and then popping it in the oven for 20 minutes.





I got a shot of the before photo, but alas not the after one as it was eaten fast.


Another thing that has happened this week, is that Charlotte has read a book that I chose for her from the local library, she actually read it all and liked it and that's made me curious enough to actually read this one myself, especially as Alain is away in Norway and I have a couple of hours of calm now the children are either snugged in bed or at least in their bedrooms.

Bonne nuit:)


I yes before I forget, the house we sold in September 2010 is on the market already, can you believe it, apparently, they use it as a holiday home and had hoped to rent it during the holiday season, but things haven't gone to plan, so they have it on the market and want to buy a studio instead in Sanary and a upgrade from their house near Paris to a bigger one in the same  area.

What have I been doing?

Well a lot of reading. I am a sporadic reader, and I'm definitely in reading mode at the moment. Yesterday I picked up another couple of new books at the supermarket (miss my favourite bookshop in Sanary, Baba Yaga), and finished one in the afternoon titled Le Fait du Prince by Amélie Nothomb which I liked immensely for the first three quarters of the book, but frustrating from there on in and as for the end, so rushed.

Other books I've been reading :-

Molloy by Samuel Beckett

Skin by Mo Hayder

L'Enfant Allemand by Camilla Lackberg

Bonne Nuit, Mon Amour

La Métamorphose by Franz Kafka (borrowed from Gaby's bookcase)

Library of the Dead by Glenn Cooper

Stitches by David Small

The bedside table is one of two, that Mr H left, the one who we bought the house from, he said he didn't want them and besides they weren't worth anything, just plastic!

Well, I bit my tongue and smiled internally, because I wanted him to leave them, and I certainly wasn't going to tell him that they were Joe Colombo boby carts, these ones dating from the early 70's when he bought the house....I guess we were lucky.

Our bedroom is the last one to paint, we're off to get some F & B paint tomorrow.

Messy teenager's bedroom...can't get worst

Started Charlotte's room, and thought I better get a picture taken before I finish scrapping and sanding. No wallpaper to strip here...phew, and the walls have already been painted by my impatience teenager, so just they just need a wash down and maybe a lick of paint here and there and all the woodwork needs doing:(.

I'd like to finish before Sunday when Alain gets back from Singapore, but with two parties this weekend and Alexis' sword-fencing and the book I bought today, L'enfant allemand by Camilla Läckberg, this looks unlikely, oh hum.

Now I like Mondays

Marie-Kate eats at home on Mondays. It's nice to have some one to one time with her, we make lunch, sometimes cakes(cupcakes today) and get to read a couple of books.

She's crazy for garlic croutons with or without soup, today she ate so many and said she'd have keep her cupcake(s) for after school (too full).

Cupcakes waiting for little hands at 4.30 (MK took this shot)

Lucky for her that I'm the only one at home this afternoon and that I am trying to cut down on all things sweet.

French lunch breaks last 2 hours, so you can fit in lots to do, eat, talk, play lego and read. MK often chooses the same books. She knows the stories off by heart but never gets bored of any of them. Her favorite sofa book right now is The Man who walked between the towers, the pictures are awesome and the story poignant.

I've started my Christmas "book" shopping on Amazon and as always, have ordered the Caldecott medal winner from this year and the Newbery one too, along with a couple of honor books. I know I'm English but I usually prefer American literature to British, especially for children.

Annual Turn Off Week Blog challenge...How it went here

Kapla Tower

What a great turn off week we had, ok, we were lucky, as we went to London from Thursday onwards, so that helped us turn off ...

Tower Bridge in sight!

Marie Kate, who celebrated her 5th birthday the 22nd did really well, never watched television nor did she play on the Wii. She played heaps outside, and she helped tidy up our garden ( note: she hasn't watched tv since coming back Monday lunch-time..yippee) I'd give her a straight A.

Marie-Kate opening some presents

Alexis watched a little tv in London, but it was in English and we need as much English input as possible, in really enjoyed "Horrible Histories". He probably watched in all, abot 1 hour over the whole week of tv. Before leaving for London he helped more in the kitchen, read more and had more imaginative fun. Alexis has started to read books all on his own which is a great leap forward.
Shelling peas, this is more fun than the TV!

Gabrielle watched the same amount of tv as Alexis and thats all... no wii, no dvd's. Gaby drew a lot and read A Picture of Dorian Gray and a couple of J. Wilson's books (her favourite author).

I didn't do as well as them, I didn't manage to keep to 15 minutes per day of internet, but for a good reason, I had to surf a little to organise our visit to London. I probably used the computer 1 hour per day from Monday till Wednesday. No tv, no videos. I have started to prepare our vegatable garden and I read lots of books with the children. The children have helped me cook a lot more.

A glimpse of a bit of our garden from kitchen window


Alain hasn't used the computer (work not included) and he watched on program on the tv (45 minutes). Bravo Alain. He used to be quite a tv add

Unfortunately our teenagers sucummed to temptation, Oliver couldn't stop playing with his toys (psp, ipod) and the tv, too! He deserves the worse mark of the class. he did play chess once and beat me, argghhh..

Charlotte, watched less tv, but listened to lots of music and hung out with her friends ( which is great).

Charlotte peddling hard at the Sciene Museum

It's Thursday, today, and the children and their friends have been playing outside most of the day, the weather's glorious at long last.

I'm really happy to have participated in this years Annual Turn Off Week and I think we are ready to give up the tv completely.

Decluttering: Day One

Still can't decide if to start with the boys room or the art corner.

For the next two weeks I'm going to declutter our house for spring, we've accumalated far too many things over the years that no long serve a purpose or never have!

Sunday morning, Alain and I started decluttering the garage. We managed to get a quarter of it cleared, we've never managed to fit a car in it, it's pretty hard to fit a person in there, well that was before we started. We took two car loads of junk to the tip, four sack loads for charity and a pile of things for friends and neighbours. There's at least 300 books to go through now in there, I am an hoarder when it comes to these, however, space is restricted and I need to find good homes for them.

I have lots of skis to give away too, we prefer cross-country skiing so our alpin skis are now surplus to requirements.

I'll add some before, during and after photos later.

Unplugged Project: Books

For this week's unplugged project, Marie-Kate decided to make a bookmark, she's really into cats at the moment and she likes playing with her beads so this is what she came up with ( with a little help)

First she threaded a few beads on some string.

Then with some stickers and some glitter pens she decorated her bookmark.

She managed to punch a hole for her beads to be attached.

Now she can find her page quickly

Marie-Kate's favourite books up until now are:-

Little Red Riding Hood ( In English or French, with a many adaptations of this classic at home)

Goldilocks and the Three Bears ( in English)

Badjelly the Witch by Spike Milligan

and finally any

Winnie the Witch book by Valerie Thomas

and

I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman

and not forgotting

Wher the Wild Ones Are ( a familly favorite)

I could go on......

Alexis didn't make a bookmark but he wanted to show his new favourite book character, Tashi ( written by an Australian author), so far he's read the first 5 books in the series and he's hooked. In France, children learn to read when they are 6, Alexis began in September to read in French, although he has been reading in English a bit longer than that.

He likes Tashi so much he painted him onto a tee-shirt that he did a couple of weeks ago.

9 years old...9 ans

Gabrielle turned nine yesterday. The weather was warm and sunny so we ate our mini hamburgers and chips ( as requested by the Miss), followed by a lemon meringue tart in the garden. She had a lot of books, an ipod docking station with radio (she wants an Ipod for Christmas), a big box of lego, and some painting and craft things. This year she received her 9th Pléiade, Mille et Une Nuits.

Wild Sometimes

Here we go (again), I'm going to try to keep this blog going for at least one year with the help of my wild (seldom these days) children. This blog is one of my favorites and we have started to do their projects which my children love and now I'll be able to send links once a project to completed.
We do have a television, although, it's often unplugged, the idea is that it becomes permanantly unplugged within weeks.

Coming soon

English and French book reviews by my children (aged 14, 13, 8, 7 and 4)

Days out, holidays here (France) and other countries we're lucky enough to visit!

Unplugged projects

Art and Crafts