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.

M-K's Rocky Road Cake

One thing I miss about where we lived before is our neighbours, Dédée and Robert. Last night, we ran out of icing sugar, I really could have done with Dédée to save the day as MK's Nigella Lawson's inspired cake would have looked better with a snowy sprinkling of icing sugar. 850km is a little far so we had to do without...

Une chose qui me manque de notre vie précédente à Sanary est la présence de nos voisins Dédée et Robert. Hier soir nous étions à court de sucre glace, j'aurais aimé pouvoir demander à ma voisine, tant pis 850 km est un peu loin, donc on a fait sans...

A window with a view

Living in the heart of a village is new to all of us. For the first time, the youngest children can walk to school which is a stones throw away while the older three catch their school buses on the same road.

Our next door neighbor raises hens and each morning his enormous rooster Chirac. He usually begins to crow around 4, and then he continues intermittently all day long (and probably all night, but I'm fast asleep).

A famous impressionist painter once lived in the house almost opposite ours, over a hundred years ago. If the house were just a little lower, we'd be able to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance, instead we see the house, which is architecturally appealing to the eye, so I'm happy with that.

This is the view you get if you look out through the children's bathroom window, it once was the village hall but now it's the village school ( I said it was quite close). This is one of my favorite views.

Happy Children

It snowed enough yesterday for the children to have a snowball fight(the girls are above throwing snowballs down on Alexis) and then be so tired afterwards that they were all asleep before 8pm (let it snow more often...).

Paint or not?

I found this cute little bedside table for MK at a local thrift shop.

Can't decide if to paint it or not, we shall wait and see. Marie-Kate loves it.

Oh yes, it only cost 10euros!

(I haven't yet painted the radiator)

1st December

One of my most fond memories from Christmas as a child was waiting for Mr and Mrs Christmas to be unpacked for another year. Christmas only began when they were wound up for the first time to turn around to music, it was magical. I wasn't allowed to wind them up though.

Mum gave me Mr and Mrs Christmas during one of my recent visits back in the UK. Apparently this eldery couple date back to the early 50's, even if they are a little kitch, I still love them so, and my children do too. And guess what, I let my children wind them up so they can see them turn around as if they were dancing.

Yesterday we decorated the Christmas tree. We seem to have lost a box of decorations between Sanary and here so the girls made some salt dough stars and snowball shapes and then painted them gold or silver or both.

When Charlotte and Gaby were younger (5 and nearly 1) they made an angel for the top of the tree and there is always a fight about who should put it on the top of the tree ( our teenagers excluded for the first time this year, way too grown up for that, in their opinion...sniff, sad really).

This year Alexis had the honor. Our tree is so tall that he needed a chair and a papa to reach the top!

Snowy House

It's been threatening to snow all morning and much to the children's delight after lunch it began(not enough to make a snowman use yet, maybe it might even stop...).

Our house is right in the heart of the village, this is a view from the garden looking down on it. On the right is our future summer kitchen. Where the roof is lower on far left hand-side of the house, you can just make out the triangle topped shutter , well, this will be our future studio, it's actually very big (36m2), but it's the last thing on our lonnnggg list.

In our garden we have two outside caves that were used (this one the sure) to store beetroot).

The other cave is behind that wall, I find this one a little creepy.

Don't suppose we'll be dining outside for a while.