A week of snow in the south of France

Well, how unexpected! It's snowed here at some point over each of the last few winters, and winter 2010 was pretty heavy... but in general, snow is not much seen down here.

What's unexpected this time is that the snow not only fell...

... but it lasted!

Finally, we have a lot of birds visiting our feeders.

If Eeyore really lived in that little hut (above right), he'd have reason to be miserable. In fact, it houses the pool filtering equipment. But I like to imagine Eeyore there.

Look away now if you don't like mice!

I'm perfectly happy if they stay outside, but I'm afraid some of this one's relatives strayed indoors and tried to steal our Christmas chocolates. They Are No More...

When the snow started falling, over a week ago now, Son 1 was excited enough to get a wellie boot on one foot and a trainer on the other, and wrap up warm enough to shuffle around the garden on his crutches. Raja followed, doggedly.

Now we're at the stage where a thin layer of snow or, worse, ice has sat over everything for about a week. Crutches are out of the question, so Son 1 is stuck back indoors and, when I'm not working, we're playing endless but enjoyable games of Carcassone. At the moment, I'm winning the latest round...Don't forget to enter my giveaway in the post below, to win four little collections of French vintage goodies!

Looking Four-ward Giveaway!

Well, friends, it has been three years since my first blog post! However, I don't seem to feel interested in the number three: I am, rather, looking ahead to the fourth year, which begins today! That's why I've called this giveaway my Looking Four-ward post - can you forgive me?
With this in mind I want to give you the chance to win four sets of four sweet French collectables, all bundled up in a little surprise wrapper! The first collection is a set of four vintage children's handkerchiefs - they were given away free with 'Alsa' brand baking powder. I especially love the gypsy one, which is in green, but you may have other favourites!

The second set of four is antique French postcards: they have romantic pictures and poems on the front, and several have messages or addresses on the back too. They date from the early 20th century.


Now we come to four rather special, quite large, Mother of Pearl buttons from my collection. Actually, these might not all be French, because I've collected these for years and some could come from the UK.

And finally some French ephemera and kitchenalia - a match-box cover with a little proverb, the number 37 (probably from a police uniform?), a Notre Dame brooch and a little madeleine tin.I don't know what you'll do with these four collections, but I think you could have fun with them!To have the chance to win, please leave a comment here. I'd love it if you would publicise my giveaway, so if you take the first or the final photo here and put it into your blog with a link, please let me know in a second comment and that will give you a second chance to win. If you're new here and would like to come back, do feel free 'follow' and/or to browse through other events like The Thrill of What You Already Have and A Pause in Lent, which you'll find in my sidebar. It's been quite an incredible three years with you all - probably the most formative of my adult life, aside from university. I'm really looking forward to the Fourth!

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED - I'm going to delete the non-entry comments so that I can count the draw fairly...

Maître des Crèpes

Or Crèpemeister, or whatever you want! This is Son 2: When he first arrived in France their little 'French as a second language' book gave them a recipe for crèpes and he's been helping me make them ever since. Now he's pretty much independent, and as he's such a perfectionist he prefers the way he makes them, anyway!

Yesterday was Candlemas, la Chandeleur in French. That's the French Pancake Day, so it was handy that Son 2 came home from school early to take possession of the kitchen. The cause was this:Just enough snow to keep the teachers from further out of town from getting in for their lessons!Son 1 and his knee say 'Hi'! We spent yesterday evening eating pancakes and playing Carcasonne. It's not such a hard life...

The Thrill of What You Already Have - February Picture

It's snowing! Here in the south of France that's quite an excitement, let me tell you... Ben and Son 2 are planning a skiing trip on Saturday. Son 1 and I are planning another quiet day, but he's becoming more mobile and suffering less pain so we are quite happy with a quiet day on those terms... He's just worked out how to play the (new, digital) piano with his leg stuck out sideways, so he's a whole lot less bored now.So it's February! I managed January's Thrill of What You Already Have post towards the middle of the month, but I'll be aiming to give you the pictures earlier in the month from now on - here is February's vintage rail tourism poster:I'm quite excited by this one! For a start, my Scottish connections these days are all Edinburgh-based, but my imagination is really captured by the great age of steam trains, along with all the historical monuments captured in the poster.

The aim is the same as last month - use the inspiration of this poster to rummage through the things you already have, to create some kind of display that allows you to delight in possessions you didn't have to rush out and buy! Last month some of the participants decribed it as 'home shopping', which I thought was fun. If you want to know more, the basic rules are here. I'll be doing my rummage over the next few days, and will post a photo or two once I've got a collection I'm happy with. Let me know on this post (or on my next one) when you've posted your February 'Thrill', and I'll put a link to it in my sidebar. Have fun!

Rainbow gratitude...

Would you like a peek inside yesterday's vintage fabric boxes? This one houses white(ish) stuff that I'm prepared to use (i.e. not my lace collection).

Following that we get onto (roughly) the colours of the rainbow:There's nothing to say about what's inside - you can see it yourself! So I'm just going to list a few things I'm grateful for:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - the film, shared with a temporarily out-of-action 14 year old.Doctors who phone in their lunch-hour to confirm that a swollen knee and pins-and-needles in the foot is OK.Paracetamol.

Ibuprofen.

Ice-blocks.Hoovered floors and cleaned bathrooms - my mental energy is returning!Toasted sandwiches for two at lunch.Simon Schama's History of Britian on DVDs - Son 2 (yes, the young scatty one, not the older intellectual) captivated by seeing how his own heritage fits in to what he's learning at school in France. He can't WAIT for the Hundred Years War!

A new dishwasher - this one actually cleans things and genuinely uses the amount of energy it promises!A digital piano - Ben's big splash-out in the sales, to replace the falling-apart-and-Son-2-and-the-piano-teacher-refuse-to-play-it-any more old one.So I think that list took me from current medical issues to the slightly bigger picture! That was the aim of the exercise, I suppose... Thanks for joining me on it - feel free to comment on the pictures or the text!

Mmm, textures!

The juxtapositions idea is still really holding my interest - I took these photos a while ago after I'd sorted buttons and ribbons into boxes, and now this detail of two vintage, handmade pincushions and the little vintage needle case, placed on three different wooden boxes, is really satisfying me! If I turn round I can see the real thing - it's the stack of boxes on the shelf at the top of the stairs. The wooden boxes currently contain my button collection - it's not that easy to slip the odd button into the stacked boxes, but I think the look is currently worth the effort, and I'll change it again once I get fed up with it - playing with the collection of buttons and boxes is half the fun!

I took the buttons out of my fabric boxes, as they were rather heavy and endangering some of the cardboard-based box bases. Now the fabric boxes are holding ribbons, binding etc, colour-coded according to the box! I did this earlier in January and so far the system is working well - when I needed some black binding I found it quickly in the third box down on the left, for example. (It was for mending Son 1's trousers, which have all got beaten up by cycling - but not on the chain side, for some reason!)Of course Son 1 won't be cycling, or even wearing long trousers, for a while. He's currently trapped on the sofa, wearing a leg-brace, following his second knee operation. Thanks so much for your kind words both before and after the op. Everything went so well, and everyone - hospital staff, friends and above all Ben, were so helpful. But for me today has still been a day of feeling a bit low and fighting off the desire to cry at times - it's just an emotional business, supporting your child through an operation. Despite this, thinking of the alternatives - living in an under-developed country, or living in a wealthy country but not having good insurance - make me realise we are really blessed. And looking at pretty boxes helps too ;)

All well...

A quick post to say that Son 1's operation on Friday went well and he's home now. We're all tired and are looking forward to some down-time together this evening!

Speak to you later...

The rough with the smooth... the smooth with the rough!

I had a bit of fun playing with juxtapositions last night - I put a rough horn tankard filled with garden cuttings, next to Ben's silver Christening bowl, on a hand-woven, goats' hair mat. Rough and smooth; dull and gleaming; European, American and Asian; 19th, 20th and 21st century: hand-crafted-all.

Don't you love the silver fish tongs (for sugar), and this cheery little Inuit tooth-topped spoon?

A happy chappy. I didn't buy him so I don't feel any guilt about the tooth's former owner.

I only meant to post about the physical juxtapositions of this display but it struck me today that our life is full of juxtapositions too: illness and operations (Son 1's knee again), sweet gestures of affection, exhaustion and concerns, beauty and blessings.I think that in the past I spent too much time 'getting through' the hard times. I didn't notice that, juxtaposed with them, were sweet and beautiful times. Now I think that looking at those beautiful times is what's meant to give us strength to deal with the tricky parts of life.

A little domestic chatter...

We had a whirl-wind week last week, with Son 1 and me charging to and from Toulouse (apparantly one of Europe's most congested cities), Ben also working hard and Son 2 feeling slightly neglected! A domesticated weekend was called for... Son 1 decided to cook, big time. He made fudge as a thank-you present to the museum staff who'd helped his work experience, and then turned to the Hairy Biker's Cookbook for various feasts: on Saturday night (rather late) we ate Romanian mititei (pronounced 'mitchi') and a fantastic Mexican chocolate pudding - sorry, no photos, we were too busy eating! We even fed Son 2's friend, who was staying over as a favour to his mum, and had eaten before he came... he had space for a choc pud, though!

On Sunday morning I decided to get in the kitchen with Son 1, as he was attempting to produce Romainian Sarmale, which has a two-hour cooking time. Even with me and Ben helping the night before, Son 1 had been a slow chef... but with two of us on the go we produced this really excellent stew. It probably doesn't look special but 4 out of 5 of us (Son 2's friend included) gave it very high marks - a super Sunday lunch! And only slightly late. We don't pay any attention to Son 2's vote, unfortunately, as he's a very conservative eater...

On Sunday afternoon the three boys went off to play with three brothers who live nearby ('their parents were slightly overwhelmed at times', admits Son 1...). I joined Ben in the garden, where he had been chopping wood for a few hours. I held branches while he sliced through them with the chainsaw, and then moved the wood to the shed, where he stacked it beautifully:That should do us for the rest of the winter!Today has provided the blessed relief of staying home alone. I tidied and sorted and cleaned, and took some photos! The (modern) boutis quilt and vintage lace pillows came from a charity shop last week, and the 'wooden' tray below (it's actually modern plastic) was from one of the Troc shops in Toulouse. My visits there were not entirely cultural, as you see!

Today I decided to have one of my periodic battles with my very own 'Sofa that Mocks Me'. (The original 'Couch that Mocks Me' was Lola Nova's and can be seen here and here, but I have one of my own...). I was fairly happy with the technicolour cheeriness (and above all cleanliness) of the result:Whilst giving the rug a good hoover (not that you'd know it from these photos) I thought, as always, of Jane. She told me once that she doesn't like modern oriental rugs, but does like them when they've got old and battered.Old enough for you, Jane? (Spot the super mend by someone before my time.)Battered enough for you, Jane? (I've mended this edge so many times that I'm currently on slobby strike, I'm afraid.)But I really, really, do love my rug, and I think Jane will too!So, the rest of this afternoon holds more time in the kitchen for me. Serge, our neighbour and Ben's partner in gardening swaps, asked if we could take half of a pumpkin (or courge). One of his had grown into the hedge, and the only way to get it out would be to cut down a tree or cut up the pumpkin! Sensibly, he decided on cutting up the pumpkin, having checked that we would take part of its bulk of his hands...I managed to pass the quarter-piece on to another friend today, so now I'm left with half of this mis-shapen monster (do you see where it grew against the tree branches?) and am going downstairs to chop and bake and produce cheese sauce pumpkin bake and roasted pumpkin soup! So, what are your domestic plans this week?