Noël 2015

Christmas for the French is very much like Thanksgiving for Americans.  It's a very family oriented event, and it often includes very specific dishes for their big meal.  While I see these foods in the grocery store every year, I'm not too sure what they do with them, as we've never been considered family to anybody and been invited to share.

Until this year.  We have now experienced our first French Christmas as guests in a French home, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Seasonal tea

Having celebrated a lovely Thanksgiving weekend which included family members, we jumped right into the Christmas season with a Ladies' Tea at church.  My part involved getting the church prettily decorated and then photographing the event, while Doc Leo continued to perform his magic on the sound board.

It did make a fun Saturday afternoon and a nice way to jumpstart the Season.

Scarf art

I have an American friend who is currently living in Mexico.  Among all her other ventures, she has started doing sewing pattern designing.  In looking for testers for her newest project, she asked me if I would be interested.  Never having done such a thing before, I thought it could be rather fun.

While I'm fairly confident in my sewing abilities, neither Doc Leo nor I are particularly professional when it comes to modeling and photographing, but I needed to show off the product and explain how to use it.  Here are the results of our efforts, as well as various styling ideas I came up with.

Thankful for family

There are two major aspects of the American Thanksgiving holiday.  One is the traditional feast usually involving a huge whole roasted turkey and autumn side dishes and desserts.  The other is the gathering together of family members whenever possible.

While we've managed to present the requisite turkey almost every year despite the difficulties of acquiring one in a foreign environment, we've usually had to forgo the family aspect.  However, our celebration this year involved a number of family units, including very small members, which gave our evening a whole different aspect.

A global Thanksgiving

There are principally two countries that have an official Thanksgiving, although they represent different celebrations.  Canada actually has the oldest origin, but the US probably has the most well known. 

What is rather ironic is that the American version is rapidly becoming a thing to do in England, as it represents dissidents leaving that country for elsewhere!  Perhaps that explains why my good British friend Ellie, out of the clear blue sky, decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Perhaps it was her first.  I thought you might enjoy how the evening went!

Municipal Homage

The French president has declared a three day period of mourning for the country in light of the terrorist attacks in Paris.  Many cultural events have been canceled, including our first chorale concert of the year.  (We had to replace our canceled country dance with something new.)

Officially, large groups are not supposed to gather for a week, but that hasn't stopped a number of spontaneous vigils all over.

There was a countrywide call for a minute of silence at noon today.  Our village took that opportunity to lay floral arrangements at the local war monument, which are found all over France after the massive losses of World War I.

France in mourning

As a global resident for many decades, I care about what happens to my fellow inhabitants of this planet.  As a resident of France for over 25 years, I care what happens in my adopted country.  As a resident of greater Paris for 13 years, I have a specific sentiment for the life that continues there, which includes family and close friends. 

While anybody local from my world is all safe and sound, the events that unfolded over the weekend took place in areas that were quite familiar to me, areas that we passed through all the time.  In fact, the only concert I ever got to took place in the Bataclan. 

I would just like to share with you tributes from all the over the world that I came across, expressing global solidarity against atrocity towards totally innocent victims.

Bologna: Architecture & History

In my last post, I introduced you to Bologna, Italy, viewed from a tourist's standpoint.  This time, I'm going to take you on a little guided visit of the city itself, as I saw it in a single day.  I love visiting these old European cities, many having had their heyday before my own country even existed.  Not only do I come from a newly developed country in the scheme of world history, but I spent most of my non-expat life in the newer parts of it.

I hope you will enjoy a bit of this part of the Old World from my perspective, especially if you've never had the opportunity to see it yourselves.

Bologna: Travel & Culture

We just had an opportunity to take a little trip to Bologna, Italy.  It's been about seven years since we were there last, so it was really exciting when an old customer needed Doc Leo's expertise one more time.  We were only there for one day, but half the fun is driving the countryside the days before and after, which doubled the pleasure.

As this is my first major trip outside France since I started this blog, I thought I would share some of the sights and experiences of visiting a very old Italian city.  This post will cover the aspect from a tourist's viewpoint.

Our feline Super Trooper

We have always been a cat family.  We've always had at least one or sometimes more most of our married life.  While we waited three years after losing our 19-year-old family cat, we finally replaced her as soon as we moved down south.  We checked out a radio announcement and came home with two sisters.  Not only did we become friends with the original "parents," we ended up with a once-in-a-lifetime feline experience.

Unfortunately, we were only given 12 wonderful years, but they were totally awesome.  If you like cats, I hope you'll enjoy this little pictorial biography.  If you were privileged enough to have shared in this experience, enjoy the memories.  And now, I present Romea, who was the Queen of Cats in the feline world.

Our annual camp retreat

As if we hadn't recently just spent a busy tiring week up at a camp facility giving it the annual clean-up, we were back up there this weekend just to enjoy the grounds as intended.  Our church is one of the supporters of the camp, and we go up every fall for a group get-away. 

Unfortunately, last year's event was canceled, as our pastor broke his back jumping into some canoeing rapids just before the event.  So the advances we made at last year's work week were not appreciated until this year.  Here's a taste of some of what took place.

Power of precipitation

Mother Nature has not been playing nice in our region.  Just about every other weekend for the past month or so, we've had intense severe downpours.  As we live on the side of a hill, sometimes these inundations can produce catastrophic results. 

While we have personally experienced some disheartening damage to recently cleaned and developed areas involving months of manual labor, it all pales in comparison to the devastation suffered all around our area this past weekend.  Sunday afternoon, we visited one of the worst hit, so you can follow us as we saw it all firsthand.

Eclipsed!

During last night, we were treated to a marvelous celestial exhibition.  It required us to set an alarm for about 4:00 a.m., then stand out in the cold constantly trying to snap photos, but what a show!

This photo is an official one taken with massive equipment we obviously don't have, but it shows how it really looked.  You can find more photos online if you are interested.

Another camp fall work week

Once again, we just spent another week up in the mountains volunteering at a children's camp facility to do whatever upkeep was necessary to keep everything in workable condition.  Both the Doc and I have developed our areas of personal interest or expertise, and we tend to do the same things every year, but each time does bring its own version of challenges and experiences.

One of my favorite current views is from the fire pit I rebuilt last year looking over the grounds I've personally done my fair share of reclaiming from wild nature.

Winners and losers

As Doc Leo doesn't like to stray very far from his internet connection and his kitty cats, we don't seem to ever take vacations now that he's retired.  Thus I get stuck having all my obligations around the property staring me in the face with no break. 

To combat that, in order to have a bit more personal time, I apparently have ended up throwing myself into my sewing site with more participation than I really should dedicate. 

Here is a recap of some of the ups and downs I've experienced recently.  The recent ups are particularly rewarding!

Becoming a teenage sleuth

Contests can be fun.  Sewing contests that stretch creativity can be fun.  Provided one can reach inside and pull out some semblance of creativity.   The current contest I am attempting really involves some imagination, and I didn't know if I was up to it.  However, succeeding at a challenge is rewarding, so I really put on my thinking cap.  But just how does a book provide inspiration for creating a wearable garment?  Not a costume, not a period piece, but something appropriate for wearing currently, yet reflecting a particular literary work.

While some contestants were considering abstract themes, I needed something more concrete.  And suddenly, the inspiration arrived.  I'm going back in my own world about 55 years to a favorite character who I'm taking back about 15 years earlier than that.  I'm turning myself into a 1940's Nancy Drew!

25 years later after Destination: Paris

Once upon a time, we were a totally typical American family of two parents and three offspring, all born in different states and regions of the country.  While we entertained the unreachable dream of "going abroad" since we were young marrieds, we occupied ourselves with the world we did live in.  While Doc Leo started traveling all over the US and into Canada (it was so exotic to get an emergency help phone call from Vancouver!) in the first half of the 1980's, he started spending more time in Europe than at home in the second half.  Not being Florida natives in the first place, it became quite interesting contemplating living where all the current business was.  When the company finally agreed, and gave us the choice of where to locate ourselves, the Doc picked Paris, as he thought he knew the language and it was quite centrally located with a major airport to everywhere.

Thus began an experiment on this date that actually continues until this day and probably for the rest of our lives.

A very cold princess

Having close friends who are the same ages as my own insanely old middle aged kids, I sometimes get to participate in a totally different lifestyle than my own. One of my friends has a life that really closely parallels mine 30 years ago, and I really enjoy watching her be involved in her three kids' lives.

Recently, her youngest had her fifth birthday, and it's becoming standard now for us to help her out with the birthday parties.  This particular one was quite an affair.

Embracing Age

Time marches on, and once again the earth has orbited the sun on the day I was born.  While I'm not too excited to reach the halfway point of my 60s, as that seems like a real turning point in life to me, it's better than the alternative.  So I decided to make a bigger effort to appreciate the positives of where I am in life rather than the negatives of where I'm not.

Helping me out over the whole weekend were a number of small pleasurable moments as well as a few larger ones.  I thought you might like to share a few of them with me!

On being featured

As anybody who knows me is aware, I've been sewing my whole adult life.  I really don't know how that evolved.  My grandma hand sewed me a dress she cut from a pattern out of newspaper when I was about four, but otherwise she was only known to me for crocheting.  My mother could sew and went through a spell of making us girls a lot of gathered skirts, but she must have done it while I was in school, because I don't really have memories of her doing it.  She did teach me a few basics when I was nine, but that was about it.

So what made me think as an adult that I was just going to make all my own clothes?  And who would ever have guessed back then that it would become a lifetime involvement?

A Provençal lunch

I seem to be sharing a lot about life in Provence at the moment.  As I am actually in the French Riviera area of the south, and Provence is more towards the west, I should be showing our more coastal/Alpine world.  However, both regions do get lumped together as a lifestyle, and that's what I'm currently trying to give you a glimpse into. 

While we've experienced some rather specific functions lately, we just had a quite simple afternoon barbecue with a few French friends, totally laid back, and I thought you might enjoy some of the very typical elements we managed to incorporate.  I was able to create a very local ambiance rather than some specific theme, and that was rather fun.

As Romea of course wasn't about to miss anything involving people and food, she also sends you her greetings.

A Bastille Day outing

"Play ball!" is a common US expression heard all summer long.  It usually is referring to the American game of baseball.  Here in France, the concept of playing ball is something completely different, especially down in the south.  I'm sure you've all seen the Provençal images of French men (and women) standing around throwing little metal balls at a little red wooden ball.  The game of Boules (balls) is a common sight all over France when the weather is balmy, or in the south perhaps all year round.

We just spent Bastille Day, the French national holiday, with a Boules club.

A Provençal Fourth

Last weekend we had our annual Fourth of July barbeque.  While we like to invite any American friends who aren't otherwise occupied, we enjoy sharing our national holiday with the French (and other nationalities in our lives at the time), who seem to really have fun with our traditions.

I thought I'd show you how our day went, and you can compare it with your own!

A Weekend in Provence VII

Scenic Summer Solstice

The whole region making up Provence is quite picturesque, which is perhaps why there is such sentiment for it, both within France and internationally. 

We have the pleasure of driving back and forth through a particular section at least once a year, so we are getting a bit familiar with a few areas.  I don't take the same pictures every time, but I get a chance to perfect some I didn't like previously.  Sometimes I just don't catch them nicely, sometimes it's the wrong time of day.

Here's some of what we came across on our way home on the first day of summer.

A Weekend in Provence VI

A taste of Provence

Before we headed home from our weekend adventure, there was one more activity we were involved with.  While the town had its weekly market on Saturday, it had its annual book fair on Sunday.  That provided another opportunity to take Mamie for a stroll; otherwise the fair was rather boring.  If I had been interested in books in French, it might have been more entertaining, but even my French companions weren't overly excited.

However, this being a major wine producing town, the local vintners were also present for a wine tasting.  As the book fair info states, they were there to blend culture with wine culture!

A Weekend in Provence V

Hanging out at home

When we visit our wine chateau friends, it's either as a drop-by overnight in passing on our way to somewhere else or for the whole weekend for their annual wine fete.  They have a big country cold luncheon for a ton of people; but the whole town is also doing wine tastings all over, and we've been taken to participate here and there.  So it's a very busy and involved weekend, with no time to be bored. 

This time, there were no big activities going on, and I was afraid a whole weekend might turn out to be a bit awkward.  Was I ever wrong!

A Weekend in Provence IV

A Mother's Grief

Tragedy is never easy to confront, but usually we don't have a choice.  The reason for our weekend trip was to visit with and comfort this family who just suffered the loss of their adult son last month.

I thought I would show you a personal experience of visiting a French cemetery, as I followed the grieving mother around while she watered the remaining funeral plants.

A Weekend in Provence III

Madame goes shopping

As part of our weekend get-away, I followed our hostess around as she carried on with her normal life.  Our hosts live just a few minutes away by foot from the center of town, so it's very easy to pop over for whatever needs may arise.

Saturdays are the big local street marché, and Madame consecrates her whole morning to shopping.  She goes back and forth multiple times, sometimes as often as four different visits.  As I tagged along, she went at least three times this particular morning, which didn't count the run to the bakery for our breakfast fresh bread.

A Weekend in Provence II

Au marché

I grew up grocery shopping in typical supermarkets.  As an adult, I sometimes had access to a farmers market or two, but those were the exception.  My shopping experiences were just pretty average and standard.

When I moved to France, I discovered the typical street marché.  They could be once a week or up to three times a week.  Unfortunately, where I lived didn't have good access to one, so I still never learned how to deal with them, especially as I couldn't speak the language everybody was shouting at me.  However, our little weekend visit included their weekly market day, so I thought I'd take you on a little tour.

A Weekend in Provence I

Village Walkabout

We just celebrated both Father's Day/First Day of Summer by taking a weekend trip a bit west of us to visit our friends with the wine chateau.  We normally go for their annual fête during May, but it was canceled this year due to family tragedy.  However, since our yearly trek is often the only time we see them, we were invited to come over now.  It's nice to know that they didn't want to miss our visit and were willing to share their time of grief with us.

Because Provence is fairly different from the Riviera, I took a lot of pictures to show you another aspect of France.  This post visits, on foot, different parts of their village, in existence since at least the 12th century.

Mother's Day, French style

Last week was the French version of Mother's Day.  As I will never be French, no matter how long I live in the country, and as I no longer fulfill any kind of a Mommy role, I decided to honor myself by admiring the results of all the hard work I've recently done in my gardens. 

However, the day started off with all mothers being given flowers at church, and I think I made a rather nice interior bouquet.  I don't normally cut my garden flowers and bring them inside, so this was rather pretty on my table.

46 years and still counting

Yesterday was another landmark date in our family.  Alpine Queen and Doc Leo have achieved another year of dealing with each other as a family unit.  While neither of us knew it at the time, we got married on the 25th anniversary of D-Day, so whenever that celebrates a major milestone, we are celebrating one ourselves.  This year was just average.

So what did we do?  Any normal and sane couple would have gone out to dinner or something similar.  As we are not normal or sane, we pressure cleaned a few rock walls in the middle of a heat wave!

Happy Birthday, French style

Once upon a time, I was a brand new bride, working in an office.  During a lunch hour, I was reading a magazine, and I came across an ad for making pretty cakes.  Not having a clue how to bake, I thought it would be fun to get some ideas.  It only cost $1 for the idea book.  So I ordered it.  To my chagrin, it was a catalog for buying all these tools for making beautiful decorated cakes.  Not what I had in mind.

However, the brand new groom asked what it took to get the tools.  It was a catalog.  I could order from them.  So why not?  Because that's a lot of money for something I don't know how to do.  How do you know you can't do it if you don't have the tools?

So we ordered a mid-level set of tools.  And thus began a journey that continues even today, even in a country that hasn't appreciated this style or texture of celebratory dining, although it does seem to be catching on more in recent years.

The wishing well

Once upon a time, I fixed up the yard space outside the kitchen into a really nice patio.  We inherited a huge but very badly pruned olive tree smack in the middle, the front edge dropped off dangerously high to the lower level, and everything was just dirt. 

We got the tree trimmed into a reasonable shape, had a great wall built to hold in the edge, and put down patio blocks to eliminate the mud.  Installed our nice table and barbeque grill, and we began to enjoy the peaceful space.

Then we ended up ruining everything.  So depressing.  But  now it's time to make the best of what we're left with.

Anatomy of a new wardrobe

The sewing site I participate on has just run a really massive contest lasting six weeks, rather than the typical two-four week run, and I decided to give it a try.  It involved making a total of nine garments, with all items being able to coordinate with every item.  In looking over my vast collection of fabric and patterns, I saw that I could actually make this contest work for me, so why not? 

This is the initial collection I came up with and followed through with, only changing one pattern for a similar one that fit my design better.

A tribute to a friend

Once again, it's the month of May, and that means it's time to take our annual long weekend as houseguests of our friends who own a wine chateau.  I told you all about it last year in my post Fete of the wine and the vine.  If you're new to this blog, I urge you to check it out, as it's always a fun and interesting aspect of our life here.

Only, this year, the event has been canceled.  Last week, the oldest son in the family sadly suffered a heart attack and passed away at age 41.

Neighborhood nature

One of our goals for this year was to start walking around our local world on a regular basis as a means of getting more exercise in our too sedentary life (raking rocks is good for the shoulders but not the legs). 

As we live on a crest, there's not a whole lot of variety.  Thus, the activity has evolved into searching a more aggressive hike around the local hills on Sunday afternoons.  I thought I'd show you what the lower Alps can look like in springtime.

Passage of time

Anybody who ever visited us in Paris has had the pleasure of meeting our next door neighbors, who have become our dearest friends over all the years we've lived in France.  While we don't get up to Paris much anymore, they have a vacation home just a couple of hours away from us down here; thus, we still manage to see them from time to time.

Recently, we celebrated his birthday, and I thought you'd like to both see our old friends again plus see a simple little French celebration.

Unlined jacket tutorial

As a complement to the summer dress I just made as part of an ongoing sewing contest, I made this interesting casual jacket.  While I doubt I'll ever make the included dress, I really liked the design of this jacket (trying to see past the model wearing it in my favorite color,  and then I did it in the same thing!) and used this opportunity to try it out.

Again, I thought I would point out some of the techniques I used outside of the typical pattern directions.  Perhaps you may find some of them useful, too.

A summer's dress tutorial

I am in the process of sewing a nine-piece wardrobe for another contest!  After taking a sewing break for a number of years, this time around I'm trying to incorporate a lot of little extras I mostly didn't mess with in my sewing heyday when rearing an active family and trying to keep customers happy. 

I thought I would explain some of those techniques used on the dress of this pattern, Butterick 5619.  I've already made the jacket and the skirt, so now it's time to do something with the dress pattern, too.

Popular pattern participation

Remember the sewing contest I mentioned I entered?  A sewing site I follow has regular contests with various themes, most of which don't interest me or fit my personal needs.  However, this last contest involved using a specific pattern from a specific list, which was a compilation of the most popular patterns from the past three years.  I happened to have three of them, so I entered one item from each.  After a week of voting, the results are in!

Fun with a Plantain Tee

There is currently a contest in progress on the sewing site I enjoy reading, and I decided to participate with a couple of entries.  It is an interesting experience to be judged by others based on photos, so hopefully those photos show all the important information necessary to make a good judgment. 

I thought I would share a little of this particular project, because I decided to have a bit of fun with it.  The pattern is just a simple T-shirt, which I recently made for the first time, so I wanted to do something a little different this time.

A sewing techniques tutorial

My sister has been bugging me to do a sewing tutorial for several years now.  We have been separated by vast expanses of territory our whole adult lives, and she has never been able to take advantage of my "expertise," although it's only fairly recently she's gotten involved in sewing herself. 

While I have a lifetime of sewing experience, I have very little teaching experience, and I've never done one of these now common web tutorials.  As I just made something from both a pattern and fabric that my sister gifted me, perhaps this is the time to take a stab at it.  So, Sister Dearest, this one's for you!

Spring chez nous

As I was working at the bottom of our property yesterday, having to pass the whole front yard, I noticed how spring is on its way.  Most things aren't quite there yet, but I thought what we do have is rather pretty. 

So for those of you perhaps being buried under even more winter snow, I thought I'd show you the promise of what's to come.

Total Eclipse -- Not Quite!

Our area was supposed to get 62%.  I managed this shot two minutes after maximum.  We actually saw it at maximum time, despite the overcast weather, by looking through two CDs together.

But I couldn't get the camera to focus when I put the lens up to them.  I finally managed to hold the CDs far enough away from me so the camera would focus on them and kept it all steady enough it's not all fuzzy! 

Yeah!!!!!!

Putting on the green

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my faithful readers.  When I was a kid, if you didn't wear green to school, you got pinched.  Do kids do that anymore?  I guess now it would be called bullying.  But I know we always tried not to forget! 

Perhaps that's why I still always think about being green on this date, whether I succumb to the temptation or not.  Now that I'm all grown up, I had some friends over for dinner recently and created my green theme with my table setting (well, yes, I did wear shades of green on my body, too, but not out of fear of being pinched!).

Boardwalk of the stars

How would you like to visit another little corner of the world?  This one is another town in my backyard, some little beachfront area along the Mediterranean coastline.  I participated in a church ladies' retreat there last weekend, we took a little tour during a free afternoon, and I tried to capture a little of the flavor of the area with my trusty little camera.

This time, we are going to take a walk along the Croisette, the name of the boardwalk in the French town twinned with the California city of Beverly Hills.  Welcome to Cannes, home of the famous Red Carpet.

A violet festival -- the fête

Now that you've visited the village and seen the parade, I thought I'd show you how the festival in general looked.  I've tried to capture the general ambiance of the event for you, including the village, the crowd, the market, and hopefully the French twist making it stand out from similar events elsewhere. 

As I mentioned before, we met up with our old Paris neighbors and friends, down south for a couple of months, which made the day quite interesting for us.

A violet festival -- the parade

Having grown up in the backyard of the granddaddy-of-them-all real vegetation parade, the Pasadena Rose Parade, I've scorned fake materials floats all my life.  Snobbism, I know.  But that allows me to appreciate other efforts using all fresh flowers.

Although I never made it to the Rose Parade in person until many years later, I also thought of parades on a large scale and had no experience with small town efforts.  Not only did I just attend a very small scale parade with real flowers, it was held in a Medieval village, a backdrop not possible in any American small town.

I thought you might like to see how it turned out.

A violet festival -- the village

This past weekend, we joined our old Paris friends for a fun little annual festival in a village not that far from home.  It was a beautiful day (unlike some past years), it was wonderful to see our friends again, and it's always fun to visit this village.

I thought I'd take you on a tour of the village itself before I shared the weekend festival they just held.