An evening with Carmen

Some British friends of ours decided to treat themselves to a trip to the opera when they came down for their annual winter visit.  After booking about six months in advance, they found that they were going to be unable to attend after all.  However, rather than letting the tickets go to waste, we were asked if we were available and interested.

Well, let's see.  Would it be interesting enough to skip one of our two weekly chorale practices?  What a hard choice! 

Thus, we ditched sweaters and jeans and decked ourselves out in more fancy duds and took ourselves into the Old Town for a delightful evening of culture.

Journey into a man's sport jacket

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, a young woman got married and started sewing a work wardrobe for herself.  But the young husband was jealous and wanted some sewing done for himself. 

So he sent his bride to school to learn how to make him a suit.  Over time, he got about ten of them for himself.  Then the bride took off in other directions, and he never got another one again.

Now, about forty years later, he is being honored once again with another new sport coat.  Thanks to modern technology, it is now possible to share the journey with you!  Let's travel the path together.

A French surprise

This past year, we became part of a new local community chorale group.  When the year was over, several of us decided we'd like to get together during the summer.  We had a group dinner early in the summer, a great way to develop new friendships. 

However, I was surprised that one couple was aware of my birthday, but they sent me this adorable birthday card.  As we are both into music and cats, it was so appropriate!

Then, another couple invited us to dinner, which I thought was just a continuation of making friends.  In reality, they'd all conspired to throw me a little surprise birthday party!

It was such a fun evening, I thought I'd share my French celebration.

Beach Blanket Birthday

I have a very good friend who happens to be the same age as my second daughter.  She is a Brit married to a Frenchman and now has three kids.  You've seen them in some of my posts, as we've been involved in a number of their family activities or we have just gotten together.

It turns out that her husband and I share the same birthday, although a generation apart.  Normally they are off on vacation at this time, so we never get to celebrate together, nor do I just get to celebrate mine with my friend.

This year, however, they happened to be around, she threw him a beach party, and I was invited to participate.  So I got a beach party, too.  I thought you might enjoy the ambiance.

PR Meet-up Milano

Last spring, I had the privilege for the first time of meeting in person a new friend I'd made on my favorite sewing website.  That pleasure was extended recently by getting to meet two more users of the site.

One visit was fairly local, like the first one, but the second one involved a day's trip into Italy, which we turned into a mini-vacation get-away.

I thought I'd show you some of what we did.

At twenty-two

Because I happened to have the necessary materials at hand, I decided to enter a Vintage Pattern Contest on my favorite sewing site.  The requirement was that any pattern used had to be older than 1981. 

Normally I wouldn't have patterns that old, having gotten rid of them when we moved overseas.  But as my prize for winning a contest last year was vintage patterns, I now have a few qualifying ones to choose from. 

What I didn't know was how my particular choices would take me on an interesting trip down Memory Lane, starting with when I was around 22 years old.

PR Meet-up Monaco

Last weekend, my favorite sewing site, Pattern Review, held their annual meet-up weekend, this time in Chicago.  It must be a fabulous opportunity to meet various members who support the site and have a common interest, especially ones who are actively involved and have thus become virtual acquaintances. 

I will probably never get to find out, although I was quite sad last year when they met in Los Angeles, as I would have loved to double the trip and see all my family.

However, I did get to do the next best thing last month and participate in probably the first meet-up in Monaco!  I thought I'd share the experience as well as a little virtual tour of the second smallest country in the world.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

Another trip around the Sun

Since I started blogging last year, I've introduced all the members of our family and paid tribute to them on their birthdays.  Except for the patriarch of the clan. 

While Doc Leo has the earliest calendar date birthday each year, he's ended up having the last birthday on my blog.  Today we shall rectify that!

Bring on 2015!

I would like to wish everybody both near and dear to me, as well as those I may not ever have met, a wonderful beginning to another year. 

No matter what we may have faced in the past, we are all still here with a promise for the future.

So, Happy New Year, version 2015!