Summer barbecue

I haven't had any blog time lately because things are just so nutty here. We've got some carpenters from Portugal lined up to work on the house, all legal (I wish people would stop assuming everyone in Portugal works under the table), and they're coming in ten days. It's a between jobs thing and they're squeezing in some work at our place when they can over the next six months. It's all very last minute and it will be like that until Christmas. They'll just kind of show up and then we have to leave them the house and let them work.

So for this visit we have ten days to clear out the upstairs and break the faux ceilings and most of the walls. All the kids things have to be packed and we have to find a place to live for the ten days too. I guess we at least have some notice but ten days isn't much.

In between this there's the end of the school year for Little S and the Wednesday picnic/barbecue I planned in the backyard with ten moms and about twenty kids. It kind of snowballed because at first it was just supposed to be our Wednesday art group but people kept saying things to me like "do you think I could invite Delphine?" (there are two Delphines coming) and I have a hard time saying no to anyone so I said "why not." It should be lots of fun and I love a backyard party but the house is a little skeery.

The whole house is hopping with fleas and there are boxes piled to the ceiling in the living room. And as if that wasn't enough there are large pieces of ceiling and house debris in the backyard where my terrace should be. And adding insult to it all is the famous tractor ruts all over the yard from the bulldozer, but hey I really don't care. If it doesn't all get cleaned up by tomorrow I'll throw a tarp over it. I've even invited Mansion Mom (I'm really curious about her). So yes, love me love my house.

And... if you love me and my house now then maybe later I'll let you sit in my very awesome cast iron Napolean III bathtub bought off of E-bay for nearly nothing. That thing is going in my future bedroom, right in the center of the bedroom like a piece of furniture. I'm in love with it. Right now it's in the (you guessed it) BACKYARD. It's quite pretty though. It should add to the kooky party ambience chez moi. Love me, love my bathtub.

Prints

Yesterday was another atelier day, this time at my house with eight kids, ages four to seven. We were able to be outside which was wonderful for the kids because they were free to be messy with no stress, yay! I set up our new camping table and added another one on the end and we left out the chairs which was a brilliant idea because I think this also gave them lots of freedom (and less work for me setting up!).

We did the printing project from The Artful Parent and it was a big hit with everyone. You should have seen how concentrated they were, it was lovely. I saw many times that vague look and I knew they were in that little nook in the mind that I like to go when I draw. I'm starting to recognize that in the kids and it makes me happy for them.



All the moms came with frameless picture frames and we used the glass as a printing surface, in hindsight we might have looked for acrylic box frames, probably hard to find and expensive in France, but it would have been less cumbersome and less dangerous for them. The frames get washed a lot as the kids of course want to keep redoing their pictures, and that's the fun of it. We have a lavoir, a sort of square fountain in the yard so it made washing the frames easy and the kids adored the washing up part. One little girl even fell in the lavoir washing her hands, so yes the frames in acrylic would have been a good idea because luckily she didn't have one in her hands.



This is a messy project best left to a studio with washable floors or maybe best done outside. It's a good idea to have some old dishtowels and a water source nearby for washing the frames because you can't keep running back inside to do it and you'll have to do it a lot. It's also smart to string up a temporary laundry line in the house or the garden or wherever you end up doing it for hanging the art to dry because we didn't think it out too well and we had papers blowing in the garden. If you have a lot of kids maybe you'll want to mark the initials on the back of their paper before they print. Each kid did about eight or ten prints so it was really time consuming at the end asking tired kids "is this yours?" as we sorted through each one.

There were a few nice prints but overall the work results were average, not because of the kids but because it's not really one of those projects that lends itself to creating *gasp* masterpieces. The best part of this project is that it's so FUN and that the kids learn something. At one moment Amy, a little girl in the group screamed "mama it's like a photocopieuse!", which I think was a click moment in her head like "Ohhhh, so that's how it works" and that's why the project is so brilliant. The kids also looked for leaves in the garden and printed with those and they did this on their own, fun to watch because it was clearly another a-ha! moment for them.

Camping

I've been in a little rut because we just spent five days in Annecy, well Talloires actually, even better, and I have the montagne blues! We all miss living in the mountains. It all worked into a mini break because Seb had a few clients to see during the week in Annecy so he had a hotel for a few days and we tagged along. So while he shmoozed in a sweaty usine, we slept in and basked in the luxe of a real bath and buffet breakfasts. During the day I sat by the lake with the kids and drew in my sketchbook and pillaged from the English book library in the hotel. We decided it would be fun to stay the weekend as well and heck why not Monday too, but since we weren’t paying for the luxe after Friday we moved from the three star hotel into camping for three days. I thought it would be rough to switch but really it wasn’t that bad.

We bought a new tent, one of those amazing pop out tents that Doc introduced me and Little S to when she came to visit. The boys camped in Little S’s bedroom, had a great time, and ever since then S has talked about tents. We bought the Family Sized version with actual rooms and which you can stand up in, which is awesome if you've spent years of camping all bent over as we have, agh misery! After we bought it I talked to my friend Dee and she gasped "you'll be in hell trying to refold it!" because she has a mini one and hers has given her some serious grief over the past year and she’s had to return to Decathalon to get them to show her how to do it. So we stressed a lot the whole weekend and joked that maybe we’d end up leaving it on the site or kill each other trying to refold it. But in the end it really wasn’t hard at all as long as you're two people and if you follow the instructions to a T. I have a theory that the bigger version of these tents are actually easier to manipulate.



Since we had three rooms in the tent Little S had his own room, Charlotte hers with the Graco set up and then we slept in the middle of the tent. The only snag was Charlotte because she was a little freaked out being in a weird place and she cried each time she went to bed, no wait she wailed each time she went to bed. Since on two of the nights it was late we couldn’t let her go on crying (at the risk of facing the angry camping mob), we had to resort to those silly things that people do to get their kids to sleep like driving around in the car and rocking her (and feeding her Cheezits). One night she refused to sleep at all so we just stuck her in between us which was nightmarish because if there’s anything worse than sleeping with Charlotte it’s sleeping with Charlotte in a tent. In hindsight we realise we should have stuck her in the tent a lot earlier and let her cry it out while people were having dinner.



Even if this all sounds awful it wasn’t at all because we had such a good time otherwise. There’s nothing like waking up in the mountains and cooking and eating outside. The kids loved it so much that they didn’t want to leave. They ran around half naked and rolled in the grass, and I loved it too because I thought they were experiencing the childhood I had, total freedom and liberty to be outside in the open air. During the day we hiked and swam in the lake and at least one evening we drove up to Montmin with our friends who came for one night and had a nice apéro on a picnic blanket with a view of what heaven must look like (if you’re really very good).



We’re thinking of taking off again this Summer on a much longer trip now that we have all the gear (nearly 500 euros worth of camping stuff!) and a list of all the things we forgot (a lighter, hammer, dishsoap). I think we’ll probably stick to the mountains so maybe we’ll go back to the alps and then on to Italy for a half week. If anybody knows of any good spots let me know in the comments and if you'd like some addresses of good places in France I'm all about sharing so drop me a mail.

Mountain begone & the fence saga

No more mountain of dirt!


With the rental of the bulldozer the dirt pile is finally gone and we are at the beginning of project terrace, an enormous sunny place off the kitchen doorway where kids can play, I can keep some herbs and we can have a barbecue each night. A gorgeous terrace full of potted plants and a wrought iron table is a mandatory part of family life don't you think? A moroccan feeling, maybe a touch of Tuscany, and of course some wisteria.



I thought I'd share these before photos on my blog so we can all applaud the progress when it's finally finished in a few weeks, and also so I could talk about the freaky fence saga, or maybe the freaking fence saga is probably more fitting. The wall pictured here with the geraniums is the same wall in this post (scroll down through the post for the before photo), minus the crap fence. When we tried to take the rest of an old tree out and the tangled ivy that looked so hellish the fence came tumbling down too, all its rusty bits complete with barbed wire and pieces of tin roofing scraps (to cover the holes so stray cats can't get through, nice touch), all of it was just sort of leaning into our property after the tree came out because our tree was holding it up you see, our sad sick tree. It looked awful and it wasn't possible to repair the leaning part because the poles had rusted long ago and were already broken in two and being held up with old mop handles in a few places, so we just scrapped it and said we'd talk to the new neighbor in a few weeks to see if maybe they'd be interested in putting something nice. The house is empty and has been for 20 years or more. So the next morning as I'm innocently preparing breakfast I hear this high pitched woman's voice screaming "madame! madame!" and I walk outside in my jammies only to get assaulted by the 60 something year old voisine, apparently the one who just sold the house, "who do you think you are that was my fence, you imbecile, what is your right to ...blah, blah blah," and in between insults I figured out that it was her ugly rusty old fence, shards of scrap metal and all. And then later in the day after being contacted twice by the real estate agent and once by the notaire we find out that she is afraid that the sale of the house might fall through because we took out a small part of her l o v e r l y fence.

Deep breaths, so now we have to go the closing and sign a paper that says we'll replace the fence or a reasonable facsimile at our own cost. The funny part was that the real estate agent kept saying that the new owners had an 18 month old daughter who might fall over the wall or something and it was a danger for her. The fence is about 500 meters from the owner's house in a sort of side garden with a brick wall in front of it, so I really don't understand what the big deal is or how their little girl might be inclined to escape and run over to our house, unless she's attracted to the smells from our kitchen, (because Charlotte would totally do that if she smelled fresh baked cookies). We didn't bother to mention the barbed wire that made the back of our house look like a military barrack and which was a menace to our wee adorable tykes because we were wrong to take out the fence without asking so how could we be possibly jump on the defensive.

It will all get replaced very soon, and in fact we'd wanted to replace it relatively fast anyway, we just thought we'd wait and see if the new neighbor wanted to participate in the cost in order to put something fancier like bricks or stones. It's not like we were planning on leaving it all bare like that. I immediately put the geraniums there to make it look better because I thought they'd enjoy seeing something pretty while we finish up our terrace work. I was told by the p.o. that I didn't have the right to put anything on the wall, gah but I've left them anyway because people it's FLOWERS not nuculear waste and if they really feel strongly about it let them bomb them or something.

I just wish we hadn't started off on such a bad foot. Hopefully we can make amends. Brownies? Cookies? Babysitting? Money? ... Parading around in my skivvies?

Yes indeed

Charlotte is now walking. Well, waddling is more like it. It was offical a few weeks ago on Tuesday to be exact which I will record here in my blog in case I ever do one of those huge scrapbooks so I can you know, get a big TuEsDaY sticker and paste it across the top with little feet stickers and a heartfelt poem about how much I'll miss carrying her lardy baby butt everywhere. Anyway there I was having coffee with a few moms from S's school who I never have coffee with, just a fluke invitation, and Charlotte bumbled over to a mom all furniture free and sassy and then sort of bumbled back like a woman on a highwire (minus umbrella of course). They were all chuffed to be the first that she walked to because everyone knows she's a late walker so the subject of when she'd walk has been beaten to death outside the school, "cou-cou, quand est que tu va marcher ma petite Charlotte!" or "Elle marche toujours pas?" I think she was sick of hearing it. Like me.

So there just like that it's done and now two weeks later she's doing things like running out in streets at the neighborhood block party "il faut faire attention, c'est dangereuse!" someone said and I felt like saying "yeah she'd better pay attention otherwise she'll get squashed, silly monkey. Ohhhh, you meant..."

The whole walking thing, all so new to us. In fact the leashed child idea is starting to grow on me as I remember it did with the firstborn. This way I can tie her up outside the school and shops while I run inside. Convenient. Practical.

She's a late walker. Curse those fat little thighs. We'll call it eighteen months and a few weeks. Yay Charlotte!

p.s. Little S took the picture, ma boy