Award winning blog

Thank you to the lovely Dottie for very kindly awarding my blog with an Arte Y Pico award. I am very pleased to be the author of an award-winning blog :-) It seems to be a blog of sculptures these days, but this one is the best.
The rules of Arte Y Pico are - you must pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting content, or for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language!

Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

The award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link or the Arte Y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

I now have the honourable task of passing this award onto five others. So, here are my five picks:

1) Le bleuet for being the first blog I ever followed, and also for taking the time to translate everything in both French and English.

2) Ms C for her rants about life, the universe and everything (well, her car and house)!

3) Mystereous World for her cute animal pictures, and for keeping me up-to-date with Horace and Hermes.

4) Shop Girl* for sharing her story, past and present. Also, for trying innovative things out on her blog, like a Podcast!

5) Last but not least, Vraie Fiction parce que je l'aime. Sometimes, it is also nice to hear about something we have done together from a different perspective. Also, for the effort he makes to update his blog daily, and for his views about anything and everything.

Cliveden

Veggie Hubby and I went to Cliveden yesterday. It was a sunny weekend, and we decided to get out of our sleepy town and do something different. It seemed that lots of other people had the same thought. However, the woodlands were so vast, we walked around barely seeing anyone. As we were walking through the woods, we happened upon a fantastic view of the house, and then we got lost and ended up in the beautiful landscaped gardens by accident. Hmmm only four days to go until next weekend....

Birthday Party's!

Last week was very very busy. My little baby is turning 2 on 30th sept and I had decided to have a proper party this year. It turned into 2 parties as some people wanted to come earlier, so basically last week was spent putting up loads of pink balloons, banners, then making a whole load of cupcakes! Heres a pic of the cakes from the 'mini party'... these are coconut sponge with mascarpone and coconut icing. The others are coconut sponge with cream, almonds, strawberry sauce and a choc wafer.......

Then at the weekend I had my first proper kiddy party, it was so exciting! Having it all over and done with now I can say that I had a great time and wish Veggie Carrie could have been there too! Everyone started arriving at 12, and I let the children who were all under 2 play for a little while. The sun came out! and I had put a bouncy castle on my balcony (which is surprisingly large), and then when they got bored with that I had these giant caterpillar balloons which i brought out for each child, then we had a picnic with lots of food. I had made tiny cupcakes with strawberry buttercream which went down well. Afterwards we had a little treasure hunt in the grass. I gave everyone little goody bags, a balloon and cakes as they went home! Cuty baby was so tired she fell asleep afterwards. In the afternoon we let her open the presents which was fun and she now has some nice kitchen accessories!! Anyway it was alot of fun and i would love to do a few more!!

x

Boats

Hi everyone.I have lots to update you all with. Firstly outside my window recently there were these huge cranes and they were lifting something out of the sea (ok river) and as i kept watching it was a huge boat!!! I was imagining a huge sunken ship along the lines of the titanic, it was very exciting! Heres a pic of it, though actually it just looks a bit wet and mouldy....

Then as I walked along the waterfront, there was a huge display ship that looked like a pirate ship, like something from Pirates of the Caribbean!! And apparently it is a working and teaching boat, anyone can join up and learn to become a sailor. This boat is over 100 yrs old and was possible made somewhere in Europe. We even got to go onboard, have a look around, I had a peep into the kitchen.....

Monster Basil

"Basil" is growing into a huge monster who is ready to take over the world - beware! I was looking at his younger siblings in Asda last night, and they are more healthy looking, unlike this gigantic plant with it's brown lower stem. Perhaps we should dump this one and get a new one? However, we have got attached to Basil, which is why we haven't replaced him, and he still produces basil leaves. Tonight, Veggie Hubby and I shall probably have some (veggie) bolognaise to make the best of him.

P.S. Thanks to the owners of Basil's cousin for taking care of him in our absence, and for the sparkly new pot and compost! Hopefully they will help him to recover.

The Louvre

Veggie Hubby and I just returned from Paris, and even though the weather wasn't great we enjoyed ourselves. We went up the Eiffel Tower, and the views were incredible, we went at around dusk so we could see Paris by day, and then lit up at night. However, it was a very windy and rainy evening, and the tower was swaying at the top. You could really feel it moving- scary! It felt like being on a boat.

The next day, we spent a long time yesterday at The Louvre. It is so big, I think we needed to spend much more time there to see everything. My personal highlight was seeing the Mona Lisa. I grew up with a copy of it at home, so I feel a certain attachment to it, and it was really special to see the original. I also enjoyed looking at the Greek and Italian sculptures...

...but we spent most time looking at the Egyptian artifacts. Seeing these really gives you a glimpse into their culture.
I was surprised by how popular the museum was, and how many people spend their day looking at art while others are working at their desks. It costs 9 euros to go into The Louvre, but in the UK museums are free. My visit to The Louvre made me rediscover museums, and I think I will spend more weekends going visit museums in London after my visit there.

Can you read this?

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Ui nervtisy, i t dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Ratatouille- Le Festin

Veggie Hubby and I have been married for a year today, our first year of marriage has whizzed by. To celebrate, we're off to Paris tomorrow. We watched Ratatouille last night, the second time we have seen it. I didn't notice when I first saw it at the cinema, but the music is also beautiful, & I like that it's in French even if I can't understand it without reading the lyrics.

En vacances...

I am in my French holiday home in Brittany at the moment, hence my lack of blogging. Here is a picture of a nearby marina. I am having a kind of Internet detox. Instead, for the past few days I have been...

• Travelling on the Eurostar for the first time
• Reading 'The Book Thief' by Marcus Zusak (an excellent book narrated by Death about a girl growing up in Nazi Germany)
• Picking blackberries
• Watching the stars and Jupiter through a telescope
• Walking through a river with my dog
• Eating lots and lots (including Breton cake, galette, crêpe, croissants mmm)
• Climbing rocks
• Shopping in little artisan shops
• Taking photos
• Drawing pictures
• Playing games with my niece
• Improving my French
• ... and watching British TV in the evenings; it's good that I can watch British TV as the majority of French TV seems so tacky.

Pastries

Apart from cupcakes which are actually secondary, I love pastries! Whoops should have mentioned that before, but actually its true, i love pastries, I would eat one everyday with breakfast and a cup of tea/ cappucino/ orange juice. I eat cinnamon whirls, pain au chocolat, croissants, almond croissants, apple danish, chocolate twists- anything goes!! At the moment, the supermarkets seem to be constantly running out of the good stuff, especially my all time favourite- the maple and pecan, it seems that eldery pensioners who get there early manage to grap the good stuff (no offense!). So yesterday after 2 long pastry free weeks i decided to bake my own.......cinnamon whirls, and yes they tasted very yummy.....

Theres a funny story too, on my wedding day Dentist Hubby asked what I wanted for breakfast and i said 'just a pastry and some juice' now at the time he didnt know about these types of pastry and thought i meant the creamy cake type things,he wondered why i would want to eat that in the morning but went rushing round the hotel looking for cream cake at 7.30am! Anyway I think he did come back with the proper pastries in the end, an guess what he's addicted to them now aswell!! x

View from the window

11pm...

Gloomy day

On my way home from work today, the rain suddenly started pouring down. It was so heavy, I could barely see the road infront of me. I have seen heavy rain before, but not quite like that.
When I arrived home, I was happy to see that the roadworks which have been going on for a week on road opposite my flat were no longer there.... however then I noticed that they had moved next to my parking space. Delightful! It looks like an open grave. All the grass has also been driven over lots, it looks like a wasteland. All to probably give water supply to some new homes that have been under construction ever since we moved in, and were due to be completed in 'Spring 2008'. Thank you Thames Water.

I also see that is gloomy for Canada in the Olympic medal table. I checked to see where Great Britain is, and was pleased to see it is ninth place. I am not surprised to see this small island behind countries with much bigger populations like China and the USA. Then, I checked to see where Canada is in the Olympic tables, and checked again, and again. It isn't even in the medal table yet as Canada doesn't even have a single bronze medal. Even Togo and Kyrgyzstan have one bronze medal each! At least there is a Winter Olympics...