Surprise!

What is better than a husband coming home with a surprise present, a new wrist watch?

NOTHING!

He's just the best :)

Work Work Work

This afternoon I'm going back to work but I will stop quickly in Aubagne in Alinea (a sort of French Ikea) to buy some curtains, lamps and bedlinen. Probably it's a little illoyal to go there and do my shopping considering that these are the things I sell when I'm at work...

Over the last couple of days we've had a company over to replace our fireplace. They made a lot of mess but did great job. The horrible crépi (irregular finish) has gone and we should now have a functional fireplace which won't leave us feeling like two smoked salmons everytime we light the fire. We also took the opportunity to install a pipe leading from the fireplace to our bedroom which will serve to heat our butts in the winter time and save some energy.

Their efficiency made us realise that maybe we should call in a few people to paint the kitchen, laundry room and bedroom too. It took me literally no time to take the wall paper off but we can't seem to find the time to actually paint it over. And having professionals doing it would also leave the walls a lot smoother than we'd ever manage I think. So now I'm leaning over the yellow pages, calling local artisans for a devis (price estimate).

Quiet

Our friends have gone back home and the house is yet again quiet. Well, that is apart from my supressed screams when the crazy cat climbs up my leg trying to catch a dangling thread...

Love Bug

At the moment we are housing this little cutie without a proper name, which is a shame so please come with good suggestions!! I could give you all her sad story but all the abandoned animals have them so I'll skip it.

She's 2 months old and likes stepping on my keyboard while I type, sending me messages like : "Are you sure you want to close this window?" or "Pressing F7 for a long time will enable a lot of strange things, would you like that?"

The only moment she stays completely still is when you caress her tummy, and in the evening when she's sleepy and wants to snuggle close to our necks. But most of all she prefers running after little balls of plastic or paper, or even chew a bit on the toes she can find... Yesterday she discovered CUUURTAINS, wow she had great time observing fostermum doing a brave attempt at pulling out all her sharp claws and tie the curtains out of reach!!

Anybody wants to adopt her? It's easy, just email me!!

Bouillabaisse and Summer Guests

Last week's guests are now flying back to Australia and two other friends are flying in from Norway tonight. We had a great time last week going to St. Tropez, the beach, restaurants... We just found the best place to eat bouillabaisse (the picture is so not doing the dish justice!), St. Pierre in Six Fours les plages which is just around the corner from us. And I should be fairly qualified to say so after having taken practically ever guest to eat this fish soup in different restaurants. Only negative thing : they didn't clean the fish for us. However the soup and fish were sooo good that it became a detail.

I'll explain better how it's served: First you're served the soup itself without any fish in it. Then the waiters bring in a huge plate of seafood with different types of fish, shells, calamari and potatoes. Normally the waiter would filet the fish and place it gently into your bowl of soup and this service is repeated until it's all gone.

***

With this weeks guest we'll have a bit more of a sporty week with kayaking, walks and bicycle rides. Oh... and wine drinking! It's only right that they'll have a bit of a degustation of all the french wines right??!!

Better than Christmas

I'm writing from Milan now. We've hired a big van so we could pick up the last pieces of furniture that L's sister has given us. Our livingroom will from tomorrow have a beautiful solid wood table with matching chairs and sideboard, and she also generously given away her teck garden table to which she has bought us some chairs as a present... Like the rest of the furniture was not enough!!

Having moved all that into the van we went to pick up our wedding presents which were still at the store where we had made our gift list. We can't wait to go home and just look at our new flat screen TV, use our new floor wash, our (my) new mp3/video player (there will never be another boring flight from now on), our multi-function kenwood..... ++

Presents are just sooo much fun!!! Maybe we could just do a repeat wedding next year, just for fun??

22:09

Home alone and scaring myself. The wind is making the whole house seem alive and I keep turning up the volume watching Doctor House.

I'm such a wimp sometimes!

New looks

I'm working on a new look for my blog but since I'm such a novice to programming languages, hacks and tweaks it's taking me forever. I've already found a template I like but now I need to personalise it, adding gadgets, taking away useless gadgets. In theory I don't have all that time to dedicate to it but it's like my addiction to chocolates, once you've open the packet you just can't stop eating until you've emptied it all!!

It's not the only aspect of my life I want to give a new look... Just before the honeymoon, in the only 10 spare minutes I had between packing my luggage and taking the taxi I ran down to the first Jean Louis David salon and asked for a 10 cm shorter cut in different levels (surely there's a fancy way of saying that but I don't have a clue, in french it's called dégradé I think). Well, the lady with a mustache basically cut it straight off as if using a ruler but I didn't have time to complain so I lied as so many times before at the hairdresser, saying I was soooo happy. So today I went to get a new haircut in the only saloon worth visiting that I found on the yellow pages. But my courage failed me seeing the age of the girls working there, in the so-called winner of the Coupe de France in haircutting because if they get it wrong again I'll have no more hair to fix... Ahahahaha.

And before you ask, nope, the only one I can ask around here for a skilled hairdresser is looking for one herself! Maybe I should send her to one first, and if she looks good I'll go there too! Real friendship that is... :)

Ensemble C'est Tout

I just finished a brick of a french book : Ensemble c'est tout by Anna Gavalda. Some of you might recognise it as the recent film by the same name. It was such a pleasure to read even though my dictionary was at hand most of the time. So in a marathon of 8 hours last Sunday, out on the terrace enjoying the quietness of our neighbourhood I laughed, cried and clung on to the last pages of the book. But hey, then I'm a hopelessly romantic person...

It's also available in English and Norwegian but I'm glad I didn't know that before I had started it!

My new NV10

Did I mention that my Canon ixus decided to not follow my orders anymore? To rebel by switching between video and photo mode whenever he wanted? Reparing would have costed me a lot more than buying a new one so I let him do what he wanted for a few months and then bought this sleek beauty in Singapore.



I love the old fashioned look it has! Since it has a touch'n scroll menu I'm still trying to get the hang of where to find all the functions and learn all the new ones. In the autumn I hope to sign up for a photography course around here.