Greetings From Paris!

Yesterday we had our first day out in Paris. We walked and walked until we got rained and hailed on and raced home. The day started great, then a quick storm, then the sun and blue sky again. It was a beautiful day. We walked all along the Champs Elysees, went to the Arc de Triomphe, and walked along the Seine. After our morning out, we came back to the hotel for a bit so Lois could take a nap, but then we went back out later and watched the sunset over the Eiffel Tower. A great start to a Paris weekend. Here are a few pictures from our day.

Pub Grub

London is filled with pubs, and we're lucky to have a great one right in our neighborhood, one called Fox and Hounds. Family friendly, great food and drinks, close to home. It's a winner. Here are some pictures from our last visit to Fox and Hounds. Dig in. Later this week French food is in order because we're headed to Paris on Tomorrow!

Tea Time

Our place is still quite messy, but it's coming along, and I do love it. Yesterday I cleared off a corner of the table and had tea with Lois. I pulled out the Dixie Dogwood, which I think is so pretty. It's not fancy, just pretty. It was a nice little tea break.  

PS. Our internet connection is VERY slow but I'll be back responding to some comments and reading your blogs soon.  We get internet service at the house on Friday.  

I'm Back!

Andrew brought home a wireless do-hicky thingy for us to use until we get real internet service! It made me so happy that he did! So now I can finally post again, yippee! Our place is still a mess, and we have a lot to do, but we're making progress. We've had many adventures this past week shopping Ikea without a car, which is no fun, let me tell you. Three of the top stressors on a marriage in my opnion:  having a baby, moving to another country, and shopping Ikea in a large city without a car. The things we wanted to order are not available for purchase online, so we had to go and get them and have them sent via home delivery, so at least we didn't have to walk and take the train with huge, heavy boxes, but it's still been a big o'l pain in the rear. But we do now have a sofa!! We got the Ektorp sofa in a sand color. It's also a sofa bed (for guests, of course). I took the picture above with my phone, so it's not great, but you can see what it looks like! Also got my favorite rug, the Tarnby rug.  We had one at our last place but it was old and icky, so we needed a new one. We have a glass top coffee table, but it's just not shown here because we moved it out of the way. Also, the curtains and blinds came with the house. The curtains are very well made and pretty, but I'm thinking I'll get a different color since the sofa is so light and the walls are white.  I've never lived surrounded by white walls and never wanted to until now. I really like white walls right now.  More to come soon!

Looking Up

We STILL don't have internet and won't until the 23rd. Our place is a complete mess! We've unpacked all the boxes, but there's still stuff everywhere. I'm just not sure where to put it all, and I feel like I just keep moving piles around. We also ordered some big things from Ikea, like the Ektorp sofa, but one of the parts is wrong so it's in a huge pile in the living room until we get the right part. Poop. The weather's been very nice though so I've been spending some time out back. I like to watch the sun go down as planes fly above. It's nice looking up outdoors, and I think things will start to look up indoors as well.

No Internet!

We've moved into our new little place but don't have internet acess yet and won't have it for 1 - 2 more weeks! Ugh. When the cable / internet guy said that yesterday I was like WHAT?!! I have withdrawls. Haha. (Though I have internet on my phone, it's not the same.) So I'm blogging from my phone, using an app I just downloaded. Hopefully this post will come out looking ok. Here's a picture of our place before it was filled with boxes. Hopefully it will be enough to keep you hanging on for a bit!

Refreshed

I changed all the icon pictures of the shops I've visited just for a fresher look. I was thinking they were starting to look a bit stale. Time to pull back the curtains and do a little spring cleaning. I still want to have a 3 column blog and larger pictures, but this is a start. I really want to get into some new shops as well. For a while I had a goal of visiting 1 shop a week and posting about them, but obviously that hasn't happened! Maybe once we unpack and get settled I'll get more in the swing of it.

Country Living British Style

Soon we'll be unpacking our things--I hope so anyway! We've secured the little row house with the garden that I mentioned before, and now all we have to do is find out when the movers can deliver our things. I'm so excited to have a place finally! And it is soooo cute. I love the back patio garden and will post some pictures after we move in. Of course I've been looking at magazines, getting inspired to decorate our little place. We have all the same stuff, but it will be nice to see it in a different arrangement in a new place. Here are a few eye candy pages of the most recent two issues of Country Living (the British version).

V&A Museum

On Saturday we went to the V&A Museum. This museum has something for everyone. It was really great--very impressive. Some of their collections include painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, furniture, textiles, photography (and so much more, whew), but a few of my favorite exhibits were the theatre and performance exhibit and the 20th century design exhibit. Not a museum to be missed if you come to London. Here are a few pictures. The very stunning Dale Chihuly blown glass sculpture above is the first thing you see when you enter.

Lighting from the 20th century design exhibit. 

Costume design in the theatre and performance exhibit. 

A picture of Twiggy from the fashion exhibit. 

Cool band and theatre posters. 

Set design models.  

Paintings. 

The textile library.  There were rows and rows of these cabinets.  A fabric / textile lover's dream.