Wake up Sleeping Beauty!

It is fair to say that this blog has been slightly neglected... obviously lots have happened since my last post about 18 months ago. We did leave London, and I still feel heartbroken about this, and we did move to Corsica and I still feel unsure about this new life : I miss the city and its endless possibilities, I miss my friends, I miss my little neighbourhood and my house...

I won't get into all the wrongs I find with this place because it would just take too long and I want to reopen this blog on a positive note.

I won't brag about the beautiful sunshine and warm sea either (I might at a later date though...)

But I will brag about something quite exciting : l'Ange Gaston is now a little business!

It all started last winter : Jeanne selected a few (lucky?) shops on the way back home from school and ruthlessly visit them everyday to get her share of chat and cuddles (obviously she is not getting enough of either at home... bad mummy!). She set her heart on the lovely children clothes boutique in our building and  I started chatting with Emilie, the owner. One thing leading to another I created little crochet collars for her to sell in the shop over Christmas. We kept on working together this summer and you can now find L'Ange Gaston collars, hair clips and little bikini bottoms in her window display!

So that was my big news for now! More about our life here next time!

Après des mois de sommeil il est temps de réveiller ce blog. Notre vie a changé du tout au tout depuis mon dernier billet... il est vrai qu'il date de plus de 18 mois! Nous avons fait nos adieux à Londres et j'en ai encore le coeur brisé... Et nous sommes installés en Corse, une nouvelle vie que je n'ai pas encore vraiment acceptée : la grande ville et ses possibilités infinies me manquent, ainsi que mes amis, notre joli quartier et notre petite maison...

Mais je ne m'étendrais pas sur tout ce qui peu me déplaire ici : je veux réouvrir ce blog sur une note positive.

Je pourrais vous inonder de photos des filles (ce qui vous pend au nez...) ou vous narguer à coups de soleil radieux, de plages de sable blanc et de baignades en famille...

Mais il m'est quand même arrivé quelque chose d'excitant : L'Ange Gaston est maintenant une petite entreprise! Grâce à Jeanne qui harcèle rend gentillement visite à tous les commerçants du quartier pour sa dose quotidienne de calins ( à croire que ses parents ne s'en chargent pas...) j'ai rencontré Emilie la propriétaire d'une très jolie boutique de vêtements pour enfants en bas de chez nous. De fil en aiguille, j'ai créé les premiers cols au crochet L'Ange Gaston pour sa boutique durant les fêtes de fin d'année. Et je récidive cet été avec des barrettes, cols et  petits bas de maillot de bain!

Voilà ma bonne nouvelle! Quant à notre nouvelle vie vous en saurez plus au prochain épisode!

Heartbroken...

My last post was published 8 months ago... hum... not good... And really it is not for lack of thinking about it! I even started several drafts, one being about New Year's resolutions, among which was updating my blog regularly! I was actually getting ready to write on here a few weeks back, taking pictures, thinking of words when our life suddenly took an unwanted turn : we are to leave London to go and live in Corsica in a few months.

Many people would be so happy to make that move but if I must be truthful I am pretty devastated. I think the exact word is heartbroken : it feels just like going through a break up. It made me realised how much I love my life here : I made beautiful friends, we live in a lovely little house, I am really happy with Jeanne's school and was looking forward to get more involved, our neighbourhood is a great little community and I was starting to really feel part of it. I'll get over the house, I am hoping that Jeanne will be happy in any school (let's just hope she will be the kind of kid who fits in... the french educational system can be so narrow minded...), as  for the community... well there is no way to know ... It's like meeting someone new... I will miss the big city and its endless opportunities, its diversity, its limitless reservoir of new faces and new places... I guess, even though I grew up in a small city, or because of it, I am a city girl at heart. I like to know that I can open my front door, take a bus or tube and half an hour later discover a totally new place. But what I will miss the most are all those great people that have made my life what it is today. I just can't believe that they won't be here to celebrate the girls' next birthday...

Well enough of it for now, I am sure that you got my point : no need to tell me about the sunshine (I like the rain personally!) or the great outdoors, I am just not interested right now. Funny how I have always been excited about moving to new places in the past. I can't help thinking that this life was the one, I had found it and now it will soon be gone. Yes, truly heartbroken.

I am sorry for this tearful post but I just had to get it off my chest so that I could be back before 8 months to discuss much more trivial matters!

Oh and there is good news too : since we are moving I was able to tick lots of biggies from my to do list like make blinds and curtains and for a minute it was down to 14! Well that was before I added the Xmas shopping!

Coming, coming, one minute...

Well... it has been a while... Yes I have been busy, but no more than any full time mum of a toddler and a newborn, the newborn is not even one any more, she turned 4 months a few days ago! No... she doesn't sleep through the night and no thanks I do not intend to let her cry it out... I had times when that really stressed me out, Jeanne was the perfect baby sleeping through the night after less than 3 months and sleeping all day, but then that all stopped when she started teething and by the age of 1 she was only taking one nap and dropped that one when she turned 2. In a bid to make me feel better I had a look at all those books that are supposed to save your life in such cases. Well, the Baby Whisperer is now used to wedge Luce's mattress when she has the sniffles and I still have to really implement the advices of the No Cry Sleep Solutions in which at least you do not find any "your baby has to... ", " you must...", "it's all your fault, you idiotic mother...". Funny how some issues can seem like the end of the world one minute and totally ok the next! It's bond to get better as I do not know of any 10 years old not sleeping through the night...

So appart from dreaming of unbroken sleep and feeling like I already broke my new toy, what I have been up to? I did quite a bit before Christmas as I had decided to make a few of my presents myself. Clever, clever idea... especially when leaving it to the last minute... You won't get to see the shawl I crocheted for my mum as I of course forgot to take a picture of it, but you will get a pip at the PRINCESS DRESS! Yep everything has to be princessy around here, the pinker and sparklier the better! So I could have saw her a really tasteful little number but it was her present after all so decided for the opposite!

Here she is being her silly self with her knight.

Since then? not too sure really...

The to-do list? Haven't ticked anything on it for ages, well at least now I can tick "update blog"!

The ultimate "I made it myself" moment

Well I had a little help from the hubby, but really I mostly did that one myself!


Luce was finally born on the 21st Octobre! So no she is not a boy, and no that boy is not premature... I have to admit I have great instincts when it comes to guessing things about unborn babies, did the same with Jeanne, was convinced it was a boy even when the doctor pretty much told me it was a girl when not asked for so much info. Actually now I think that I was trying to convince myself, and that deep down I wanted another girl. Maybe partly because Jeanne was so set on having a sister, so I was really relieved when I found out. Plus as I was really sure it was a boy it came as a great surprise!
I also have been surprised by the way Jeanne reacted, I was expecting some reaction, but not that let's go back to square one of potty training, don't want to go to school, won't stay in my bed and eventually remove my nappy at night and try to sleep without one so that my mum can come and change the sheets at 3 in the morning between two feeds... But I am convince we will all survive! Today is our first day on our own and so far so good, it does feel like skydiving without a parachute, repeating to myself, so far, so good, so far, so good, but with the niggling feeling that something is bond to go wrong... But suprisingly I even had time to do 10 minutes of crochet today, so it has to be ok!

The to do list? Well, looking good, 39 items, less than 40!!!

Weaving in loose ends

Well, still no baby... You wonder why I worried so much about not making it to 37 weeks! I was convinced that baby would be born in septembre, and here we are nearly 3 weeks later...

The plus side is that I have been able to finish off a few projects that were in danger of joining so many others in my , big, box of unfinished items...

First I finished the crochet blanket, and I quite like it, not very baby like maybe...

It is made of extra fine merino and is nice and soft... I crocheted the squares quite quickly as they are highly addictive! But I really had to kick myself to sew them together... I had promised myself that my next granny squares blanket would use squares that can be joined as you go... And then I guess I changed my mind... So after nearly a week of sewing and weaving in loose ends here it is!

It then sat on my hospital suitcase for over a week, as the blanket to take the baby home in. That was until I finished this baby nest, angel nest in french, that I had actually started before Jeanne was born 3 years ago... So finishing it is twice as satisfying!

And once that baby is brought back homesafe and sound, she will even have a little sleeping bag to sleep in, hopefully for hours at a time!

The quilt is also nearly finished, just have to sew in the binding.

Well I guess this post will just be about showing off as my brain is shrinking in proportion with my belly getting bigger... and I therefore cannot think of anything clever to say... Hey, maybe next time!

The to do list? Updated it tonight and I still have 42 items on it, but it did climb up to around sixty last week as I added all of my Christmas shopping... The biggies are still all there, blinds, curtains and other tax returns...

1.3kg butter, 1.5kg sugar and 24 eggs later...

Well I did make it to Jeanne's birthday party and pretty much cooked everything I intended to (well super husband did his fair share!). My main challenge was the pink butterfly shaped cake I had decided to bake, thanks to my friend Alex who lended me a really nice book called Birthday Cakes for Kids by Annie Rigg.

It was my first attempt at cake decorating and it did not go as bad as I was dreading :

The birthday girl was really hapy but then it was pink so I was not taking much risks there! Does not matter how sickly that pink shade is!

Of course it wasn't perfect, as in the previous days I had tried to really take it easy to make sure the baby wouldn't be born before the party... So we had ugly plastic glasses and no decorations to speak of, the music wouldn't work but the kids were being so loud that we would not have heard it anyway. But again who needs decorations when you have a whole dance studio to yourself and nice big piles of steps to pull down :

And built up again :

The kids went back home knackered and I suspect the grown-ups with a nice big headache, success all round then!

I didn't really have time to eat much during the party and decided, against all good judgement to make up for it in the evening. I settled nicely in front of the TV watching the new ITV Drama Lowndon Abbey, which I thought was pretty good, my sort of show (can't give birth on a Sunday evening now or I'll miss it...), some hommous and crakers, feta and sundried tomatoes savory cake and 2 pieces of the butterfly... A bit ambitious or down right stupid... Do you think unborn babies can have sugar rushes lasting all night keeping their mothers awake thinking they are about to give birth? Well I think they do... So a sleepless night it was, a long sleepless night...
Super husband came to the rescue again and stayed home today!

The to do list? down to 41 entries but nothing happening fast now as I turned into a real turtle...

Where have you been?!

I know, it has been over a month... Well I have been busy with Jeanne's christening, sewing her a dress, sewing matching little bags for the dragees and then I got REALLY tired and stayed in bed for two days, and never really recovered...

And yes, this is the best picture I have of that dress, isn't it bad? For me, yaking pictures is the biggest challenge in having a blog, I am just useless... Well, anyway it was pretty enough for her cousin to tell her she was a princess, which obviously is the nicest compliment you can pay Jeanne at the moment! It was a lovely day on the Ile the Batz, one of my favourite place in the world, surrounded by friends and family.

We are now back in London where a giant courgette awaited us...

It weights over 3 kgs! I already made 2 zucchini pineapple breads with it, thanks to my friend Barb's recipe and intend to make so more for Jeanne's birthday party on Sunday.

Here is the recipe :

- 3 eggs

- 2 cups shredded zucchini

- 3 cups flour

- 1 tea spoon cinnamon

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1 teaspoon soda

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 cup oil

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1 6oz shredded pineapple tin

Just mix everything together, put in a greased and floured bread pan and cook at 180 celsius until browned, I would say an hour.

I think next time I might add the zest of one orange to give it more zing.

Jeanne turned 3 on the day we were back and had some ... Christmas cake to celebrate... It is what happens when you don't have neither the time nor the energy to bake one and that you send your husband to buy one... Well as long as there is a candle on top it is a birthday cake isn't it? She didn't seem to mind...

And we will try to do better for the party. I am supposed to make a butterfly shaped one covered in lots of pink and sparkles... The itch being that even though I am only due in a month time I was told yesterday that the baby had started coming down and could arrive anytime now... So fingers crossed I make it to the party! And if so I'll try to take pictures...

But the big even was that being 3 years old she started nursery 3 hours a day!

I always said I didn't like uniform but I have to confess that she is awfully cute, if I say so myself... She really likes it so far and I enjoy every minute of it!

Waited for me on the fridge was also the To Do List... We are down to 43 items... Progress might come to an halt any minute though...