Bonbon de famille à la maison

Ah voila! We arrived in Paris a couple of weeks ago, greeted by grey skies and beautiful old buildings. Our first two weeks here have been flat out with Scott straight into work and me making trips to and from home renovation shops every day. It has taken a little while to find our feet and familiarise ourselves with how the French get things done. I must say, I am quite impressed with the abundance of home reno and decoration shops here - while you have to make the long trek to the suburbs of Paris, once you get there you can find everything you need! Of course, it would help if I could parle some française, but in time this should become at least a little easier. Apart from spending time setting up shop at home, I have been enjoying getting lost in the gorgeous city streets, finding some incredible little quarters, a fantastic falafel house and of course brilliant coffee at Coutume Cafe - a French Aussie duo, and the crème de la crème of the Parisian cafe latte scene. We don't have a kitchen just yet - we're told this is a French idiosyncrasy, whereby the previous tenants actually pack up the entire kitchen and take it with them - we're talking bench-tops, oven, sink, shelving, literally everything (sometimes even flooring), so we are having to start from scratch. In the meantime, we are enjoying picnic style dinners and a nice bottle of red wine on our lounge room floor. Some of our furniture arrived a couple of days ago, so we have been busily assembling it and little by little our apartment is starting to feel more like home - though for now, it still does look like a tornado has just swept through the place! Before we get too organised, I wanted to share some photos of all the boxes and bits and pieces that seem to be piling up very quickly. I will follow up with more photos as we begin to make some sense of this mess. Bisous x

the work station

mr rabbit doing his door stopping thang

this light may well be as old as the building itself

eeeek ... boxes and more!

wall detail love

door handle love

our city view

Bonjour Paris

Super excited to say that Scott and I are moving to Paris next week. The planning has been in motion for some months now and I can't believe the time is finally here. On one hand it's hard to say goodbye to our friends and family and to our city, which we love so much. But on the other, we are so looking forward to this new and exciting adventure on the opposite side of the world. I look forward to learning more and more about the Parisian life and to sharing my varying experiences through this blog. x

Etsy loves

Good morning from a sunny spot on our balcony ... It's birthday day today and for the first time in many years, the sun is shining on the 7th of June! It's been my kind of start to the day - After a lazy sleep in, Scott and I ducked next door for a take away coffee and then went for a quiet morning walk along the beach and watched the waves roll in. On this day for the past few years, we have been on opposite sides of the world, so it's nice to be able to spend the day with my man for a change. When I woke this morning I found a little gift waiting for me on the kitchen table ... It was lovingly wrapped in all sorts of colourful paper, with hand made stickers all over it. When I opened it, I found that Scott had secretly been scouring through my Etsy favourites and bought me the most gorgeous backpack from one very talented seller, BagyBag. Yeeee, I love it. As a result I thought I'd feature my favourite Etsy items on the blog today. The first is a pic of the bag Scotty bought for me. x   www.etsy.com