Shops I love.

   I know, I know. This time around, I've only seen the tip of the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe not at all, or Place de la Concorde or...name just about any other famous Paris monument. So why did we make a pilgrimage to one of my favourite stores? 

   Last year, around this time of year actually, we were in Paris. I was researching a story on a shop called "Merci." If I'm doing a story on it, I don't blog about it because, to my way of thinking, that's not really ethical, putting it all out there when someone is paying you for exclusivity. 

   Anyhoo, Merci is the brainchild of a couple who made a fortune in children's clothing. Long story short, they took over an old wallpaper factory, did it up with great panache and élan and give the profits to kids' charities. Nice. 

   A transportation strike notwithstanding (although we saw no evidence of it at all) we Metro-ed over to somewhere near Boulevard Beaumarchais, and wandered into the courtyard that's Merci's entrance. A small scarlet car (Fiat? Can't remember) overflowed with flowers last time we were there. This time around, it was furniture from Egypt made, as far as I could see, from split bamboo. 

   Other things that caught my eye: a vintage Chanel dress (there's a rack of incredibly luscious, very rigorously curated, fashion), an endearing little cupboard faux-painted and distressed to within an inch of its life, a patchwork-covered armchair, and sundry other sundries. The whole place is full of designer moments. Best of all is a Great Wall of Second-hand Books where I found a novel I'd been looking for, for two euros. Come to think of it, all we seem to have bought this week is books. 

Decorating for Christmas

  Our house standard Camembert is La Rustique which comes in the traditional round wood box with an inner wrap of red-and-white checked paper. I'd been squirreling away this paper for ages, smoothing it out and stacking it in a drawer. Here's what was at the back of my mind. The inside of the "gift" is a chunk of polystyrene. Kate did the work, wrapping each little white block, sealing it with tape and then trimming it with red ribbon. The evergreens are prunings from the garden. 

    When the checked paper ran out, she used leftover pages from an 19th century book that I've torn apart for its illustrations.

The Big Screen.

     Someone in this household has set his heart on a big flat-screen TV. We have not had a TV for 16 months and I haven't missed it. But winter is coming on and there are all those DVDs we've found at flea markets or ordered from Amazon...

    So the deal is: he can have the big screen and I'll make a big screen to hide it when it's not in use. Scouting around on-line, I've seen numerous "scrap" screens from the Victorian era decoupaged with kittens, faces, roses and all the other images beloved of the era. 

    I want to make something similar and, in recent months, had been hunting around for a source of pictures...postcards, giftwrap...I wasn't quite sure what.

    Then the answer fell into my hands. Bear with me if my prose gets a little purple further along in this post. It's the result of spending time with Volume 2 of Les Batailles de la Vie--The Battles of Life--a thick, heavy tome that, as luck would have it, I came upon lying forlornly on a heap of Readers Digest Condensed Books at today's vide grenier in Chalabre. My heart thumped and my cheeks paled as I asked the price. "Two euros." I swooned.  

    The first few pages are missing but I'm guessing from the fashions and the prose style that it's late 19th century. There's also a telling reference to a certain comtesse Régine who is described as "still charming" at 37 (!!) with shoulders of an ampleur superbe. That era was hot for big lusty shoulders as you can see in the 100 or so engravings punctuating the 1000 somewhat stained pages of mayhem, lurve and betrayal. 

Just one shelf in the kitchen

The two shelves either side of the stove have almost reached saturation point. Here's a section of the one on the left and here's what it holds. Left to right:

1) A tiny, tiny china figurine that was contained in the gateau du roi we ate at Christmas. Think of it the French version of the sixpence traditionally mixed into a Christmas pudding. You see a lot of these diminutive people for sale at flea markets.

2) A somewhat larger figure of a chef. This is actually a timer. 

3) One of many jugs--but here's the thing--still holding the bunch of now very dried mimosa I bought back in February.

4) A big fat blue teapot on loan until we come upon one that's just as big and attractive. 

5) A row of three china canisters for tea, sugar and coffee which, logically, is what's inside them.

6) Behind them is a 3-D map of our department, the Ariège. I have no idea why we bought this or what it's doing in the kitchen.

7) A very heavy pestle and mortar that I brought back from a trip to Borneo. 

8) A glimpse of the Bodum coffee maker.