Snow Falling on Cypruses

This morning we were feeling lazy so had a lie in, especially after all our heavy work polishing off a bottle of mulled wine yesterday and eating like kings and queens. Wouter let Cassy out about 7.30am and said it was gloomy outside - that after a week of brilliant weather - we thought, never mind, it's cosy here and we have heaps of inside work to do. When I got out of bed I said, "I see snow falling". Wouter leapt out of bed and after a quick breakfast we took Cassy for a walk straight away to check out the snow.

It's funny because we both found/find it really interesting and funny that we've both experienced snow before, in different circumstances, and realise that for a European living in NZ or Australia this is one thing which can be missed at Christmas time - snow in winter. It's now a strange feeling to come back to this after years of humid weather in December and hot Christmas days.

The weather forecast was right - Aude district was the only one predicted to get snow today and we are getting it all right as the pictures show!
Xmas day

Boxing Day
Xmas day
Boxing Day
The weather system has picked up a stream of cold air from Siberia.

The temperature doesn't feel any colder than it has done all week. There is an eerie sense that everything happens in slow motion as you can see the flakes falling from the sky - but because they fall more slowly than rain it feels different. Also there is less noise as the snow seems to dampen any outside noises (although I think we are just about the only ones to go out as the French know better and stay indoors!)
Xmas day
Boxing Day
Wouter called this pic "little red riding hood and the big bad wolf":
I said to Wouter that the snow tastes salty - so as we were walking back home Wouter was walking along with his mouth open and sticking out his tongue to try and catch a snowflake to taste how salty it is - I had to laugh as anyone looking out of their window would see us and wonder what on earth we are doing.... In fact, he reminded me of the guy from KISS (Gene Simmonds?) who would stick out his tongue and wiggle it around.
Xmas day
Boxing Day
Xmas day
Boxing Day
For Cassy this was yet another new experience which he took in his stride. After a little while we think he was really enjoying himself - except when Wouter threw a fake ball (snowball) and it disappeared into thin air. A few tries and he threw a more substantial "ball" which Cassy caught only to spit out in disgust!

We compared ourselves to young children who have never seen rain before and run outside to get wet.... We are lucky to have experienced this. As I type it's still snowing, but melting at a faster rate than it is snowing, so by tonight it will be gone. But to finish, some more snowy pics to complete the festive season:

All I Want For Christmas

It's that time of year again. We are not buying gifts for each other this year, but being in a different country we are watching with amusement at what French people give each other for Christmas - at least, what they tell you on television should be the perfect gift for the person in your life.

If you're a bloke, you can expect to get some sort of smelly - one which will give you rippling muscles and dripping sweat off your brow, or let you throw sand into the air mysteriously, or become athletic as a black panther, or be a competent, muscly sailor - yes, any or all of those things if you buy products advertised by - Jude Law, David Beckham (Instinct), Hechter Paris, Dolce and Gabbana, Dior, Terre D'Hermes, Airness, Paco Rabanne, Chrome Legend.

For women, fragrances are also popular - you can become a swan with Vanderbilt, roll around naked and seductively on satin sheets with Shalimar or be an Angel or Devil, depending on your mood. Buying for women is easy as you can still buy a lot of products which get rid of those ever persistent wrinkles, get double lifting (which must be ideal for a double chin?) or rejuvenate the skin to look as you've never looked before (or perhaps ever will again).

Uni-sex gifts include the ever-popular chocolates - Eiffel Tower shapes, Ferrero Rocher with 'ice' - I think it's mint chips in the chocolate coating, Ferrero Rocher noir, Ferrero Rocher..., Mon Cheri with cherries inside.... mmmmmmmm. Or music - 101 singers we've never heard of and 101 singers we have.

If your loved one doesn't buy you any of the above then you must be getting something for your telephone, mobile or internet, or a Wii game (music, sport or Super Mario).

In a way I guess they are all good gifts and not over the top. In NZ you can buy all manner of kitchenware (for the chef), all kinds of hardware (for the handy person), Lazyboy recliners, a huge range of electrical appliances - great if you have that sort of money or your recipient has everything else already.


The best present I ever received from my son was something he made - he didn't have much to spend so I told him to use his imagination, which he did. It was an envelope full of 'coupons' with various treats or promises - one free hug, helping make dinner, make dessert, do all the dishes, etc. A good selection of things. If I was going to use one I had to hand him the coupon in time so he could organise things (if required) and the best bit was that he had put an expiry date on the back! It was colourful, thoughtful and original, and making it must have taken him a lot of time.

Whatever your gift, enjoy your Christmas day and don't eat too much turkey. Bonnes Fetes from Cambieure!

Calendar Girl

Yesterday we had a full on day. I painted the last coat of the entrance hallway ceiling as well as the scotia. Maybe needs a few bits touched up again as it's quite hard to cover brown paper with no traces coming through. After lunch Wouter sanded the walls by hand as using a machine would just chew through the walls and make far too much mess. I decided to paint the kitchen windows to step a bit closer to finishing the kitchen - Wouter removed them from their hinges and I painted outside under the verandah as the day was reasonably warm - I later moved inside to paint some wooden mouldings and moved the windows in as well as the weather turned cold.

About then it was time to take Cassy for his afternoon walk as he'd been in since lunchtime - keeping me company while listening to Pavarotti, Katherine Jenkins, French Cafe and Frida. So I went to the laundry to get our gear - leash and garden shoes - and was singing away and talking to Cassy. Welsh people are either always singing or talking to themselves - I happen to do both as I can multitask very well.


So still singing and walking back to get my jacket, hat, gloves and gilet de chasse (hunting sleeveless jacket) there were standing on our verandah two hunky sapeurs pompiers (firemen) who caught me off guard and I felt like I was in a bit of a dream as they didn't appear to be doing anything in particular. So I said hello and they told me that they were dealing with my husband.... ok. When I headed out for my walk they gave me a wave and headed off in their little Fiat - I'm sure two guys with that many muscles couldn't possibly fit side by side into a fiat properly.

On my return Wouter told me that they were fund-raising and a calendar could be had for a donation - so Wouter said "my wife will like that" - I have no idea what he meant (ha ha ha). But when I checked out the calendar, it was nothing to do with helmets, hoses or overall straps strategically placed over muscly chests and the like, but pictures of them out working. At least we don't have to worry about where to hang the calendar next year..... Have you noticed how the young muscly ones always seem to get the job of selling the calendars and asking for donations?

Kitchen

Finally here it is - the Kitchen story. I suggest if you don't have much time, just look at the pictures.

Where does one start? I guess you are wondering what we've been doing the last couple of months. Ha ha - it has been a huge job to redo this area. When you don't have a proper kitchen to cook while work is underway, coupled with the fact that our electricity was a bit unreliable, I must say I got sick of running down to reset the switch but maybe it helped to keep me fit. It was also tricky trying to juggle more than two pots on one element - I had 2 possible elements but if I used both it would blow the fuse....

Rather than give you a complete rundown on every single thing we did and every single problem we encountered in changing the kitchen/dining, it's better to list what we did and show before and after pictures. I've tried to put them in chronological order so it makes more sense.

Unfortunately we don't have many pictures of before we started pulling things to bits, so hopefully you can use your imagination a little. Some things do not show well on the photos we have so it's probably hard to see what we've changed. The layout is very similar for practical reasons, like pipes and power supplies, but some changes have been made like the addition of a pantry and we've expanded the area slightly.

You can see that the former kitchen fittings were good quality and sturdy - they were just outdated and needed refreshing and modernising. None of the items will go to waste as Wouter can either use them in his workshop or we can somehow use them for guests if they want to be more self-sufficient (that's the current plan) is difficult to imagine all the different textures and colours that were here - overwhelming would be a good word. There were so many differences we found it didn't really come together for us and that's why we did a lot of things which other people might have left alone.

Electricity has been done throughout as much as possible, puissance changed so we don't blow any more fuses and we have a 'night rate' which is more economical. We have also had more plugs installed where possible.

This is the camp kitchen (in the lounge):

I had a list of befores and afters here but the formatting looks awful so I've removed it. I guess if anyone really wants to know the details you can email me for a list.

Note that the kitchen is not completely finished as Wouter needs some tools to work on the pantry. In the meantime I have a cupboard to assist with storage until the pantry is done. The overhead units are not yet installed as we are going to do the wall tiling first. The wall tiling (above bench) is not yet done as we only picked up the tiles 4 days ago and need some more cement and grout, as well as an aluminium strip to do them. The rangehood is to be installed once the tiling is done and Wouter is looking at another cabinet which may suit it better than the one we already bought. The dishwasher is yet to be connected - we may get the suppliers to do that for us - and I can't wait to be able to use my very first dishwasher!

The floor tiling was done in stages as poor Wouter did the first day alone and then felt like a broken man. So as I already mentioned in a previous blog, I assisted with cementing the backs of the tiles and delivered them to Wouter when he was ready. It took us 5 sessions to do the whole floor in this area. Grouting was about the same number of sessions but less time, and by the end it was turning out pretty well.

The interior of the cupboards is easy clean melamine and for the 2 corners we have carousels (one installed and one to be collected).

One set of doors is almost done paint-wise - final coat to be done once weather warms up, other windows opening up to outside will also be done then. The only doors I can do at the moment are 4 interior doors, so I won't be bored....

There are two cupboards to go on the walls - one above the fridge and the other above the bench against the wall which meets with the dining room - this one will have under lighting to help with the problem we had of only being able to have the one cable to the ceiling.

Before the units were installed Wouter had to change the plumbing around a little to accommodate the new dishwasher and sink unit. Because the old gas unit was no longer legal (we found out when signing the house contract when buying the house) we had to replace the line with a copper pipe and get a new pressure regulator tap. This was done by two lovely young guys from the local plumbers - they were calling out to each other what sounded like "an-ka-va", which I figured out finally was actually "encore va", meaning push the pipes through a bit more....

The original extractor fan was a huge thing which needed a huge hole in the ceiling. After removing the chimney stack itself, Wouter made up a wooden platform to support concrete which was poured from above in the attic. It was left a couple of days and then the wooden framing removed - et voila! It's been decorated up to look like the rest of the ceiling, and while it's not perfect, it's pretty close and will be sort of hidden (or at least camouflaged) by the new cupboard containing the new extractor fan.

All the doors have to be (or have been) trimmed as the tiles raise the floor level by 12 millimeters. The doors from dining to outside had to have the lock replaced as the previous one was totally shot.

All in all it was a huge job and we are glad to be finally using the kitchen and able to use the room next to it with the fireplace (as a sitting room). It's so cosy. We've "dressed" the room as well so have our furniture - chairs, bookcases, tv, globe, coffee table, lights, persian carpet and of course Cassy's towel (still searching for his duvet!) We gave the room a test run when our guests were here last week and it was given the thumbs up. Now we are already onto the next job which is the entrance hallway - this needs ceiling painted, walls stripped and finished with plaster (they call it crepi here), painted, floor tiles (same as kitchen), plinths, paint doors.

Well done if you made it to the end!

La Cité

For a couple of days this week we had guests. The weather was not the best despite our order - we had a bit of snow and a bit of sunshine, but mostly dark grey clouds. The snow was for the first time on our property since we arrived - first time I've had snow fall on me since I was a child and what I remember most is that we could go out for a short time to make a snowman - which of course you can't do properly wearing your gloves or mittens, so you end up with frozen fingers!

As we only had one full day to do something touristy we decided to go to Carcassonne and visit "La Cite" and see what it was all about, one of our guests having read the books from Kate Mosse (Labyrinth) which were set in the area. The medieval looking towers and surrounding buildings were quite ominous with such weather as a backdrop, and the wind was icy - so even though the air temperature was around 5 degrees it felt more like somewhere below zero.

Defenders of the castle:

Only the bravest people were out to tour the castle. Outside we pulled up our collars, hoods, hats and scarves and inside the rooms enjoyed the lack of whistling winds while viewing the interesting history and museum pieces on show. There were some large stones to hoist and catapult onto attacking enemies, slits through which you would fire your arrows at them, a gallery of important people (the family album?) carved in stone, many statues, sarcophagi and other interesting artefacts. There are lots of websites about La Cite so if you want to read more it shouldn't be too hard to find a good page or two.

Some shops were open and doing a slow but steady trade, but we made our way to a cosy cafe to enjoy a hot coffee before visiting the graveyard to view the ornate tombstones. Interesting how people look after loved ones when they have passed away - memories and personal messages, flowers, belongings, all on the tombs which are lovingly attended. Very sad but at the same time soothing.

The afternoon was complete after a couple of glasses of mulled wine in front of the fire mmmmmmm! and Wouter reminds me every day since how nice it was so maybe I have to make some more.