Terrasse

It was All Hallow’s Eve . . .

France isn’t big on Halloween (it really is a holiday of american invention) so it was up to Mister Cooper and I to make our own celebration.  As my American comrades were partying away back in my homeland, and while there were a few available parisian halloween parties to choose from, Mister Cooper and I settled in for a more private celebration of this beloved American holiday.  We opted to cuddle up, eat loads of popcorn and sugar-based snacks and watch movies that i’m usually too much of a wimp to handle.  Films that got top billing: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, It’s a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and Rosemary’s Baby.

Freddy Krugar’s really scary.

But I wasn’t too scared because I had these guys to watch out for me:

note their jaunty mustaches and killer berets. (the one on the left is a bit crooked, i know)

Also note the gummy smurfs in the foreground.  you can get gummy smurfs everywhere here.  I think they’re my new favorite vice.  And I discovered that the flavor builds on itself so that the more you eat consecutively, the yummier they are.

To ensure that we stuffed ourselves as much as Hanzel and Gretel in the Witches cabin, I made popcorn the old fashioned way - on the stove.  It was super easy and waaay yummier than that microwave crap.

I made three kinds: regular butter and sea salt (and i threw in m&m’s for good measure), gomasio and furikake, and butter and herbamare.  yum!  Also note our green “potions” (really just a minty french drink called a “diabolo menthe” - mint syrup and mineral water).  Mister Cooper’s back there noshing on some corn and setting up the films (we watch movies on the xbox)

This was my mom’s favorite movie concoction: popcorn and m&m’s.  In honor of her loving memory (and to satisfy my own love of the sweet with the salty).  Seriously, try it.

It was the perfect halloween for us.  cozy inside, me jumping at every sound and dustin giggling at my horror-film induced nervousness.

Pieces and Bits

This week has been a series of small occurrences that link together in a delightful chain that by Friday had me smiling like a crazy person.

First up: Corgi in a gym bag.  I got on the metro monday morning, on my way to meet clients for a tour at mister louvre only to sit across from a lady who had a Welsh corgi stuffed inside a gym bag.  The corgi didn’t seem too alarmed that his 30 lb bulk had been squished inside something that would normally carry two tennis rackets and a pair of smelly shoes.  Not at all.  Instead, he was smiling at me all the way to work.  I was giggling to myself ceaselessly, probably convincing all my fellow metro-commuters that they were sitting next to a young woman in the midst of a mental break, but I didn’t care.  And I didn’t care that my constant corgi-directed gaze was probably alarming mister corgi’s owner.

I didn’t have my camera with me, so I’ve instead tried to recreate the effect here (please excuse my drawing):

It’s not great, but you get the idea.  It’s a corgi in a gym bag.  Then you have to imagine a tiny French woman attempting to lug this chubby pup through a busy metro couloir.  No easy feat.  And fairly amusing.

Later on in the week, I spotted this little gem in the window of a local shop:

This is the funniest “ass plate” yet.  Mister Cooper and I had a good giggle over this.  You may recognize the shop from an earlier post.

Of course, then there’s been the amazing fall weather.  Autumn and Paris are the best-matched couple I’ve ever met.  I hope they stay in love and live a long, harmonious life together.

Dustin and took a walk in the Bois de Boulogne to check out Paris and Autumn’s love child (a sunny sunday):

Mister Cooper walks in the woods.  Note fall coat.

I’m not sure what this man’s hoping to catch in that stinky pond, but he sure looks relaxed.

Everyone was basking in the warm, orange sun.

I love watching the ladies gossip and elderly couples out for a sunday stroll.

Last night I wanted to take a picture of this really beautiful, old-fashioned storefront in the 9th, but this guy wasn’t having it:

I kind of wish he was more in focus so I could really center on his disapproving gaze.  (it kind of cracks me up).

At any rate - these are just a few pieces from my life of late.  It’s been beautiful and happy and I’ve been feeling more contented and warm than I have for a good while.  Paris is its own theater, and it seems I’ve been endlessly entertained this week.

The Doodles of My Dreams

Today, while I was on a Christmas shopping reconnaissance mission at the Louvre’s kid gift shop, I picked up this amazing coloring book.  Initially I thought I’d give it to one of our many nieces and nephews back home in california, but I’ve decided instead to keep it for myself.  Selfish, I know, but I can’t bring myself to part with this find.

The book is huge, maybe 11 x 14″, and features the playful artwork of Lili Scratchy, a French designer living in the eastern suburbs of Paris.  Her work is hilarious and cute, with a bit of a punk rock, outsider-y edge to it, featuring labyrinthine moustaches and spaghetti full of lost jewels.  The illustrations are funny enough to make even mushrooms laugh.  See?

Below is my favorite illustration, and the first I’ll color with the included watercolor pencils.

And all the pictures are one-sided and perforated, so when you’re done coloring they’ll make excellent and sophisticated decor of your own making (almost).

If you’re not going to be in Paris any time soon, you can also order these books online from that timeless purveyor of cool, colette.

So, I’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday with singing vegetables and the world’s smallest elephant, thanks to lili scratchy.

Sexy Cheese

Mr. K and I were remarking last night that only in France are the cheese commercials so unavoidably sexy.

In France cheese is sexy.  No joke.

Cheese is a revelation

And one from the 80s proving that sexy cheese is a long-standing tradition

Amazing Site-specific Project

Check out this amazing project by a design studio in the Czech Republic, where a group of artists have cached sound-producing sculptural works in the forests surrounding Brno.  Their works are fantastic and industrial at the same time, playing off both natural (wind) and industrial (train tracks) phenomena.  The website itself is beautiful and imaginative, make sure to turn your volume up.

There are more interesting works than the one pictured above: podvedomim

Tricothé! (a parisian version of stitch n’ bitch?)

I finally found a Parisian knitting group - held once a week on wednesdays at 7pm at a lovely tea house called L’Oisive Thé, which is located in the 13th.

I have yet to insert myself into this little group (let alone choose a new project) but I’m excited to try it out.  And now this little tea house is selling yarn to boot!  What’s more, the location (butte aux cailles, the former home of my favorite former parisians) is one of my faves in Paris, and I’ve walked past the tea house many many times without even knowing it housed the Parisian incarnation of a stitch n’ bitch.

Regardless of the salon de thé’s appeal to this specific craft nerd’s woolly yearnings, it offers the non-crafty seemingly delicious treats for the tummy in a cozy setting.

Check it out here

Imagining what was Missed

A new favorite blog - I love this artist’s illustrations and the idea itself.  What a great source of inspiration, to build a visual story from these little narrative snippets - lovely and playful and funny (read the one about flatulence).

http://missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com/

An Estival Farewell

Summer is officially gone.  The trees are brown, the sun is orange gold and I wear sweatshirts to bed at night.  In homage to one of my most insane and busy summers ever I present to you the cream of my collection of Parisian sunbathers.  Toward the end of the summer - late july, early august - I began to see more and more sunbathers around town.  They were everywhere in various states of undress - park benches, stairs, chairs by the fountains, sidewalks, and grassy knolls.  And I became a shameless voyeur, recording their whereabouts gratefully undetected. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my voyeuristic labors.

Genies On My Feet

I picked up these beauties while completing my obligatory visit to the Walmart in Southern Shores, NC.  They’re slippers, but they’re also mops.  Genius, huh?  Little mops for my little feet.  So I’m testing them out today as i putter around the house, unpacking, cleaning, writing, smoking  . . .

The packaging specifies that slipper genie is not a toy (it is a serious cleaning product, you see), they are not to be used to slide across the floor ala Risky Business, and they are not to be used if one’s balance is unstable.  I think I’ll break all these rules to truly put them to the test.  I will: dance in them, jet myself across the living room clad solely in my underpants and a pair of sunglasses in imitation of a young Tom Cruise, and I will continue to wear them even after downing too much 1664.  Slipper Genie?  Slipper joy.

Home (Paris) Again, Again

Just returned from two amazing weeks in North Carolina.  Already missing it.  While I didn’t grow up there, my sister and her fiance went to grad school at Duke, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time visiting and it feels comfortable enough that I even sort of think of it as a second home.  Durham specifically has all my key ingredients: good food, heat, informal, great music and art, small town vibe.  I like it.  I could wear a tube top and flip flops down to buy a popcicle.  Unlike this town where I live, where I need to be fully clothed and made up to purchase a Berthillon ice cream cone.  In short, a trip to the states did nothing to appease my chronic homesickness.

BUT, that’s besides the point as the purpose of my visit was the marriage of two incredible people: my sister and her mister.  And they put on quite an event.  For all the stress and anxiety they faced the final days before hand, the wedding sure paid off. AMAZING.  I cried until the dancing started.  Cried from joy and, of course, also loss - missing the mama something fierce.  Hard to believe how life keeps moving without the one who seemed to move it before.

After all the beautiful celebration (culminating in my husband, my sister, her husband and me drunkenly awaiting a cab at 3 am in downtown Durham - last ones standing) we all headed out to the outer banks for a week on the beach, where my sister and her mister procured us a HUGE beachside castle to share.  Though constant social interaction can wear me down (particularly when I’m feeling a tad emotional and having a mild mama freakout), the week was truly wonderful.  Favorite moments: swimming with sister+mister, my dad, my man, riding bikes with my 75-year-old dad and my own mister cooper, beautiful dinners on screened-in porch, quiet time with my sister all to myself.

Loving the beach and heat and tan skin and my people, it has been a rough 24-hour welcome back to Paris.  I am missing family fiercely, missing convenience and familiarity, missing the burritos.  And I’m coming back to a Paris where the small community I built up over the last year has entirely dissipated, everyone having returned to their own respective corners of the world.  So in some ways I feel again as if i were starting all over, though I now have regular activities to occupy me.  But, I continue to take on this project of trying to establish life here in Paris, determined as ever to embrace its alienation, its blessed anonymity, its quirks, charms, and luscious vices.

La Rentree approaches, and all the Parisians return from vacation.  And with them the art wakes up from its own month-long nap.