Her Life is a WIP

Christmas came and went, and it does so so fast, doesn't it? I hope everyone who celebrates did enjoy every moment of it and had a lovely time with friends or family... or on their own!

I had the most excellent weekend myself and came back with lovely new memories (there was so much baby holding time omg ♥). Also a stomach filled to full capacity and some lovely presents ;)

We've always been a family in love with Christmas (my sister, cousins and I are fortunate enough to have wonderful memories of our childhood Christmases) and we've always enjoyed celebrating it even after we lost the last of our grandparents and before Chiara was born (the eldest of my nieces and nephews) but, admittedly, ever since the kids came to our lives, we've had so much fun teaching them the traditions we grew up with... and so much fun re-creating the magic surrounding this time of the year. With five young children with us now (well, Nolan and Eloïse are obviously too little to even know there's something happening but you know what I mean) we're having the time of our life ;)

Which, look what one of my cousins found ( for the assorted nieces and nephews )

Aren't those bags the cutest? We were pretty jealous and are thinking of asking the same for the adult members of the family lol

Anyway. I had a lot of fun, is what I'm saying. And could fast for the remaining of the week, really ;)

I meant to post this last night but I was so mellow and chill that this was almost too much effort for me lol I could only snuggle on the couch and watch the Sense8 Christmas special. Again. Oh, I enjoyed that episode so much! Two minutes hadn't passed that I was already smitten. And I basically never stopped. So many awesome, moving, hotter than hot, beautiful, sweet, funny moments in one single episode! Sense8 is one of the best shows to have ever graced our digital screens, imho. It is such an ode to human connection, to love and friendship, to resilience, to kindness, strength, tolerance, it's such a beautiful exemple of diversity and representation. The action scenes are all kinds of awesome, the plot is pretty cool and original. As for the sex scenes, you guys? There are no words to express how gorgeous (and hot) they are. No words ♥

Netflix does have some brilliant original series. Next in line, The OA, which sounds extremely intriguing.

Omg, I can't believe Christmas is upon us! Tomorrow, people, it's tomorrow! (I mean, for those of us who celebrate on the 24th, obviously). The excitement, it is hard to contain ;)

We're 99% done on the Christmas gifts front and we're about to leave for Paris to get the Very Last Present (I know what to get and where to get it and there's no risk of it being out of stock so that's 0% stress) meaning that in a couple of hours, we'll be officially done. We've also planned a little visit to Marks & Spencer to get some scones and whatnot to add to our little post-Christmas brunch on the 25th (since we'll be staying at my parents').

I love Christmas shopping in its many forms :) Plus, I'm already thinking of the crêpe I'll get later on - an important part of some of our outings in Paris, especially in Winter ;) Mind you, I say "Winter" but right now, the cold hasn't really decided to make an appearance, it's supposedly 12°C today and that saddens me. Truly, it does. Please to be getting cold soon, ok? I'm not even asking for snow at this stage (I think I've accepted that this will be another year without snow in Ile-deFrance) but at least some low temperatures, please? (I should move to a colder part of France, really, so that these shenanigans don't happen!)

Then again, I'm still going out with my gloves and my woolly hat (which I love, it has a pompom and it is warm and cute!) even though they mostly stay in my handbag. It's the principle of the thing, you know what I mean?

Anyway, this is just a little (random, oh so random) post because I'm having a lazy morning, I was just listening to an adaptation of Jane Eyre on the radio (French radio) and I was having quite a languid time of it; snuggled up in my blanket, watching the Christmas tree and listening to this classic. Pretty lovely morning, if you ask me :)

Hope you're having a nice week, flist, and that the Christmas preparations (if you celebrate Christmas) aren't stressing you out *hugs*

I've been on holidays for four days now and I haven't had a single lie-in yet. What the hell? Case in point, I've been awake since 7.30AM this morning. It's annoying :-/

I've been meaning to post earlier but I wanted to share some pictures of my weekend when doing so. Alas, I'm having some issues with my mobile and I haven't been able to synch aforementioned pictures to my dropbox account yet.

Those were good pictures, too. We've had Cookie's nephew with us most of the weekend and have been spending most of it with my BIL and cousin-in-law. We went to see The Hobbit (third time for us, though in French, this time, and in 2D, so it was kinda like a first) on Saturday, played a mad Monopoly: the Hobbit game in the evening with him (like, for three hours, and we had to cut the game short or he would have played well into the night lol) then went to one of Paris' big Christmas market on Sunday (hence the pretty pictures I wanted to share).

I also participated in a fun BookTube online "event". Some BookTubers organised a short, laid-back BookAThon (ChristmasBookTubeAThon, to be precise) where the goal was to read as much as possible over the weekend. A hashtag had been created so that people participating could share their reading and exchange with others and it was so much fun! I couldn't participate a lot as I was busy all weekend but I did squeeze some reading (especially Friday night as I was on my lonesome at home) and managed to finish The Name of the Wind (by Patrick Rothfuss). I highly recommend that book to anyone who's into fantasy, it's a gorgeous and compelling read.

All in all, a very lovely weekend was had :)

Yesterday we did some last-minute Christmas shopping in the morning, then spent the afternoon at my parents' to start the first part of the cooking - we're in charge of the appetisers and we do them from scratch. We'll go back later this morning for the last part of it.

Then we'll be leaving for my godfather and aunt's in the afternoon and celebrate Christmas all together this evening ♥ Always so odd to think that this is it, after weeks of anticipation, Christmas has arrived :) I'm pretty excited to be with the whole family, as per usual, and also to see my tiny wee nephew Killian whom I haven't seen in a whole month! Can't wait to hold a one-month old baby in my arm :)

And ok, I'll stop here. I wish all of you who celebrate Christmas a wonderful time with your family and friends (or on your own!) and those who don't, a great day all the same :)

Hello flist. Hope you had a great Christmas if you celebrate and a good start of the week if you don't. I got home tonight from three days spent in Normandy with my parents, godfather and aunt, after having a wonderful Christmas on Monday (since we celebrate Christmas Eve) with the whole family and an equally lovely Christmas day on Tuesday with the in-laws. I was spoiled on both days and got some awesome gifts, among which a couple that reflected my most recent fannish loves, namely The Hobbit and Jeremy Renner :-) I got the Hobbit edition of Monopoly (which is funny as I got Cookie the BBC Sherlock Cluedo game), Thorin's key on a keychain as well as an issue of Hawkeye, a mug with chibi!Hawkeye doing the Renner stretch and a "Let's stretch bitches" tshirt ♥ ♥ My aunt also gave us some very pretty origami bookmarks that actually come right from Japan. ( Don't you think I have the prettiest bookmark in all the land? ).

My goddaughter also spoiled me when she fell in love with (the French version of) Misty Mountains. My cousin Rémi went to the see the film in French and we were talking about the song and at one point we visited YouTube to listen to the different versions. Chiara heard the song and even though she was a bit wary of it at first she asked to listen to it a second time when I told her how much I loved it and why and promptly fell in love with it as well as the story that goes with it. Throughout the whole night she kept asking to a) see where Santa was (we always check the NORAD Tracks Santa website on Christmas Eve) and b) listen to "la chanson des nains" ie the Dwarves' song. We also found a version with illustrations and by the end of the night she could recognise Gandalf and Bilbo. As a matter of fact, after she opened her presents, she was mighty curious to see what the rest of us had received and when she saw my Monopoly board game she squeed and went "oh, it's the song I love" #Score We'll make a geek out of her yet! And, hopefully, an avid reader #FingersCrossed

After the Christmas festivities, we went to Normandy with the parental units and had a jolly time together. We even managed (not that it was that hard to convince them) to bring my mother and aunt to see The Hobbit, which they loved #ScoreAgain! It was my and Cookie's fourth time but first time in French and we really enjoyed that version too. Also, we finally saw the film in 2D, so that was great. ( Here are a couple of pics of our weekend )

We're now back in Choisy with still a whole week of vacation ahead of us. We're planning on a quiet weekend for a start. And maybe a fifth viewing of The Hobbit ;-)

Hope everyone who celebrate had a wonderful Christmas *hugs*

Christmas Eve (the 24th is when when we celebrate Christmas here) was fantastic. It was spent at my sister's with the usual suspects and two new family members, namely Cookie, who was with us for the first time and my niece Emma who was spending her very first Christmas, period ♥

We did our traditional team cooking and "created" new appetisers, the entrée was a novelty as well, the idea came from my aunt who suggested we tried a crème brulée au fois gras - it was very different and very delicious. Our main dish was roe deer with, as it happens, no side dish as my mom thought that my aunt was bringing the vegetables and my aunt thought it was my mom lol But turns out it wasn't such a bad thing because we had salad with the meat and the meal ended lighter than it would have been, which was of the good. Especially as it meant we could get at the cheese part of said meal without feeling like we were on the verge of exploding and, even more importantly maybe, that when it was time to savour the assorted desserts, traditional bûche de Noël/yule log + ice cream'ed yule log + almond paste + macarons + the traditional clementines, we could basically take a piece of each :-)

While waiting for midnight, ie for Santa to come and deliver his presents, we played crazy dart and passionate Trivial Pursuit games - I dare say it was epic! Then midnight rang and we woke up my goddaughter - who was, as you can imagine, Extremely Excited all day - and aww her little face when she saw the presents under the tree and she realised that Santa had come ♥ ♥ We distributed the presents among us all and then just looked at her opening hers - like the crazy stalkers we all are lol She kept squeeing and telling us what toy Santa had brought her and then displaying it for all of us to see. Sis filmed the whole scene, to which I say, I love technology!

After everyone had squeed over their own presents, my BIL suggested we played some Wii and omg! We just couldn't stop afterwards lol Those Just Dance games are so addictive. And so hilarious when playing in multiple players mode. Also, dude, we totally burnt some of the calories we'd ingested that same evening ;-)

Anyway, it was awesome. We went to bed around 4.00AM only to get up at 9.00AM because Cookie and I were doing the second part of the celebrations at the in-laws', ie at Cookie's mother's place, with her brother and cousin. Which, the calories I burnt when playing Just Dance? Were absorbed again thanks to the raclette we ate. And the crêpes that followed said raclette. Well, one of the gifts that Cookie's mother received was a crêpe maker, we had no choice but to christen it, right? Right!

After that, we headed back to Choisy where we spent the evening at my parents' and ate our third Christmas meal of the weekend and, to my delight, there were snails on the menu this time. Score!

And now it's past 10.00PM, we're back home, listening to some Christmas songs and waiting for the DW Christmas special to download so that we can end our Christmas weekend as any DW fans should :-)

Holidays going very well so far. Today, Miss G and I went to the Maison de l'Alsace in Paris for a Christmassy cooking workshop where we learnt to bake Bredele, those cakes from Alsace, which are baked and shared for Christmas. I mean, you can find them all year long (moimoietmoi and I bought some last Summer) but they're part of the Christmas tradition in Alsace. We had a blast :-) It smellt so incredibly good in the room as we baked batch after batch. We got to taste what we'd made at the end of the workshop and then took some with us at home. ( Here be some of the fruits of our labour. Well, cakes would be more accurate ;-) )

Then we went for some more Christmas shopping and I'm happy to announce that I'm done! I got evrything for everyone. Wait, no, there's one present missing but I won't see Sandra before next week so I still have time. ( Don't they look cute and pretty under our tree? ) I think they do :-)

And because we were apparently in the mood for some walking we decided to walk from the Champs-Elysées to Saint-Michel Notre Dame. Cookie took photos all the way. After that we were happy to get home where it's so warm and cozy! We ended the evening with some Doctor Who Christmas Special followed with Narnia (chapter 1). Mellow is the way to go :-)

I know not everyone around here has a Twitter account (or even wants to) but let me tell you that Twitter has a nice sense of humour. If you're not familiar with it, whenever you follow someone, meaning when you add someone to your reading list (I know, we all sound like stalkers on Twitter but after all, we do follow people's tweets so.) it suggests some other people you might be interesting in following/reading too. As I found out today, turns out that when you add the Dalai Lama (or the twitter of his office), Twitter suggests Leonard Nimoy as a possible interest lol I don't know what it says about Twitter. Or Leonard Nimoy ;-) With all due respect, of course!

Unrelated, I've been sick as a dog this week; I went to the doctor after work tonight and the verdict is both tracheitis and bronchitis. Somehow I feel totally validated in my feeling miserable all this time. The Doc signed me off work tomorrow which delights me to no end - I'm knackered. Then I'll be counting the days till both Work & Big Top are both over and then, on Monday, I'll be on holiday for two glorious weeks ♥

Christmas break is my favourite time of the year *happy sigh* I'm so ready for it. nicelyobsessed and I did our First Christmas Tree Together last week, btw, which was all kinds of awesome :-) ( This is our tree )

She also took several photos of the snow last week (as well as some more of the decorations in the flat), which she posted over at her LJ here.

She forgot that one, though, which I find very pretty. It's the contrast between the white of the snow and the red of the traffic light. Twas taken at the station (at Choisy-le-Roi): ( Read more... )

Ok, now, I'm gonna have what I call fannish comfort-food (because characters always have that kind of meal when they're sick in fanfic): chicken soup with a toast. If I can swallow it #Suspense

Quiet and mellow Sunday morning for me. As well as studious. I woke up early, lazed around a bit, had breakfast and didn't put either tv or music on because I needed the peace and quiet to really Wake Up. After accomplishing all that, I was able to start working on my translation studies paper.

Don't know if I mentioned it around here but I'm working on The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and its French translation. Pretty exciting but I'm totally putting double pressure on myself because, ok, I don't want to screw it up as I don't want to screw my average but also, it's Neil Gaiman! One of my most favourite authors! So if I were to get a sucky grade, I'd be a very sad fan, indeed /o\ I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping I'll do a good job with it *fingers crossed*

Tired and busy these days but also excited and happy because the cold has arrived and it reminds me that winter is at our doors and that December is almost there and soon the Christmas decorations will be lit in the streets and the Christmas markets will go live in Paris and it'll be all festive and gorgeous :-)

Speaking of Christmas, I'll try to send Chrismas cards this year again so I might knock at some of your doors to ask for your addresses. Though I should be fine if I just found my address book. I know it's here. Somewhere.

ETA Re: Panic's article in Alternative Press, does it mean we have a release date for the album? Like, for real? Because if it does, I'm totally putting March, 8th in my calendar right.now!

... and you're cold people! Heee, thanks go to sparky77 for linking to this! Christmas Idol: Andrew: or how I learnt that it was possible to turn Matthew Bomer into a "retarded Clark Kent in a (fugly) Christmas sweater... looking like a loser". Also, what I want to know is when will we get to hear Neal sing in White Collar? Because MB has a pretty voice, melikey!

In other news. I went Christmas tree hunting tonight and came back empty handed *sadface* Mom found hers, though, so it wasn't a complete failure. Plus, if I had found my tree there was no way the two of them would have fit in her car. I even had my doubts about hers, to be honest... I always forget the struggle it is to put said tree in her car - this time was no exception. Mind, we weren't the only ones fighting against the laws of physics on that parking lot and I bet one could make a lot of money selling tickets for that kind of stuff; it's pretty fun to watch.

Anyway, I'll try again on Friday. Fingers crossed that I find it then *fingers crossed*

Still on the subject of Christmas (it's just the beginning, I'm afraid), I've seen some Christmas songs here and there on the flist and I wanted to share one of my favourites. I say "one of my favourites" because I love many, many of them. I usually prefer the classic ones (Bing Crosby, Nate King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald ♥) but this one isn't. Fans of Love Actually will recognise it: Olivia Olson - All I Want for Christmas is You.

If you want to share some, be my guest! Covers are appreciated because I've lost all the ones I had... Which seems to be a habit of mine, come to think of it, because I have the feeling I was already looking for Xmas covers last year. I'm sorry?

From what I could see on the flist, looks like many of you had a lovely Christmas. I did too :-)We had a great time with the cooking first - homemade appetizers, foie gras, stoked salmon, then stuffed capon with veggies to go with it. Cheese and salad and then the bûche/Christmas cake to end it all. We all took turns in the kitchen, as usual, and my godfather and cousin Rémi were quite inspired when they dressed the foie gras plates - ( look for yourselves, doesn't it look pretty and very cute? )

We savoured our dinner and when midnight struck it was time to open our presents. We were all spoiled: doubly in my case as I had gifts from the whole family, of course - Kaamelott Livre V! Pushing Daisies! A Starbucks mug! Duma Key etc. - but also from yami_tai, aswanargent and angeliksmall, so THANK YOU to the three of you again for the wonderful pressies. I'll have a nice book to read thanks to Tai and the shawl I got from Karen is absolutely gorgeous! So warm and cozy and just too pretty for words! And, Cookie got me Merlin, dude! That is, the DVDs, we all know Merlin belongs to Arthur :-)

So, anyway, Christmas was awesome. Also, Julien's reaction when he read my sister's card telling him Henry and her wanted him as a godfather for Chiara's? Was even better than expected! He started with a heartfelt 'hell yes' before reading the card to us and then he started to choke up and he cried. Next thing you know, my aunt and mother and cousin Emilie and sister and I were all crying. So we're a bunch of saps, so sue us! We were all so happy for him because we knew he really wanted to be Chiara's godfather... that was just lovely. Afterwards we kept calling each other marraine and parrain because we're not just saps but dorks as well.

Of course each time I called Julien parrain, my own godfather would be 'yes?' and I would be like, no I was talking to Juju. Fun times! lol

I slept at my parents' with the rest of the family and we all had a lazy Thursday together. Then I got back home and lazied some more. One needs peace and quiet to wind down from the Christmas high, you know?

Oh! And on Thursday we ate the Christmas pudding yami_tai had offered my parents when she came last month and they liked it, Mom especially. I can't say the same, but I was happy someone got to appreciate the English food lol So thanks, Tai :-)

And apparently I'll keep with the lazying today as the two friends I was supposed to meet bailed out. So I'll stay home and watch the Doctor Who Christmas special instead *nods*