Showing posts with label Life in Normandie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life in Normandie. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 May 2020

Au revoir Normandy

Although I haven't posted here for a while in the years that went before I loved being a part of the blogging community and making new friends around the globe.
So, I wanted to let anyone, who might have stopped by wondering what was new in Normandy, know that this will be NL's last post.
No more tales of country life or beach walks or la vie quotidienne en France, now it's time to say goodbye to our beautiful home as we turn the page and begin a new chapter.


To use all the well worn phrases that one hears so often in the "media" the last twelve months have been a journey; a rollercoaster; of ups and downs and twists and turns but now we have finally returned to the land of our birth.
Merry Old England has opened her arms wide and welcomed us to a wonderful new home in the picturesque Derbyshire Dales.
To chronicle our new way of life I'm starting a new blog: "turning the page" which I hope will be up and running this week, it would be lovely if you stopped by for a visit if you get the chance.

Linking this post to the legendary meme Mosaic Monday hosted by Angie @ Letting Go of the Bay Leaf.
Au revoir mes amis.

My New Blog can be found here
https://hazelbarn.blogspot.com/

Saturday, 22 December 2018

Merry Christmas from Normandy.

After a few weeks of neglecting the NL blog I've popped back on to wish all my friends and followers in blogland, especially the special ones who've shared the MM journey with me

and to share a few snaps taken around the place this month as we prepared for the festive season.

Wreaths on the front doors began the Advent season.
Logs stacked by the wood burning stove made sure we stayed cosy and warm
(Baby It's Cold Outside!).
Old Saint Nicholas came bearing gifts on December 5th.
The Salvation Army began singing carols.
and
the Santa tree, with Olaf directing, went up in the sitting room.


Last month we celebrated a special birthday by surprising my sister with a family trip to Disneyland Paris.
Colonial Williamsburg characters carolling on the first Sunday in Advent.
A pair of rose gold sequinned Minnie Mouse ears is the only decoration this tree required!
Gotta love Olaf, do you wanna build a snowman?
Our time at Disneyland Paris was a wonderful occasion to celebrate and a great way of getting close family together for a pre Christmas treat.

 All the "girls" chose a set of Mouse Ears to accessorise their outfit, as a lark I popped mine on the Christmas tree for a Whatsapp silly photo before getting down to the serious job of decorating it.

So, from these lovely chaps, the SP and myself  


Joyeux Noël à tous Joining Angie for Mosaic Monday @ Letting Go Of The Bay Leaf

Sunday, 4 November 2018

This Old House

Today's post was prompted by a question from a recent visitor who was intrigued to know if our home had any stories to tell. 
When we purchased the house over 20 years ago the seller didn’t really have very much to tell us about it's past.
Over the years I've done the occasional internet search but have yet to find anything relating to the house. 
I did discover in the Rumsey Historical online map collection "The Carte de France 1750"which was published by four generations of the Cassini family from 1750 to 1815, it consists of 185 separate pages joined together to form a physical map measuring 39 feet by 38 feet. 
By zooming in and looking closely I found St Marcouf with a drawing of a church!
Carte de France St Marcouf.
All we really know is that it is a former Presbytere, it's origins date back to circa 1600 and through the ages a succession of priests from the Church of St Marcouf du Rochy have lived here.
The floor of one bedroom in the original part of the building has a handmade terracotta tile floor and we were told that the Bishop of Bayeux slept there whenever his travels brought him this way.
Whilst renovating that room we discovered the numbers "1787" chiselled into the stonework surround of the ancient doorway which leads to the newer 18th c part of the house.
We have over the years made some enquiries into the origins/history of the house and heard from one elderly lady who remembered that during WWII the village children were gathered together for safety and slept on makeshift beds in “la chambre ancient avec le sol en terre cuite ancienne" - the bedroom with the old terracotta floor. 
We've also been told that the house was occupied by Germans soldiers for a period of time and indeed it is well documented that during the weeks following D Day there was much fighting in the area as the Allies pushed inland, from the landing beaches, towards St Lo.
One mystery we have yet to solve is why there is an unmarked grave in the garden? We discovered the base and cross, overgrown with brambles and weeds, whilst clearing flower beds when we first moved here but no-one has been able to tell us who is buried there. One neighbour suggested we excavate the site but we decided to leave whoever is buried there to rest in peace.
Perhaps it was the final resting place of our resident ghost ? 
That's right, we believe that the house is haunted and know when he’s around because we can smell the smoke from his cigarette. Several visitors have been aware of his unseen presence but everyone agrees that he’s a friendly ghost. 
In 2011 I took part in a Room By Room meme that was great fun, click on the link below to see a little bit about how we brought love and life back to This Old House.
I so wish that walls could talk, I would love to hear it's stories.
Joining Angie @ Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
as she hosts Mosaic Monday
for the first time today.

Sunday, 14 October 2018

Mosaic Monday # 105 - a sea change ahead?


Bonjour Mosaic Monday folks.
Well, Plan B sort of worked last week didn’t it? 
My scheduled post which I wrote whilst we were away went up on Sunday morning as planned, as did the link for you all to join in with, which was good because our internet service had  still not been restored by the time we got back from Tenerife. 
Thank you for all your supportive comments, I can’t deny that it was quite challenging to get all the ducks lined up in a row from afar!
However, you’ve probably realised that I didn’t stop by your blog last week to comment on your mosaics and that was because the problem is ongoing.
We are still without internet service in the house, I’m using my iPhone’s personal hotspot for this post, and unless a techie comes to fix the problem soon I possibly won’t be visiting you this week either.
Mosaic Monday has been a very enjoyable part of my blogging experience for many years but all this palaver has got me thinking about the logistics of continuing to be the host in the future. As you know the SP and I love to travel, we already have something planned in November and there are a couple of other trips pencilled in the Diary for next year.
Although I will always want to participate in MM I’m wondering if there might be one of you, who enjoys our MM Club as much as I do, who would be willing to take the baton from me and become the new host so that we can keep this long standing meme running for many more years to come?

If hosting Mosaic Monday appeals to you just let me know in your comment or you can email me using the link on my sidebar and we can have a chat.

Sunday, 23 September 2018

Mosaic Monday # 102 - postcards from Normandie

For Mosaic Monday #100 Nick V linked a post from his NixPixMix blog which he called "Australia I.D."
I wonder if you also saw it whilst MM blog hopping? If not just follow the link above.
I was quite taken by this project so trawled through my massive pile of photos to come up with a tribute to Normandy.
Of course once I started playing with the postcard idea I had to send you one from the seaside.
M'selle Fleur did consider going in for a swim with her new friend last week but decided getting her paws wet was enough to be going on with.
Talking about beaches...…………….. 
The Senior Partner are heading off tomorrow to find us some sunshine again, this time to Tenerife in the Canary islands staying at the Royal Hideaway Corales Beach Hotel in Costa Adeje.
It is our first visit and we're looking forward to experiencing the island with a ride up to the summit of Mount Tiede in a cable car or possibly taking a boat trip and hopefully encountering dolphins and whales.
I'll still be hosting Mosaic Monday for the two weeks that we'll be away, keeping to the new timetable as it seems from your comments last week that it's working for most of you, however it could take me a while to get around to visiting your blogs.


Sunday, 16 September 2018

Mosaic Monday #101 - a case of deja vu

I was up in my attic craft room/office last Friday morning prepping blog posts, as you do, when the Senior Partner yelled (it's a big house) up the staircase "We've got another visitor - I'm off to the farm"!
Grabbing my iPhone I ran (walked steadily) down three flights of stairs to see who it was.
Surprise, surprise.
Remember the heifer that jumped the fence two weeks ago to munch on our lawn?
Well, she was back.
A little while later "the Farmer" and his cowman arrived to assess the situation.
A walk of the perimeter revealed just one place where she could have jumped the fence this time and the decision was taken to return her to the field via the same route.
She didn't want to leave as you can see in the mosaic below.
Meanwhile her herd mates took notes.
???Question for you???
I recently changed the hours of MM to offer the chance of linking up on Sunday rather than on Tuesday. From what I've seen so far that doesn't seem to suit your schedules as much as I hoped it would. So, my question to all MM'ers is shall we go back to Monday 7.00 am to Tuesday 7.00 pm (French time) or stay with the new timetable?
Either way works for me so please let me know which you'd prefer.
Merci!

Saturday, 8 September 2018

Mosaic Monday # 100 - playing with my food

These past few days I've spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen attempting to turn the fruit which we received from GN last week into something temptingly edible.
What to do with grapes, I asked myself. Grape jam/jelly came the answer from bbcgoodfood.com
I had a packet of jam making sugar in the pantry so thought I'd give it a try, cooked the grapes as directed and drained the juice. Grape juice, sugar and lemon juice boiled together until setting point reached.
Well, that didn't work.
The result could best be described as a very sweet grape coulis.
Here's a link to the recipe.
grape jelly
Let me know if it works for you!
Next I made a tarte tatin using those lovely looking red apples and a recipe from Raymond Blanc.
The end result didn't look very much like the photograph on the website but it did taste good served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Not to be defeated I tweaked an apple crumble recipe that appeared on my FB page one morning, using walnuts in place of pecans and baking the mixture in several small dishes instead of one large one.
My thinking being that I could freeze some of them for another time instead of having to throw half of a large one away because, after all, we are only two people with normal appetites and the dog won't eat sweets.
As with the tart tatin it wasn't a pretty pudding but it was edible.
Thinking about it later I decided that it was probably the dark muscovado sugar that turned both desserts such a dark, unappetising colour.
My final attempt at using up the apples was a success!
If only I'd thought to turn all the apples into apple sauce I could have saved myself an awful lot of time and effort.

I did think twice about blogging my less than perfect culinary concoctions this week but one thing I do know is that even though not everything in life turns out the way we would like it to it doesn't mean that we can't have fun in the process!

Sunday, 26 August 2018

Mosaic Monday # 98 - a generous neighbour

We have a very generous neighbour, I've mentioned him before, who has some wonderful fruit trees in his garden.
August is the month when he picks the plums and a few days ago the Senior Partner returned from a walk with M'selle F with a box containing some of this year's harvest.

This is the second year that we've been lucky enough to share his garden's bounty, last year I made several jars of plum jam.
This year I got busy in the kitchen and turned them into plum and preserved lemon chutney, plum compote and a delicious pudding of plum crumble.
Here's a link to the BBC good food website where you'll find the recipe for the chutney.
Like most chutneys the flavours will deepen and mature with time if you can hold off eating it that is!
We were in a hurry to try it so I served some chutney and a cooling mint and cucumber raita as condiments to the chicken curry which the SP made for dinner earlier this week.
A favourite "afters" from my childhood, plum crumble and custard is also a comforting "once in a blue moon" grown up dessert too.
What's your favourite dessert? Do you still hanker after a childhood favourite or do you have a more sophisticated palate?
I'd love to hear what delights your taste buds and satisfies your sweet tooth, I'm thinking that chocolate/ice cream will be involved for quite a few!


Sunday, 12 August 2018

Mosaic Monday # 96 - life lately

Two weeks ago the temperature in Normandy reached a blistering 30*C (98*F) making it the hottest summer that we've experienced here since we arrived in 1996.
The lawns are scorched and my hydrangeas wilt a little bit more every day.
Although I've not read anything regarding a hosepipe ban in Calvados this year there was one in place in 2017, my garden pot plants are surviving on waste water from the kitchen sink.
To top it all off M'selle Fleur got a bad case of the "itchy scratchies" a,k,a heat rash.
Usually the Senior Partner would use the hosepipe/shampoo in the garden method to relieve her itches with the foreseeable result of all three of us getting drenched and hot and bothered at the same time.
This year instead we called upon the services of the Mobile Toilettage lady.


M'selle F was not best pleased but it was far less stressful for us. Unfortunately the itchiness doesn't seem any better but she sure smells nice!
Yesterday I took this photo of the cows in the field next door, looks like summer just might be over now.
You may have noticed that after 2 years I've tweaked Mosaic Monday's opening hours to fit better with my schedule and hopefully yours too.
We're open now from Sunday 11.00 a.m. to Monday 11.00 p.m. French time.



Sunday, 5 August 2018

Mosaic Monday # 95 - how time flies when you're having fun

Last week, 1st August to be precise, I celebrated two years as host of Mosaic Monday and let me say what a great time I've had doing it.
Feeling slightly nostalgic I took a little look back at the previous 94 MM posts (ninety four!) and totally enjoyed revisiting the past 24 months. Time really does fly when you're having fun.
BTW, if I've written 94 MM posts that could mean that you have too!
One thing I quickly realised was that I blog quite a bit about food, travel, family, travel, Normandy and a bit more travel!
I picked a few out at random to share with you today, if you'd like to read the original post just click the highlighted link.

Autumn in the garden

Flowers and cheese 

Touring Agreco Farm

Easy Like a Sunday Morning

Church of Saint Nicholas Kato Paphos



It's all about family

so then this happened

Thanks for travelling with me on my Mosaic Monday journey, each week my visits to your blogs take me all over the world seeing places and things I will possibly never experience for myself and all from the comfort of an easy chair.




Sunday, 29 July 2018

Mosaic Monday # 94 - snap your summer!


Every summer I always enjoy the boost that the Summer Snap Challenge hosted by Sue & Alison @ UK Scrappers gives to my photography and scrap booking mojo.

in a jar; drain cover; steeple.
Here's the 2018 summer challenge list if you feel inclined to join in

1 your new avatar
2 a drain cover
3 spire or steeple
4 windmill
5 soft top
6 a crescent
7 whiskers
8 in a jar
9 tessellations
10 bags
11 naughty but nice
12 a rose
13 in the air
14 entrance
15 match
16 stamp
17 cornet
18 four candles
19 the letter 'O'

20 crooked

in the air; new avatar; red, white & blue

Substitutions
A red, white & blue
B numbers
C wedding

D summer

crooked; whiskers; rose(s)