Bonjour!

I'm back from a long vacation to Paris with my family. We had a magnificent time! We stayed primarily in the city seeing all the major sites (and some minor ones, too) with a couple of days trips to Versailles and Giverny. It was a fantastic excursion filled with croissants, crepes, gelato, nutella, bread, wine, walking, climbing, and smiling and laughing with my three favorite people :)

Here I am with my fabulous husband at the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel between the Louvre museum and the Tuileries Garden.

Taking goofy tourist photos at the Louvre pyramid.

Gardens at Versailles during the musical fountains display.

At THE lily pond in Monet's Garden at Giverny.

And yes, I did one quilty thing while I was away. I visited this cute little patchwork shop in Paris called Le Rouvray. It was quite tiny by American shop standards, with lots of lovely French Provence fabrics, and a good selection of Kaffe too (you know how that made me smile!)

The owner is also a fabric designer and had an entire new line of quilting cottons produced exclusively for this shop. They were very pretty, but not exactly my style, so at 18 euro per metre, I passed on those. But I did pick up this pretty French print.

I'm planning to finish it very simply as a tablecloth to toss on my small outdoor table this summer while enjoying a "petit dejeuner" of croissants and chocolat :) Bon appetit!

There's no place like home

We are home from a week-long vacation to the Big Apple. It was our first family trip to NYC. We saw many amazing things (photos that follow are not necessarily in order of amazing-ness) like M&M World in Times Square...

If you've never been there, they have M&Ms in every color known to man available to purchase as well as tons of wacky dispensers, t-shirts, pajamas, socks, hats, keychains... you name it! All M&Ms, all the time. Eat your hearts out, Tante, Nana, Mimi, and Aunt Lisa!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was my personal favorite; I could wander that place for days. Here are my two dancers posing with Degas' "Tiny Dancer" sculpture. I love, love, love this piece of art, and I've been lucky enough to see it three places: Paris, Chicago, and now NYC!

Another room at the Met...

Remains of an Egyptian temple awarded to the Met because they had the best plans to house all the pieces in one room (and probably the most money to accomplish the building of said room.)

Our day-long trip to Liberty and Ellis Islands was my second-favorite NYC experience. Here I am at the base of Lady Liberty with my girls...

A shameless tourist photo with King Kong at the Empire State Building...

"Oh look! They named some islands after me!"

And lastly, Alan and I atop the Empire State Building. Amazing views on a beautiful sunny day!

It's good to get away and see new sights, but oh, so wonderful to come home :)