Food for Thought...

...a feast for the eyes.

The smell of warm bread wafting through the street...

A woman in a business suit and heels carrying a warm baguette home for dinner - not even placed in a bag but clutching the narrow loaf with a small square of wax paper...

chocolate, raspberries, whipped cream...

works of art in their glass cases...

an ice cream cone presented in the shape of rose petals...

...such care and pride taken in the making and presentation of food. This food was meant to be enjoyed, each mouthful tasted, digested. It is the complete opposite to our hurried, grab what you can fast food culture. Few cafe's even provide take out coffee cups. Sit down, enjoy and have a conversation. What a concept!

...it's easy to stop and smell the roses when you're on holidays and especially when it's made of vanilla bean, coffee and pistachio flavoured ice creams...but it does make you realize that somehow our fast and 'I'm so busy' lifestyle is missing something...and I'm not speaking of fancy french pastries...there's just something you can't get while racing through the drive through line of Tim Horton's.

My Point of View...

...from the Eiffel tower...

....sigh.

Inspirations....

Claude Monet

No vacation has ever affected me like this one did. Full days of walking through museums, churches and old buildings provided what was almost an overstimulation of artwork and history. Weary feet and tired eyes at the end of the day could barely take in any more beauty. This time away allowed me to rest my head of everyday stresses and open my mind. Creatively, my head is in a wonderful place. It's full of colours and visions and thoughts. The visions I can't complete at the moment I scribble and draw on scraps of paper so I won't lose the image.

Although this image of Waterlilies, Matin is small and so tiny compared to the floor to ceiling sized canvases I was lucky enough to see in the Musee de L'Orangerie it still can pinpoint my inspiration. The right hand side of this painting is a gorgeous mixtures of aqua blues and greens.

Here's my interpretation ....Waterlilies ~ glass and copper earrings.

Capturing the Moment...

Little snippets of our trip.

Telephone booth near Trafalgar Square, The Fountains in front of the Louvre, The 'Adventures of Squishy the Turtle" ~ here he is up the Eiffel Tower, Joie de Vivre!

Back Home

I'm still slightly in a fog as I write this. Not a groggy, headachey type fog that I can often find myself in but more of a gentle, relaxed, at peace with myself haze as I try to work through my daily life. It's a lovely, dreamy haze to be in and I don't want to let it go. We recently returned from a short but wonderful family trip to London and Paris. Only 9 days long but the time together was a memory itself to hold on to as our young teenage daughters are growing up so quickly.

We walked for hours every day. We carried no cell phones, read no newspapers or watched tv and only once briefly touched in with reality when we had to check our emails for our return flight home confirmation. We engrossed ourselves in the history, art and architecture and of course the food. We all came back a little different. Our daughters now live in a bigger world. Once what was only read about they have now seen. Their eyes are wider now and they have seen a small glimpse into a big world.

Our first night in London.

Looking across the Thames at the Parliament Buildings and the Clock Tower (Big Ben).

The steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. Absolutely breathtaking inside.

History and traditions. The changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

Westminster Abbey provides more than a 1000 years of British History within it's walls.