this neck of the woods

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have a giveaway over on The Ardent Sparrow this week! I’m so excited to be able to give away a garland on this wonderful blog – so please head on over and check it out!

As promised, here’s a look at what we bought yesterday at the AgroGast.. yes that’s right – get jealous.. I’m over here getting fat on delicious delicacies from the country that still uses LARD instead of butter. It’s a tough life but someone has to do it! We had no idea what some of this stuff was – until Dave charmed some ladies waiting at the stall who were all too happy to speak English with him (not something we’ve commonly experienced in France).

So here, in order of appearance are: Cheese cake, Caramel and butter something-or-other (apparently Dave did too much charming, he can’t remember the name of this one), Bebe.. something something.. with caramel.. he also can’t remember this one (we’ll call it ‘death by pie’ for now), and finally Coconut Macaroons. So any of my lovely French friends out there (or Swiss – Aude, Maryline?).. feel free to enlighten me if you know what it is that we’ve bought here (but not the ingredients.. that, I don’t need to know).

This weekend, in a big paddock behind a small French village, AgroGast 2010 was in full swing. What is AgroGast I hear you ask? Well.. it’s a place where lots of the wine and food makers from around France and Germany come to show off their goods. It involves a lot of wine tasting, salami eating and cheese smelling.. and is really good fun! We headed out there today for a look, and walked away with none of the things I just mentioned. Instead, we managed to find all of the sweet stalls.. I’ll show you tomorrow what we bought :D

So it’s been months, but we finally got all of our ceramics back! We’re extremely happy with the results, but now have to find somewhere for them :/

For the next few days, etsy seller The Starcraft and I have a dual giveaway going on over at one of my favourite blogs – Young House Love! It’s my first ever giveaway and I’m thrilled to be doing it with the help of John and Sherry of YHL.. thank you so much guys! And thank you to The Starcraft for sharing this experience with me! So go and check out the giveaway, enter to win some cool stuff, and check out all there is to see on YHL in the process :D

So I may have become a little bit distracted while I was sorting out all my papers the other day.. hehe.

Speaking of hearting things, we reached a milestone the other day (according to google analytics), and hit 20,000 views on the etsy shop in the last three months!  In light of that – I’d like to give a little bit of love to all those amazing people who have blogged about this neck of the woods over the last few weeks and months! I truly appreciate it :)

In case you’re interested, here are just some of the wonderful posts that have helped me reach this milestone:

Oh Dee Doh, Creature Comforts, Paper n Stitch, Lushlee, Sweet Sweet Life, Oh So Beautiful Paper, Vintage Indie, Paper Crave, Spearmint Baby, Elephantine, Burrs and Berries, Design Crush, Anna Joyce Design, A bit of Pilli Pilli

We live so close to Switzerland that sometimes we like to consider ourselves half Swiss and half German. Probably not the proper thing to think if you actually are one of those nationalities, but we can do that because we’re neither! ‘Strayen all the way. So anyway, when Switzerland puts on a party, we just go ahead and invite ourselves. And our friends.

Last Saturday Switzerland had their National Day, which is celebrated with fireworks and drinking and more fireworks (in Basel at least), so we headed to our nearest beach (on top of a parking garage – also blogged here), settled in with some beers and mojito’s and waited for the fireworks. 6 hours later, the fireworks appeared, closing out the most fantastic summer day yet. Hopefully the photos can give you some sense of how beautiful a day it was.. and can pass on a little bit of sunshine for those of you playing in ‘Straya. Enjoy!

Hi there! Remember me? …No?

Who can blame you – it’s been a while! Hows about I make it up to you with a peek at one of the reasons I’ve been detained!

I’ve been trying to add some more stock to my shop in preparation for a giveaway I have coming up (with one of my fave blogs!), and below are 4 of the newbies – two of which are actually mobiles making their debut! Over the next days I’ll be adding a couple more, and then very soon I’ll be able to tell you more about the giveaway!

A little while ago I posted about a weekend trip to Paris that Dave and I took, during which we visited an antique market called Marché Vernaison. I also mentioned that we’d picked up some pretty cool loot, which I’ve only just gotten around to photographing!

Below is the outcome of about 1.5 hours (not kidding) standing in the hot sun, rummaging through boxes and boxes of old wooden letterpress type. Being the kind of people that we are – we couldn’t leave until we’d uncovered every ‘w’ ever made, in search of one that would fit in that spot perfectly. In fact we were so dedicated that we even checked through every ‘m’ as well, in the hopes that one could pose as a ‘w’. We didn’t have much luck, so modified the best ‘w’ we found.

By the end of our search we were completely and utterly covered in decades-old French filth.. it was so worth it!

As far as I know, there are two dedicated ceramic markets held around this area every year – Freiburg and Kandern. So far we’ve only been to the Freiburg one (first posted about here), and amazingly 12 months has gone by since we last visited! I’ve been anticipating it for weeks, counting my pennies and mentally preparing myself for an onslaught of creative awesomeness.

I wasn’t disappointed.

This year it was held on the last weekend in June, and we arrived bright and early on Saturday (ok, like 10.30 – early for me) to snatch up our favourites before anyone else could. We sought out our most favourite vendor (who consequently always sells out of her coolest stuff really quickly – and who I’m pretty sure is actually starting to get to know us) and managed to walk away with some pretty cool purchases. Who needs money when you have painstakingly handmade plates and bowls right? Priorities.In.Order.