Dear readers,

Here, in the peninsular part of France where the Little White House is, we're on Winter break. So what do you think I'm doing? Painting? Reorganising the office area? Changing my windows? Doing the laundry? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I'm fighting a nasty angina. The temperature makes me dizzy and oh, so weak I can barely type...

I wish having a fever was as sexy as when it's only metaphorical...

Et voilà, les vacances sont arrivées, je devais en profiter pour commencer à "dérosir" la chambre d'amis, trouver un super menuisier pour changer mes fenêtres, repasser la tonne de lessive qui attend sagement sur le lit de la dite chambre d'amis, trouver une solution pour le coin bureau... En fait, je suis mise KO par une angine... Je suis toute faiblarde et je souhaiterais qu'avoir de la fièvre soit aussi sexy que dans la célèbre chanson de Peggy Lee, mais là je ressemble plus à une poupée de chiffon en jogging affalée sur le canapé.

Speaking of fever, do you believe an ad for tiles can be hot? Well, look what I found when researching stone tiles...

Justement, en parlant d'attitude sexy, vous auriez pensé à faire une pub pour du carrelage aussi sexy, vous?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you can keep your wig on...

Je ne sais plus ce qui m'a attirée le plus lorsque j'ai vu cette pub: les perruques ou le carrelage... (comment ça, ne me dites pas que je suis la seule à trouver les perruques sexy?)

Just imagine if the brand sold bathtubs, what the ad would look like...

Funnily enough, these was on of my floor ideas when remodelling the Little White House... More on that when I can think straight...

If you want to have a look at wonderful stone tiles, you can hop on lapidica's site... But if the tiles are all gorgeous, they didn't come up with clever ads for each pattern!

Magali, from the Little White House xxx

Hello there,

We are experiencing some mild cold here... I consider myself lucky as it seems Brittany is the only "warm pocket" in the whole Europe, warm being a generous word for our 2°C!

Bon, d'après ce que j'ai compris, je ne dois pas me plaindre puisque la Bretagne est, une fois n'est pas coutume, l'endroit le plus "chaud" du moment avec ses 2°C!

Still, I kind of spent the weekend curled up on my not-so-comfortable-but-to-be-changed-in-a-not-so-near-future sofa (we're not afraid of long names, are we?), catching up on some late (ok, very late) episodes from The Vampire Diaries... A hot guy or two (or three or four) couldn't hurt with that cold wind outside.

Enfin, d'après moi, cela reste trop froid pour jardiner ou courir les brocantes et j'ai donc passé une partie du weekend à corriger mes copies rattrapper mon retard dans mes séries préférées.

And I couldn't help but notice some more set gorgeousness...

Et je pense que vous ne pouvez pas continuer à vivre sans observer cet adorable salon qui apparaît dans l'épisode "Mascarade" de The Vampire Diaries. Si vous préférez lire en musique, le clip suivant est celui de la chanson qui apparaît dans l'épisode...

If you want to really be in the mood, this is the song that's played in the episode "Masquerade":

Dear readers, wanderers and all,

I've been away for a while, so I'm not sure I really know where to begin...

Maybe I should explain why I was away. Because the Little White House has eaten more budget than planned last summer, I have agreed to work some extra hours as soon as one of the schools I'm working in asked me to... It keeps me really busy.

And when I say busy, I mean "up until midnight" busy. What I've been asked to teach is "Latin language and culture", something I did study... But ten years ago, so my memories are a bit fuzzy. I love a challenge, though. I love the feeling that washes through me  when I'm learning.

And yes, French school is not afraid of contradictions: "You can speak English? Why don't you teach Latin?"!!!

I try to be a good girl and study every evening, but clearly if Ian Somerhalder spoke Latin, I'd be fluent in a week!

2012 a apparemment plein de projets pour moi... Mais les projets ne se concrétisent que si on leur donne un petit coup de pouce... Du coup, je travaille beaucoup et je blogue moins... Je dors peu aussi car devoir prendre des décisions va souvent de pair avec quelques insomnies!

2012 might have something else in store for me as far as work is concerned and that also keeps me up at night, balancing all my options deciding on something different every night... Aaaaargh! I would tell you more, but I'm very superstitious, so you'll have to wait... I have wonderful people around me, family, friends and colleagues, who try to help me get to the right decision without putting any pressure on me... And I feel really blessed for that.

Je profite de ce petit article pour remercier les gens formidables, parents, amis et collègues, qui m'entourent et me conseillent pour m'aider à prendre les bonnes décisions, sans pour autant jamais me "mettre la pression". Je me sens vraiment épaulée.

The blog is still on my mind: I have about a post a day written in my head... But I don't have time to type it. If only I could type while driving!

The house is still evolving and I'm very aware of the fact I'm late to show you tons of things... But I'm also late on so many projects... Seriously there's a poor mirror that's been waiting for month to be repainted!

So I thought I would begin to show you some of the transformations you've missed... The side garden! The first picture is 18 months old. The place used to be a very old and very shabby (not chic, though) henhouse.

The henhouse was removed...

And I was left with an ugly job. That part of the garden had been used as a dumping ground years ago ,  the way it was often done in the counrtyside. So every weekend, I would take a big plastic bag and fil it with various stuff from old paintbrushes to empty beer bottles...

Alors, juste pour vous prouver que je n'ai pas été inactive à la Petite Maison, voilà un résumé en images de l'évolution du fond du deuxième jardin au cours des 18 derniers mois!

There, after a few full plastic bags, it was already looking better...

Same part of the garden: a gardener helped me to level the ground and he aslo dug for me the holes for the pear tree and the apple tree.

I had thought it would be fun to choose the trees by myself... Stupid little blond amateur-gardener!!! It sure was fun until I tried to stuff the two trees in my European sized car! To be true there was a moment when I thought I would let one of the them on the parking lot!!! But after lots of swearing (I amazed myself at how many words I know) and some bleeding (my hand, none of the tree was harmed in the process).

I just love going to that part of the garden now!I proudly call it my "orchard".

Clearly I'm not done with the garden, but this was a very big step completed in 2011.

(For some reason my usual signature won't work tonight... and I still have homework, so I give up!)

I must say I'm utterly amazed that I still have readers, though I haven't been a good blog-partier lately nor have I been much of a writer actually. So maybe it's time to tell you what's really happening at the Little White House.

This is not an easy post to write, so please pardon my English, which is not perfect when I get emotional. Corrections most welcomed in your comments!

Last summer I discovered that the house was actually roting from all the water it was absorbing. There were various reasons for that and trying to think fast, I decided some major renovation was needed. It was a tough summer, but in September I thought the worst was behind me.

How naive I was!

The stone wall began to show sign of humidity as early as mid-September! I must say my first reaction was to panic and I seriously thought I'd better get rid of the house and that I was way over my head believing I could run the renovation of such an old house!

Before completely loosing my mind with worry, I did what always works for me when the situation seems to get out of hand: studying. I spent lots of nights reading things on the Internet about humidity and how and why  water travels in old walls. I avoided forums as much as I could, because people are most of the time so negative on them... But I studied architecture sites. A big thanks has to be given here to the Canadian government : they have great pdf documents that really simplifies things and it was a great start for me. (I wasn't promised a Canadian citizenship to write this line!!!)

I even got in touch with a "humidity professor" (it does exist!) from an architecture school. He wasn't very pleased with me at first for having the guts to phone him... But after a few minutes, he thawed out when I told him that I had read his entire website and the page he had written on wikipedia... After an hour and a half (that's how long the phone call lasted!) he said that I had done my homework better than most his students!

Knowledge made me stronger: I guess it's always true, whatever the subject is. I understand my house better, I realized that what people say about modern houses does not apply to my very old house and that the house and I will both find a way to figure things out only if I take the time to know it.

Good news now : as of mid-November, the walls are not as wet as they were in September and the humidity level in the house is correct for a seaside house. This means that a lot of the rampant humidity that I had in September was due to the new slab slowly drying and that the draining system I had done in the summer does work, at least a little! 

So here was my confession: it was hard to write as I always have a feeling that all of you meet only success when renovating your houses. But I guess it's kind of a relief to explain why there isn't much decorating going on in the Little White House right now... Though I have a few things up my sleeve to show you later.

Thanks to all of you who come and visit the Little White House. Your visits and your comments make my day when times are rough!

Pictures (of very poor quality are they are not artistic pictures) are all of the same wall: 1) during the summer - 2) right after the renovation - 3) I removed the bookcase to be able to "study" the humdity in the wall - 4) taken tonight, the wall seems to be better. I guess you can't even see but the bottom inches of the wall are slightly darker...

Magali, from the Little White House

I live in France, you know that country that has PARIS for its capital? We don't celebrate Hallowe'en here, but we have "Toussaint" that is just... not as fun!

Last year, though, I decorated the veranda and I believe with this modest "decor" I went to my first blog parties! What I had not had in mind what that some kids actually came trick or treating last year and I couldn't help smiling when I saw their faces lit up as they saw the Hallowe'en-y veranda.

So I promised myself to do it again this year.

Please, if you really want to get in the mood, you should listen to this music... I did while putting up the "décor".

Maman, appuie sur la flèche de la vidéo, la musique devrait te rappeler des souvenirs... tartaresques!

I danced on this music when I was young and the first time I heard it, it actually gave me shivers...

Off topic, I know...

All the decor was made using only things I already had (budget is kept for more important things in the house!), except for the flowers, the squashes (but I'll eat them later!) and the candies (I can't give kids leftover old candies, can I? - I'm not such a bad witch!)

The teapot is a gift from my mum. It's an old "Villeroy&Boch" and I thought the black transferware would be perfect for Hallowe'en... Roses are from my mum's garden and my own.

The mirror, which made taking pictures a nightmare, is there for two reasons: it's my nod at the old superstition that if you hold a candle and combed your hair watching yourself in the mirror on the night of Hallowe'en, you should see over your soulderthe reflexion of your future husband... It can't hurt to try!

Also, those convex mirrors are called "Witch's mirror" in French. Maybe in English too, I don't know...

I found that one a while ago in an English Charity shop run by some English folks who live in the area.

Wishing you all a very spooky Hallowe'en...

Magali, from the Little Haunted White House

(I apologize if the adjectives are not in the right order, I never could learn the rule about the adjective order!)

So now, grab some candy or try bobbing for an apple and let's party!

Here's where to party: