Kentucky Rain ... à Versailles

Faces of Versailles

When I first moved to France, I tried to do something "French" every day to make sure I was making the most of my time here: buying a pastry in one of the beautiful boulangeries (a feast for the eyes as well as for the mouth!), going for a walk in the gardens behind the château, buying cheese (the stinkier the better) at the open-air market, ...  And now that I've been here for almost 15 years (!!!), I still stop and look around me and think from time to time, how fortunate I am to live in such a beautiful place.

Little Jewels

Vintage buttons can be like little gems, very intricate, beautiful colors, designs, and materials.  I often use them to replace jewelry. As we say in French, "I'm not very jewelry" (translation: I'm not big on jewelry).  But that works out perfectly, because my husband is "not very gift". :)

a lot of stock

I'm busy busy busy making stock for the boutique.  I'll need lots of stock, because my things are going to go like hotcakes! Well, I'm hoping.

Let me explain why I need to sell so much:  I have a very high rent! Sounds simple, I know, and the bottom line is pretty simple, but the whole story is a bit more complicated.  I'm taking over a store space that is currently in activity and is doing well.  To have the right to rent this store space, I need to buy that right from the current merchant.  Basically, I'm buying air, if you will.  This isn't a folly dreamt up by the current merchant, this is the system.  She bought the same right from the person before her.  And I won't go into the "indemnities" that I will pay to the owner of the "walls", as we say, because she is apparently somehow a victim in all this ... yeah, right.  It's an abusive system, and France is the only country that I know of where this exists.  But when you have no choice ... Anyway, I'm all the more motivated to make this project a success!

Going too far?

Am I going too far with my love of vintage?  Even the iron that I use is vintage! I think it's from the early 60's or late 50's, anyway, you can hardly regulate the temperature and you have to kind of push down on it as you iron.  I've used other people's "modern" irons and realize what a huge difference there is in the effortless way the other ones glide over the material, but I just can't bring myself to get rid of this one!  However, when I move my workshop to the boutique, I'll have to buy another to have here at home.  Not because I iron any clothes (heavens, no!) but because I'll surely have some work to do here at home from time to time. So I guess I'll just have to modernize!

Excuse my French

Well this is it, I finally got my professional blog going! I'll be making most posts in French, but for those of you whose French is limited to a few explicatives, I'll slip an English post in from time to time.  And don't hesitate to ask any questions: I can translate when needed -- English IS my mother tongue!