Poul-Fétan: a traditional Breton village

Hey guys! It's about time I show you some photos of our time off with Jason's family during Easter! Jason's parents and his brother with his girlfriend arrived on Easter Sunday at around lunchtime. By the time we drove back to our house and had some food, we thought it would be too late to do anything special and we went for a walk in Port-Louis (we loved it so much last time that we had to show them the area!).

But on Easter Monday, we wanted to have a proper day out with them and as we wanted to introduce them a little bit to the Breton culture, we thought it would be great to visit Poul-Fétan. It's so close to where we live that we didn't need to drive very far, which means that we could take our time in the morning (6 people waiting their turn for the shower can take a long time!).

Poul-Fétan is a traditional Breton village that has been restored thanks to the local council and many volunteers. It's all really well organised, and although the entry ticket is a little pricey, it's quite worth it with all the activities they have planned throughout the afternoon.

All the restored houses have a particular purpose like it was in the 19th century for the people living at the time. We enjoyed watching this young woman showing us how they would create candles made out of bee's wax and how the traditional galettes de blé noir (buckwheat pancakes) would be made. We could even try some pieces of it with some fresh butter! Yum :)

For the little anecdote, Jason's parents started to talk to her and when they mentioned the fact that they were from Anglesey, North Wales, she told them that she'd been there a few times and knew a bit of Welsh! Small world eh?

It's a lovely place to explore as there's plenty to do and see during the day. I didn't take photos of the traditional games Breton people would play during festivities but we had a lot of fun having a go at them. Also, they have a little farm that you can go around and at certain times of the day, you can watch some of the employees giving food to the few animals they have there.

Some of the highlights for me was to smell the delicious breads and cakes the baker had made fresh from the morning, and dancing a bit of Hanter-Dro, a traditional dance routine that I learned as a little girl!

It was a little bit overcast for a couple of hours and we were a bit cold having our picnic outside, but all in all, I would definitely recommend going there. Maybe more around Summer time ;)

We stopped in the town centre of Quistinic on the way back as Jason's mum had spotted the chapel and really wanted to go inside. Even though I'm not religious, I'm always fascinated with the history and the architecture of churches and chapels so I'm always happy to visit one. Plus, the sun was back and it gave us an excuse to take even more photos!

Stay tuned for the next adventure in Vannes! Photos coming soon :)

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Brand New Etsy Collection!

So, do you remember when I told you I'd like to create a new collection of greeting cards as part of my goals earlier this year? Well, I did it! And I'm SO pleased about it.

It's not that I didn't like the previous cards anymore, but I designed them in 2015 and I felt it was time for a change. Plus, I wanted my new illustrations to reflect better the type of style I like to work on without doing something completely different from the previous cards... and Tadaaa, aren't they cute?!

You can now find 6 new cards, some of them with French, some of them with English and some of them without any message on the front. I figured it would be best to keep them simple so that they would appeal to more people ;)

If everything goes well, I'd like to add some prints at one point! A good friend of mine has always said to me that having them framed and ready to purchase like that would be a good idea. Now that I've moved back to France and I'm a lot more settled in my freelance work, I feel that this would be the right direction :)

So don't waste a minute and have a little nosey RIGHT HERE!

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Port-Louis, Bretagne

Hey guys! How was everyone's Easter? I hope you've all eaten way too much chocolate and you had a fab time with your close ones. We've had Jason's family over for the last few days and it's been great! We were so pleased to show them the area and make them taste some very good Breton food ;). More photos to come soon! For now, I'm sharing a few snaps of an afternoon Jason and I spent in Port-Louis.

With us being us, we can't stay far from the sea for too long. With Port-Louis being only 30min away from where we live, and the weather being gorgeous a couple of weekends ago, we thought it was the best time to explore this historic town.

We didn't visit the interior of the citadelle as we preferred to walk along the fortified walls, but I'm sure we'll go back very soon. It was so sunny and quiet, we absolutely loved it. The wind was just a little bit too cold for me to lose the jacket though ;). After a couple of hours walking, we had a (delicious) snack and drink at La Dame Blanche. They have a garden at the back, and we could have stayed there forever.

Also, I think the world is telling us to get a cat as every time we go somewhere, we always manage to find a cat who's following us!! We are crazy about cats though, and it might be that they can sense it, ha!

As always, if you'd like to follow our little adventures, make sure to keep an eye on my Instagram!

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Life Lately...

Hey guys! I thought I would give you a little update about what's going on in my life lately and how things are going with the move!

Although I've never lived in Bretagne before, I've always loved this area and I knew Jason would like it too as there's so much history to it and so many things to discover here. When searching for a new house to rent, I thought about Dordogne first, but realised quite quickly that it was a little bit too far from my family. After all, one of the reasons I moved back to France was to be a bit closer to my family after being so far away for more than 5 years (Jason was quite happy to follow me!).

We're really pleased about the house we found and we can't believe we're so lucky to be living here. The rent is completely reasonable, the rooms are big and bright, and the landlords are super nice. I think we liked it straight away because it's a renovated old barn and although the inside is quite new and modern, they kept all the nice features on the outside.

Plus, the surroundings are beautiful! We're a little bit isolated (and our internet connection is not the best in the world), but we're very close to loads of small charming towns and we'll never be short of choices for afternoon walks! It's also quite nice to have the river close by. It's so quiet that we feel relaxed and in peace.

It has been a bit hectic during the first week though, with all the obvious things to do when you move home, and we hardly found time to take it easy as we only took one day off and we were back working our little butts off for our dear clients!

To us the difficult part was more about the fact that we had almost nothing the first couple of days. We sold pretty much everything before moving to France in December, so we didn't have any bits of furniture! I mean, we still don't have kitchen cabinets or a wardrobe! Things are going slow because we're careful with our money and even more careful about what we buy. It's usually a good mix of new and second-hand stuff, and this time we want to do it right!

The one thing we wanted to get right as soon as possible was our desks. Now that we're both working as freelancers at home, we wanted to concentrate on making our desks inviting, with some elements that we liked and that made us feel inspired and comfortable. I'm pretty pleased with mine so far! Also, don't you love this little table from Sostrene Grene?! I fell in love with this shop and all their decorations that don't cost an arm :)

We went around a couple of Emmaüs before finding a couch that would do the job for us! This charity has loads of warehouses around the country and is similar to Crest in North Wales, where we used to get a lot of our furniture. It's perfect for us as we found a few gems for super cheap and as we didn't want (or didn't have the money) to buy a brand new couch, we found a super comfy one that we got delivered to the house last Wednesday! Although it's a horrible yellow colour, we covered it with a blanket bought in Ikea and a couple of nice cushions and it's looking really good now!

My grandmother gave us this old wooden bed and we instantly thought about painting it white. However after cleaning it and sanding it, we realised that some parts were looking more yellow, even after a second layer of white paint. So we quickly decided to paint it dark grey and we haven't looked back! It's looking amazing in the bedroom and it's a nice contrast with the walls.

We got the bigger drawers for free thanks to my mum's colleague and the little ones on the side are my old drawers that I had since I was tiny, and repainted in white! That's basically the only furniture we have to put our clothes away so quite a lot is still in boxes and suitcases. We're hoping to find a wardrobe really soon!

We definitely love old lamps as well, although we made sure to buy a couple of new ones so that our house doesn't start to look like an old person's house ;)

And Jason was eyeing this Ikea desk lamp for three years, can you believe it?! It was down to 35€ so he finally treated himself to a cool looking desk lamp haha. It's funny to see how my desk is white with pastel colours whilst his is dark brown with just dark elements all over it. Oh well, our styles are very different!

I'm hoping to give you some more updates very soon, and in the meantime, make sure to follow me on Instagram for more :)

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