2009: Home & Garden Improvement!

2009 will definitively be the year of our home and garden.

Starting from scratch, we have to find furniture for our new home, to start our vegetable garden and landscaping project in the backyard, build a new fence, build a home theater, have a nice guest room, etc, etc. The list seems to be endless!

The first issue that we encounter was with the wheelbarrow (la brouette - la carretilla). It was not possible to fit it in Ivan's car, and it just fit in mine - We had to drive back from the store with opened trunk. It was our first green adventure!!

I already got busy with the garden, and we were able to build our compost container (by recycling an old wood closet that was rooting in the garage: Ivan is taking the challenge to have the compost ready in three months! I am just saying...Good Luck with that! We will see...

And finally...welcome our new 'babies':

Green babies:

Tools babies:


Stay tuned...

Vacation Summary

We are back in Charlotte and slowly recovering from the 2 wonderful vacation weeks in Paris and Helsinki.

High points of the trips:
Family time - playing "the hat" with the whole family was definitively a blast



Food & Drinks - difficult not to mention the amazing food we enjoyed, especially the one we don't have here in the US at our regular stores, such as cheeses, rabbits, deer meat, dinner with food coming from my Grand Pa's vegetable garden, Champagne, Orangina rouge, and much more!


Sun: finally, after few years of terrible weather in Paris during the holiday season, we finally had two weeks non-stop sun. However, it was still winter and temperatures were averaging -3 Degrees (37 F)

Being able to visit Paris, Honfleur (Normandia), Helsinki (Finland) in two weeks, and in-between Christmas and New Year Eve celebration. Believe me, it required a very tight timing and a very lean organization...we did it!

Being able to bring some good French seeds back for our future vegetable garden in my luggage...even though my luggage has been searched through somewhere in the US.

Low Points:
Shall I mention the Chateau de Versailles? I think someone already mentioned it...


Our luggage didn't make it on time in Portland, but arrived two days later in Charlotte. I would say that the low point here would be to have to deal with disastrous customer service. We almost had to apologize to the airlines rep to ask for information about our lost luggage.

In all, best vacation ever for our December trips to Paris!

Our stay in Helsinki - December 30th to January 2nd

We were welcomed in Helsinki by my cousin Henry. He was a wonderful host during our stay in Helsinki and we would like to thank him again for this.

Helsinki is a very nice city with just one problem : "the cold" . For people like me it is always a challenge dealing with extreme cold climates.

We visited several places during our stay there. We were in Cafe Ursula, a nice place close to the ocean. We also went to a local museum and to a Mexican restaurant called Santa Fe.

For new year's eve we spent the afternoon watching movies (Apocalipto) and then we had a very nice dinner.

After midnight we decided to mix with the locals at Havana club a Latin bar where Latin music is played.

January 1st was used to go to Porvoo, a small town north east from Helsinki. There we enjoyed the cold by walking the streets and then by drinking some hot beverages. In the afternoon we chill out watching the transporter.