In the US, Julia Child is a household name.  She was the slightly nutty chef on TV from the 60s to the 80s, but did you know that she was also an expat wife? When the movie, Julie and Julia came out, I instantly connected with her story. In her mid-30s, Julia Child moved to Paris for her husband’s job. She didn’t speak any French and struggled, just as I do, with how to spend her time in a meaningful way. She decided to take up cooking.

The movie, Julie and Julia, is based off of two stories – Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France, and Julie Powell’s blog where a 30-year old girl tried to add meaning to her life by conquering Julia’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days and blogging about it. A couple girlfriends and I recently finished Julia Child’s autobiography, and decided to take a daytrip to Paris to see some of the sights mentioned in her book.

Our first stop was “81 Roo de Loo” – the apartment where Julia lived. We laughed as we remembered her describing her apartment, and the similarities we all had when we moved to Brussels – tiny bathrooms, kitchens missing major appliances… Julia and her husband lived on the second and third floor. Though you can’t tell from the photo, it was a gorgeous area, just a block from the river and down the street from the metro.

Julia Child's Apartment

Reid, Jill, and Nikki at 81 "Roo de Loo"

We continued on to Dehillerin, Julia’s favorite cooking supplies store. It reminded me more of a little country hardware store with it’s dark, narrow aisles and crates stacked up high. Though Julia is not well-known in France, the guys at the store knew who she was and were eager to help us. We wandered around admiring the bins of knives, shelves of cake pans, and walls of copper cookware. We picked up a couple of souvenirs and headed next door to lunch.

Julia's Favorite Cooking Shop

Rugged Shelves in Dehillerin

After lunch was my favorite part – we toured the cooking school Julia attended – Le Cordon Bleu. We saw the demonstration rooms, the practice kitchens, and learned a bit about the history of the school. The chefs and students were so friendly, sharing their fresh-baked treats with us. Nowadays, there are two tracks of classes – 3-month programs for professionals and 1-2 days workshops for amateurs. I will definately have to keep this in mind for future trips.

Le Cordon Bleu, where Julia learned to cook

Master Chef shares his Madeleine cakes

Though only a daytrip, this has to be one of my favorite outings. I had a great time with my girlfriends and we were all inspired by this famous woman who lived such a similar life to what we are living now in Belgium. I can’t imagine doing it before the Internet exhisted, as she did. If you’d like to see more photos, I’ve posted them on PicasaWeb:

• Julia Child’s Footsteps in Paris (35 photos)

I keep hearing about all these modern quilt guilds that are popping up all over the US.  I miss my old craft group that would meet regularly in Atlanta.  Thomas has found a new group of geeks to hang out with at the Brussels Hackerspace. And now my best crafting buddy here is getting ready to move away.  So I’m excited to pass on the word about the new Brussels Crafterspace.

Note: I’m not the person starting this up.  I’m just very excited to meet other crafters and am eagerly spreading the word.

Welcome embroiderers, knitters, and quilters…

Crafterspace will hold it’s first meeting Tuesday, March 9, starting at 5pm, at Café Model, 208 rue Antoine Dansaert in central Brussels. Future meeting times and other practical information will be discussed at this first meeting.  There will also be tasty drinks and snacks for purchase, comfy seats, wifi, and lots crafty discussion.

The hostess, Florence at kreature.be, would like to know how many to expect, so please pop over to her blog (in French) and leave her a comment.  Unfortunately, I’m not available to go to this first meeting, but I hope to make it to them in the future.

Finished vintage sheet quilt!

Yay! I finally finished my blue/green vintage sheet quilt (quilt #3). Thanks for all the feedback on the border, but I decided to just skip it and add the binding. For the back, I pieced a row of the three solids together with another vintage sheet. I think I used about 15 different sheets in the end.  These photos were taken after it came out of the wash. It looks wrinkley, but it’s very soft.

Vintage Sheet Quilt - Front

Vintage Sheet Quilt - Back

My friend Karla and I are hosting a baby shower for our friend Marisa. Since Karla is handleing all the food and having it at her place, I told her I’d handle the invitations and decorations. I found a little scrapbooking store around the corner from me and quickly made up these invitations.

Marisa's Baby Shower Invitations

During our recent travels, my laptop has been just stuffed into a backpack or a duffel bag.  It needed more style and protection.  I made this padded, zippered laptop sleeve and tested it out on our Ireland trip. It worked well, but I forgot to include room for the power plug.  Next time…  So, is it a bad thing to have a Windows-running Dell in an apple laptop sleeve? :)

Apple and Pear Laptop Sleeve

What crafty goodness have you been up to?

Wow, it’s been a while since I blogged. Sorry about that, I just needed a little break. All is well, and Thomas and I spent a wonderful Valentine’s Day in western Ireland. He’s working in Dublin for a couple of weeks, and I flew in to whisk him off on a relaxing weekend. Other than learning to drive on the other side of the (very narrow, pot-hole filled) road, it was very relaxing. We stayed in a little bed and breakfast in a village called Oranmore and explored the sights.

Dallas at Cliffs of Moher

On our first day, we drove through The Burren National Park to the Cliffs of Moher. The Burren is covered with large flat limestone rocks.  We drove little country roads lined with sheep.  I found it interesting how the farmers penned off the areas with hand-stacked rock walls.  One of the advantages of these walls, other than the abundance of rocks in this area, is that the farmers could easily unstack part of the wall to move their livestock to another area. The Cliffs of Moher, raising 400-feet above the sea, were quite a sight.  I was surprised to learn that they are competing to be one of the new Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

View from Dun Aonghasa on Inis Mor

For Valentine’s Day, Thomas and I rode a ferry over to Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands. The islands are known for their traditional living and arts. People there speak the Irish language (Gaelic) rather than English.  Inis Mor is a quiet island, inhabited by only 800 people.  We rented bicycles and visited Dun Aonghasa, a prehistoric fort on a 300-foot cliff.  We lucked out with gorgeous sunshine all day.

Hills in Connemara National Park

The owners of the bed and breakfast suggested that we visit Connemara National Park on our last day. They drew out a map and marked specific sights we should stop at, and they were completely right.  It was a beautiful drive.  The area is filled with clear lakes and rolling grassy fields.  My favorite part was a drive out on a peninsula called Skyroad with stunning scenery jutting out into the sea.

Driving along the Skyroad Peninsula

It was a wonderful weekend to relax and reconnect with Thomas.  If you’d like to see more of our photos, I’ve put them on PicasaWeb.

• Valentine’s Weekend in West Ireland (57 photos)

P.S. The title of the post was from a phrase we heard wherever we went – rather than just Thanks or Thank you, the Irish said Thanks a Million!

This is a short story about why I was grouchy this week. It has a happy ending.

This Tuesday, I took my first hot shower in my apartment in a week. That’s the reason I was grouchy – ice cold showers, no matter how quick, are not fun.

Shower and sink in our bathroom

It all started last Tuesday, when our hot water heater failed to ignite. We fiddled with the ignite button and dials, but no luck. We realized that we have a gas heater, and that we had never paid for a gas bill. Something similar had happened to a friend of ours, so we quickly contacted our relocation specialist to have her check things out for us. She was out of the office for the next 4 days.

As soon as she got back, she reported that everything was good with our gas – it was combined with our electricity and we’ve been paying it all along. She suggested we talk to our concierge and see if she could check if our meter looked okay. Our concierege only speaks French, and my vocabulary does not include hot water heater, meter, ignite, so we used google translate to print out our questions.

This is the happy ending. The concierge sent her husband up to our apartment and he fiddled with the heater and finally got it going. We were trying reignite it incorrectly, though I don’t know why it went out in the first place. Anyway, he showed us how to do it right, and hot water flowed forth. Yay!

I also realized that I’ve never posted photos of our toilet and bathroom. Toilets are usually in a seperate room that the bath here. Our toilet room is just big enough for one person to barely stand in. It also has the hot water heater, the breaker box, and a tiny sink that doesn’t really work.

Our toilet room

Our bathtub room has a larger sink, a small bathtub/shower, our washer/dryer combo, and a couple cabinets.  I should mention that these photos were taken with my wide angle, which really distorts things.  It’s a small room.  We use the heater in there to warm our towels on. Unfortunately, there is no fan to suck out the steam after a shower.  Both of these rooms have skylights to make them brighter.

Sink and washer/dryer in bathroom

When I lived in my house in Atlanta, the master bathroom was a constant complaint. I thought it was too small, and I missed having a big soaking tub. In fact, it was double the size of the bathroom we now have, and one of three in our house. It’s funny how your perspective can change…