Afreubo!

This Saturday, on a whim, Mr. K and I went to the Université du Paris Sud d'Orsay to see a free music concert of Afreubo. That's all I knew of it. A woman in my French Conversation group mentioned it to me as a fun thing to see if we had no plans Saturday.
 
We are so thankful she said something about it!

We entered an almost packed lecture hall (and we were there 20 minutes early) and found some seats next to some high schoolers. There were people of all ages from 1st graders to the elderly.

You see a lot of elderly here, but I can assure you, there was an even number of youth there.

Paper airplanes (or Cerf-volants) were being launched by random people while everyone was finding a seat. We made some paper airplanes too out of some scrap paper I found in my purse. They didn't fly very far. Too small and the paper was too heavy, we think.

 Looking at the program, we realized that this was not going to be an ordinary music concert.

From classical music to tv show music, it was a great lineup. Also, it stated that this program could be recycled as a paper airplane. Awesome

Between the music pieces, they had skits and very bad jokes, groaners if you will, with a lot of playing on words and gag props.

For example:
A man asked if there were any black holes. He was given one: something black that had a hole in it.

And another:
A man asked for "Une baguette de chef d'orchestre" whereupon another man produced a baguette of bread for the conductor. In French, "baguette" can be the baton or the bread.

Hahaha.

A nun, a pretty lady, a tv host, Time, and Math all meet in a gym (the start of a bad joke)

Dupont and Dupond, from Tintin made an appearance

  Then, the conductors came out with the drums guy.

The conductors and the percussianist

 But what do they have on their heads? Lightbulbs on funnels, mais oui! It was an electrifying concert!

Cool! Oh yeah, remember those pieces of TP up above? They were our voting cards.

We held up the color we wanted in order to vote. I even got to get the meteor in the left-hand corner.

The band began to play!

They all look like scientists!

They were really good! They played MacGyver, Rabbi Jacob (a French film from the 70s that is still very popular today), The skater's Waltz, Funeral March of a Marionette, Mission Impossible, Bridge on the River Kwai, etc. The cool thing was that the audience was allowed to fly paper airplanes during the concert. The musicians would catch them and send them flying back into the audience too!


And here is the band during Mission Impossible.

Looking so cool, gotta wear shades.

All in all, a wonderful afternoon spent listening to great music! Mr. K and I decided that the US should do more things like this: free fun music concerts that show kids (and adults) just how wonderful orchestral music really is.
Get on that, guys!

Snow, snow, snow!

So, a rare thing has occurred in the last week here in Courcelle-Sur-Yvette. We've got snow! *grin*

I love it.  I love walking in it and watching it fall. Growing up in Florida, we didn't get too much snow in winter. More rain and drizzle than anything. But, now I can thoroughly enjoy it in France. I don't have to drive in it!!!

Last Wednesday, my walking group got cancelled due to the frigid weather and snow. It was pretty icy. Well, I decided that it would be a great time to go out and explore the snowy wonder. This is what I found.

Snowy wall at 9am

 I walked past the bakery and the aroma of bread was so delicious. It can actually be seen here.

 Walking over the bridge, the river looks so delightfully frigid. (Can't tell I love winter, can you?)

Continuing my walk, which is very much the same one I did a while back in fall, you see the river bend and turn.

Well, hello there duckies! It's just wrong that they have to swim in such cold water...though they can probably handle it. It just makes me cold looking at them
Brrr...

They make the polar bear club look silly.

I took the wooded path here instead of the Intermarche path. It makes me feel like I'm in a fairy land.

Such a pretty little bench near the river. So inviting, save for the fact that it's dusted with snow.
Another time, my pretty little hidden spot, another time...

I loved how blue the sky was that morning. And with the trees all dusted with snow!

Walking past the Intermarche and on to the Bassin de Coupieres, the fence was glistening and glimmering in the light.

 What? A meadow beyond the fence? Untouched by human feet? What chance!

And voila! We made it to the Bassin de Coupieres! Icy, yes. Windy, yes. But such a lovely morning it was that I managed to get about 2.5 km in around the basin before I had to go back.

This is my favorite picture from that morning. I love the light, tree, and bench. It just works and could be very Burton-esque.

Bringing it back to the present. Today we got a lot of snow. Actually, all weekend we've gotten a lot of snow.
Just look!
It's impressive because we were only to get 2-5cm of snow and got 18cm instead.
C'est la panique en France! (But chez les Krueger, we love it)

Lots of snow on our balcony. Probably should have taken in the table. Ooops.

And so with all the snow, we've decided to make it a hot tea and book and movie day.
Off to enjoy the remainder of the evening!
A tout à l'heure!

My Sister has a shop on Etsy!!

So, guess who's so excited and proud of her sister?  ME!

K-girl

 My little sister has opened up a shop on Etsy to sell her art and handmade jewelry. She's very talented and can do almost anything (not that I am biased...). Her major was sculpture and ceramics at the University of North Florida and graduated with honors. She does installations, jewelry, custom designed projects, and also likes doing industrial design when she can get ahold of a welder.

This is what she says about her shop, Sparkle, on Etsy:

"Here, you will find a multitude of cute, fun gift ideas that are sure to please.
{{Glittery, girlie, sweet, and cute}}
Most jewelry and club accessories can be made to order, upon request.
- Cute jewelry and club accessories
- Functional ceramics
- One of a kind collage cards and boxes
Feel free to explore my shop {Sparkle} and my artist website {kristinbartie.com} and message me with any questions or comments.
Thank you for popping by :)"

P.S. She now has Clip-on earrings, for those who do not have pierced ears. She can make some on special request as well, as she is doing for one woman.

Her jewelry is fun! Her pottery is great, but what about something more artistic, you ask?

As you can see, her website is teaming with ideas. The possibilities are endless.

Want a natural design for your office building? Try her Cocoon series. (price available upon request)

Need an idea for a wedding? Want to line a path in the woods or surround your patio in your backyard for your next outdoor party? Try a faerie installation!

What about a great front walk conversation starter? Try a zipper on for size!

How about decorations for your next gala, event, or dance? She does autumn leaves beautifully or you can have cerf-volants or, in other words, paper airplanes! (Perfect for the kid in all of us!)

Check her out and enjoy the beauty of her art.

Nature Surrounds Us

Thought I would do a post of a recent hike Mr K and I did in Courcelle.  We decided to go visit the house where I used to work as an au pair.
As we could not go into the house, or really justify standing outside on the street gawking at the said house, I decided it would be WAY less creepy to walk the path in the woods behind it and show Mr K my old abode that way.

You'd do the same too.
Right?

Anyway, not much had changed and the garden looked like it always had...wild. I wonder if they still have the wild strawberries running rampant in the garden and front of the house...they were delicious.

I digress. After the visit, we went on a hike through the woods.  I love the well maintained paths in Courcelle.  Just beautiful. Here are my favorite pictures of that day:

The beginning of the path, after the hardest climb up the muddy track. I love the moss!

  Mr. K really likes hills and mountains. I just cannot keep him off them. As soon as he sees something steep that goes on for a long while, you would think that he would sigh and grumble, but no! He goes after it with passion! Next time you should see him, suggest a long hike up steep, steep hills on muddy tracks. He'll thank you for the opportunity to pretend to be a mountain goat and get fresh air.  

Gorgeous! Rustic woods, green moss, sunshine, and Mr K.

I just love the way the sunlight plays with trees in the woods.

  At the top of the hike, there's a plateau with a very old farm.

 There, the wind blows so hard, it shakes the camera. There are hardly any pictures of the plateau because of this. However, I have a great shot of the trees!

I managed to get a good view of the farm a little further up. So pretty.

The cool thing about this farm is that it is walled in!

 Mr. K pointed out deer tracks to me and we saw canine tracks as well.

The path leads you around a bend and there you see:

The view of the valley.

There are three villages there.  Very hard to see them for the trees, but they're there and it was breathtaking.

You saw Courcelle, St-Remy, and Chevreuse in the valley. 

We continued our walk and saw two deer (one of which I thought at first was a huge rabbit. I couldn't see the legs due to the hill and the she was really fast!)

Then I found the sky and so these are my celestial pictures.

It was a lovely day. And we really enjoyed the rare moment of sunshine and blue sky, but alas, we had to return home as it was just starting to get dark. (It begins to get dark around 4ish.)

We came upon two paths and I was immediately reminded of Mr. Warner in my 9th grade English class and his Frost tribute.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth ...

~Robert Frost

 

We took one home.
"And that has made all the difference!"

Au revoir for now!

New Year's Festivities and Such

Happy New Year!  Hoping 2013 brings more love, joy, and peace to everyone.

Mr. K and I had a lovely time celebrating with friends for Christmas Day (his boss invited us to his house where we were treated like family and played Jungle Speed- a cut throat game of matching and speed).  We were even given a fondue kit for two.  It was so cute, we had to try it out as soon as we could. Here is the fruit of our labor:

Clockwise from top left: french fries, beef tips, raclette and cheddar fondue with white wine, home-made bread, apples and carrots, and Hedgie the hedgehog.

 Mr. K's verdict of the dippings was that the apple won over all, and that the bavette beef paired with a chunk of bread was excellent as a dipping partner. Though the french fries came in as a pretty close third.

Mr. K had all the week off, so we made the most of it: relaxing and enjoying some days together. Walks, new food, two movies at the theater (Life of Pi and Anna Karenina), all the holiday movies we could watch (It Happened on 5th Avenue, Mickey's Christmas Carol, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Love Actually), and just enjoying being a married couple.

We also went to a music concert at the Palais Garnier:

If you think the outside is gorgeous, just wait until you see inside!

The famed stairs

This is taken from the top of the seats from another night, where we heard music by Rossini and Stravinsky (not our favorite)...in the nose bleed section; our seats for Schubert were the second set of box seats on the far right.

 They had a concert of Schubert/Strauss/Webern/Schoenberg. It was FANTASTIC! We heard waltzes and sweeping music from violins, violas, cellos, plus a piano, flute and clarinet.  They had 7 curtain calls. To top it all off, they played "Funiculi, Funicula" as an encore! Hah! We had the best time, even if we shared a baignoire with a grumpy elderly lady (she was not very nice and kept poking me with her program and pulling on the back of my chair...luckily I could just move the chair forward). We were in heaven and completely swept away with the music. Whoever said "classical music is boring" obviously has never experienced a concert at the Palais Garnier.

For New Year's Eve we were invited to the home of our new friends from church, The Paulussens.  They're Kiwis! :-) I made sugar cookies and brought some Champagne and 'Tit Boules (Champ'omy- sparkling apple juice). We had such a fun time with 6 adults, two 3-2 year olds, 1 toddler and a very cute little baby girl. We almost missed New Year's countdown, but we were able to toast just in time!

Our walk to the party.

The lovely ladies of the party (A, AP (hostess), and me) plus little E man (who wasn't quite enjoying the festivities as much as the rest of us, poor little fellow)

L (the host) and all the kiddos. The little one on the floor is his, as well as the one in his arms.  The other with the Dora balloon was the best dolphin balloon fighter I've ever seen and belonged to the lady in red in the photo above. Her husband was not photographed but he was present too.

 And so, that is the recap of our holiday week.  Oh and before I forget:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, K-GIRL! 

You are 26 today! Wooo hooo!