Bretagne and pumpkin pies

I'm on my way to Bretagne for a week. A welcome break: no more work in the evenings! Yeehaaaaa!
My sister and her big family will be there too, that is kewl We're going to play REAL scrabble (lol) in front of the fireplace while eating marshmallows and sipping rum! It sounds boring? It is not:)

Of course we've already planned our days of work in the hobbit house (sigh), but I mainly hope I'll manage to read the 2 books I've taken with me. If I can read them, then the holidays will be a success! :)

Before I forget, here is Mahie's new list game! Great idea, it's always a pleasure to answer!

"Tell me which is your favorite....

* coffee: first one with milk, then the 6 (no kiding) others just black
* color: red
* snak: chocolate
* car: feet ,horse ,bicycle, anything but cars
* perfume: Amour by Kenzo
* continent: Europe
* manga: Captain Harlock
* joke: one line jokes
* position: lying down on the stomach (allongée, position roupillette, quoi)
* milk: with my first coffee and cereals
* magazine: marie-claire
* island: the Isle of Skye
* shoes: boots in winter, lovely sandals on summer
* cat: purring
* dog: hm, I'm not a doggoil!

Your turn!

Even if I'm a devoted Air-girl ...

...I almost never enjoy watching their videos, they do not correspond at all to what their music inspire me..

I enjoy this one though, I even love a few details there, including the disappearing *go* in the window!

javascript:void(0)

PS: oh but this one is brilliant too, I was less inspired by the sog than the video this time! :P

the lil wolf and the sunnybananas cake

Once upon the time there was a beautiful GREEDY baby.
His name was quite scary, for the little red cap and the 3 lil piggies.

Loup, for it was his name, first drank like a lamb. Milk and milk again.
Quickly he thought meat was MUCH MORE more appropriate,
He got CARNIVOROUS.

Then he grew stronger.

He is now a LOT heavier
He is now a LOT more cuddling (I did not think that was possible!)

A hundred times more adorable
And a zillion times more devilish (Gawd, what will it be in 10 years!)

More SCARY? Yeah, definitely!

... Loup has just turned 2 :)



PS: I hope you appreciate the grande cuisine cake above: "chocolate cake on a trip to Maui"
Well I must confess it's one of the cake Michelle gave us the other day, it was so good I thought "no need to cook one which would be worse"! So I took the rest of it, planted Hawaian beach umbrellas and just brought a touch European decadence with grapes. Ermm, Loup loved it ! hehe

I've just signed all the papers!

(and I'm not even drinking champagne! tsssss!)



...I'm very motivated :)
I have to finish all the illustrations for a first book before the 15th of November. Not easy, but... it's such a great opportunity that I'd work night and day (well I work mostly during the night already, no choice... pfff)

well, it is great. The book should be really good and helpful.
I have a lil thought for Penny Sillan who was convinced that my art at some point would be used to help kids. She was just right **~~**^* *~~^* *

The hobbit house to be shared?

At the end of the week, we leave for Bretagne, for a week.
I haven't mentioned it, but I've got really down with the hobbit house lately.
We spend all our holidays working on it, which means we do not see each other really, one takes care of the kids, the other works.
Then... I do not feel ready to live in a lost hamlet all along the year. Yeah, I'm a fookin Parisian and I love it (which must sound really weird!)

Soooo... we have a house in the countryside (which is absobloodilutely wunnerful, I agree!), we spend all our free time and money on it, to spend, what, 5 weeks of holidays there every year (I mean in the future), huh?
I just can't imagine such a place empty 90% of the time. Not with all the work and efforts we make for it.

Soooo, I thought... why not making of it a holiday accommodation (un gite, quoi! :P)
That would be just perfect!
The house would be much more alive this way, and we could make lil money.

At the beginning I couldn't stand the idea of sharing my "walls", but now, I just love it!
We must think about it seriously! :)

A day at Chez Mickey -with fangs-

It was a full day yesterday. We left home at 8.30am and came back at 10.30pm.
We had a beautiful day, cold but very blue :)

Lola LOVED everything there, she *believed* in everything she saw **~~*^* *
And Eva was a great company for the shrimpette and for the rest of us, motivated and all :)

And I highly recommend anyone to visit it on Halloween time. You expect they celebrate it there, right. But it was much more than that. Disney just make everything perfect you know (when it comes to entertaining), like celebrating halloween as a child can expect it in its deepest dreams!
It was huge, wunnerful! Witches everywhere, Donalds dressed in vampire, pumpkins everywhere, laughing skeletons on roofs, etc etc.

(happy sigh)

I loved it too!

SsssSSShpirit of Halloween

I know we have another week before the witches invite themselves at home, but we already enjoyed THE party of the year.
And I don't say that because my lil family won the costume contest!!! (hehe.. no, but it's true! we did!)
... it was just perfect, great atmosphere for lil ones and much older ones (try to make a party for lil kids and grown-ups at the same time, that's a REAL challenge me thinks!), great costumes (we were invited by a Elvis and a dark Fairy who should have won the contest -thank Gawd, they couldn't participate- :P)

So, as it's not obvious on the pic below, Eva (my niece), Lola and I came as spiders, Martin as a Pssshhhiiit against spiders! I loved the idea and concept! hehe
Now when we had to make the costumes, it was another story. We spent the last week making legs with stockings and cotton, and it was really difficult to make them hold and move too (I know you can't see much on the photo, but for real it was not much better! lol). Martin made his pshhhhit costume himself, and it was brilliant!

I think Martin's costume was absobloodilutely great, ours were more hmm, very home-made! lol ... But the girls looked fantastic, the most adorable spiders!
Well, I guess we won for the concept, which was fun, I reckon!



Thank you again Michelle and Frederic, we had a lot of fun (and we're still enjoying all your cakes! yummm!)

The end of the week kinda starts tomorrow

Oyé Oyé

Loup will leave tomorrow for Bretagne, till Monday!!!

Mixed feelings:

-I already miss him, I hate when Loup is not playing the *glueboy* around me ;-)
-I'm so happy to get 4 days to focus on my work, 4 days without feeling the constant stress a lil devil can provoke... 4 days with Martin only in the bed! Almost holidays!

let's see...

Tomorrow will be wonderfully quiet

Friday will be busy with work, then with a great rugger match to watch

Saturday... while I'll be working, Lola and Martin go to take Eva, my niece, who will spend the weekend with us.
Then we have our Halloween party + a final rugger match to watch (pretty difficult to chose which team I'll support, I think I'll have to chose for the cuttest bums!)

Sunday: Lola, Eva, Martin and I will spend the at Chez Mickey, Halloween to be celebrated there too. No pumpkin overdose you see! :)

If everything goes well (=full batteries in the cam) you will get zillions of pics of all that.

Like mother, like .... devils !

not sure about the title though! lol

Loup and our white sofa have discovered painting not so long ago... a pleasure to see him enjoying it so much! (btw, I let Martin deal with the painting activity, mwahahaha!)



As for the shrimpette, she's already an artist. Here she's painting the little mermaid. Brilliant! You see this charming lil tail? And the painted nails! And the smile, the SMILE! (faint) Just perfect! :-)



(what? I'm a proud mom? grmppph, of course I am :P)

This is you last chance...

...to get a painting at a reasonnable price ;-)

I really didn't want to do it, but I have no other choice than raising the price of my paintings.
2 reasons mainly: 1) the online payment system is expensive (somehow I hadn't realized that), 2) shipping and packing costs are getting more expensive. There is not so much left at the end.

(sigh)

so, after next weekend I'll add a 0 to all the prices
(kidding)
hehe

And the blue winner is ...

...a red cabbage!



wait, there's something wrong here

woooooooooooooosh

back

and the winner is ......

the blue photoshoped cabbage !!!




Hmm, I still wonder how Martin could imagine that a "red cabbage" could actually be blue!

The croissants might be bannished at chez Candles', but ...

...Nutella (aka "nut-nut" for the aficionados) is still most welcome! :P

The Alien effect

I hope I haven't bothered you too much during the rugger cup! I did my best to avoid talking of it here.
It's not over, 2 matches to come, the second one being not that exciting for us... England vs South Africa (cute legs in the second team though :P)

Tonight I watched the Pumas and their emotion at the beginning was really touching. They fought well, but too bad they couldn't make it! :(

Talking of emotions, I LOVE the cup. I wish it was every year! (sigh)

And if you've followed any of it around here, you probably saw that. I love it (except the French national anthem touch, almost spoiling everything!) It gives me the same shivers as when I watch one of the Alien movies! Brrrrrrrr!

I still wait for Ripley to jump out from the screen though..
(Ripley and a gang of impressive creatures, huh! :P)

My spoiled Princess

...has celebrated her birthday with 10 of her lil friends on Saturday!
I feel bad because 1) I did not cook any cake for her, 2) the birthday party was organized somewhere else (way too small here)!

Hmm, I feel we could have keep all the money we tried to save during the last months, but (cough) life's short, and she loved it so much!



All her girlfriends were dressed as princesses (Lola chose a Ariel-who-gonna-get-married-and-crowned-as-queenette-of-the-world *lol*); the boys were much more creative: a cowboy for David, Samsam for Edouard, Zorro for Amaury and a chinese prince for Nolan :)

more pics to come :-)

Help! I'm lost in the big blue!

Voilà, Lola must bring some food at school next week (it's the "week of the taste" in French schools, like every year)
Her teacher has chosen the blue colour as a main theme (not white or brown or green, of course not!)

She can bring whatever she wants, except candies and sodas.
Michelle brings bilberries muffins if I remember, others bring figs, grape, blue cheese, blackberries and... Jeez, all my good ideas have been stolen! And I won't bring sardines! oh nenene!

Last idea I got was mint... but isn't it a bit green? (sigh)

Any idea about blue food?
Blue might be inspiring (for me it's the "twilight blue" that beat all the other kinds of blue) but with food... hell no!


(patchwork of borrowed pictures, thank you, you talented photographers)

Absolutely Scrabulous

Martin is totally addicted to that Scrabulous game!
It's one of the numerous lil games you can find on Facebook (yeahhhh, I know, Facebook AGAIN!**)

I've got an invitation to this game by Benoit yesterday, and I don't know if I must thank him or to curse him! It's just a great lil game! You should join, huhu :P

**but I wouldn't talk of it that much if it was not that good, somewhere in the dark :)

See you next year, doc

Lola, Loup and I got our injection against the flu today. Yeeehaaaaaaaa!
The plan was for me to show the devils that the injection did not hurt, so I asked their doc to do it on me first (which required some kind of *mommy self control* -like "don't faint in front of your kids, etc"-)

It went ok for me,it went awful for Lola who was so so stressed, and it was even worse for the wild Loup who had to be held by 3 people. A real Hercules!

Talking of Hercules, the doc found that Loup was a bit heavy.
heavy
hey what did he mean by that?!
my baby boy... HEAVY! (shrugging)

I answered he was just wonderfully STRONG (which is the case, honest!) :-)
He has a weight of, ok, 15kg700, which is clearly higher than usual at this age. It should not be that terrible since I only have to stop giving Loup his morning croissant and it should be fine... pfffff ... I'll do it, ok, but my baby will be starving, I know it! (and an apple is just not the same :P)

Who keeps me busy nigth and day?

(I wish it was Martin!
pfffffff!)

Just to share what I'm working on at the moment ;-)...



I think you will hear again about the lil boy :)

Watta shitty day !

It started with Loup being a REAL devil while Lola was having her dance courses.
He wanted to join the girls, screamed, then went to empty the lockers (one of the lil girl has lost her trousers... I hope it was not the fault of my devil!)

Then we went back at home. I had lots of work to do you know. So I highly expected the first signs of "mom i'm going to have a 3 hours nap".
It did not happen.
No way I could work!

Then, huho, time to run to the next hospital to make lungs' scan for the shrimpette (to check her last infection was really gone).

A hospital is, for Loup, like Paradise. Long corridors, switches everywhere, smiling nurses (yup!), etc. Paradise.
For me it was like hell. I had to take care of Lola while the lil devil was opening forbidden doors, trying to flip forbidden switches, to scream when silence was required, etc. ETC.

And it was like, 30°C inside!

(faint)

GREAT point: Lola's results were good :)

Then ok, we went to the next park to have "fun".
(yawn)
Finally we came back home, and there I had a message from my ol' friend Phantie. I discovered I had been plagiarized ! Or, more precisely, my "Herman" character had been plagiarized!
I won't show it here, I won't name the one who did it, because she instantly accepted to get rid of the "Herman" illustrations she presented on her site.

But this had been a shock!

I understand even more my monoï sista, Etolane, when she was confronted to plagiarism.

Anyway, this has been some kind of yucckky day.

Except that now I'm here.

sharing all that with ews,

and it feels good.

hugggles

Halloween Romance

If you knew how many troubles I've got with the colored background here. At some point it was all brown and grey! Jeez...
But watercolour is magic, you can work and work it again, and finally the result is really not bad me thinks..


click here

I got inspired here by Mr Bones, just in time to celebrate one of the funniest time of the year :)

Five!

I know a shrimpette who'll have the time of her life today!



Today we celebrate Lola's fifth birthday, and I could tell you how much I remember the first kicks in the belly, the first cries, laughs, words, tears, etc ... how much I find her beautiful and funny, how much I am proud of the sensitive little girl she is now.... words will never express the Happiness our shrimpette brings me everyday.

Because ....

-because I've just learnt that French lil ones won't have to go to school on Saturday morning anymore
-because Martin has a shining boat license in his pocket
-because I'm in a pumpkin mood
-because I have professional plans
-because the Frawnch ruggermen will play an exciting last match tomorrow
-because I also plan to watch England playing, South Africa, Argentina and Scotland
-because it's Friday evening

Because of all that, we thought we had a few things to celebrate with bubbles! :P
Wanna join?

Call me le Chef

You know why I don't enjoy cooking at all? Because I do it way too often, to feed my babes first. And whenever I try to be imaginative with ingredients, you can be sure they won't like it.
(sigh)

I think that partly explains why Martin is much better at it than I am. He does it once a month, for pleasure!
tssss, that's unfair!

But I always focus my efforts on one thingie ... presentation :P
(and don't laugh with the pic below, thank you!)

Whenever I can, I bring some poetry to whatever I cook, even smashed potatoes, carrots and sausages... and the kids loves it!
So ok, it's the most basic kind of food, but have you ever eaten a smashed-potatoes-carroted-and-sausaged-kitty ? No??? (told you!)



So you can call me le Chef, I deserve it! :P

Lola and I, the accomplices (part 1)

Some of you might wonder how one can spend so much time on Facebook, huh!
As far as I am concerned, I reckon I have an accomplice to help me...



The best one! :)

(PS: if you haven't registered yet, I will spare you with my pirate bombs, and if you decide to join, then it will be my round! Rum, old one!

Candy, the Corsair Pirate level 62 ...

(you don't know what it means, but you can still be impressed ;-)

... starts again her illustrator's activities!
Yeeeehaaaaaaa
It went really fine with the publishing house yesterday. We share the same motivations, we got on well and agreed on the way we wanna work together.

I have to prepare a first book for next month (next month! sheeeet!!!), 2 others for February.
I've also presented my new project Lola Tralala n'a pas peur des piqûres ...



... and they might be interested with it!

I'm already working on my painting biz, taking care of the house, the kids, taking them here and there, etc... and I have no idea how I'll manage to find the time to work on all that, but I'm ready to do it. Ol' Candy is not a lazy bum!

Now I wait for the contract to sign it :)

While surfing on the professional wave, I've also just ordered a graphic tablet, and I cross all my bits so I can easily use it (which I doubt)... THIS could change my life to make illustrations (=it would save a lot of time working directly on the screen!)

A girlie topic, sorry guys... talking shoes today!

These boots should be made for walking..



but... the walk would be a bit expensive........ 235 euros!!!


ok, in some other life.

Now let's see, these boots should be made for walking too...



They're not that expensive (69 euros)
... but they're only available in size 40!
Pfffff... my boots are not waterproof anymore, you see, I DESPERATELY need a new pair ... and these one look pretty kewl!

I keep looking for them, and as soon as I find my size... Meoooowwww ... they'll be the mouse, I'll be the cat! :P

Monday, Monday

I don't find it very fair to start the week being THAT exhausted ...
And the weather did not help: warm and wet. Yuck!

Tomorrow morning I have rendez-vous with a publishing house. I bring them my last manuscript, even if we will mainly talk of another series.

I have no doubt it will be positive :)
Great thing for me, the busy mama, is that Loup's kindergarten is at 100 meters from the publishing house! how kewl is that, huh?!

Talking about kewl, Jack reminded me of a few sketches from the Monthy Python the other day.

I thought I would share a laugh here... Not the Ministry of the silly walk (which I LOVE), just another one ...