Settling in France week 2

Well we have a vegetable patch now, courtesy of my hubbies digging, with melons, tomatoes, herbs, pumpkin, cucumbers and courgettes, lets just see if they survive. I feel really good about my first ever veg patch, simple honest living is the way forward.

We have filled our paddling pool so the kids are very very happy and our table is under the cherry tree in the garden, so we can relax while they play - heaven.

As you can see suddenly lots of blogging, well that was one of my main aims along with developing my marketing skills when I moved to France, I also wanted to make it (hopefully) a bit more interesting by adding  little titbits from my new French life.

I am just loving assessing my site with google anlaytics - which pages most people go to, bounce rates, where they come from - what about Ribeirao Preto in Brazil or Sofia in Bulgaria, how come they find CocoCards - but the person from Sofia only looked at 2 pages, so not that good a site she or he thought and the Brazilian spent 5 minutes and 26 pages - but sadly no order.

Eh what did you say?

So learning new words every day, Birth announcements are called faire part naissance in France, El anuncio del nacimiento in Spanish, and geboortekaartjes in Dutch. Hopefully I will be designing some baptême invitations very very soon.

Some beautiful quotes

These 2 quotes I feel are so important in my life right now:

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless." Mother Theresa

There are always flowers for those who want to see them." Henri Matisse

Bilingual birth announcements and bilingual christening invitations

Seeing as being bilingual is so relevant at the moment to me, I just wanted to say I have designed many bilingual birth announcements, even bilingual Christening invites. One birth announcement was in chinese, english and spanish and I designed a greek christening invite last week, which the lady loved. I cant proof read Greek or Chinese obviously but I can send it to you to proof read.

On the subject of being bilingual, my little daughter just sat down in the cafe with my hubbie and I today and said 'bonjour, jus d'orange please'.

So we have arrived

We arrived in France on Thursday after a tortuous journey, 3 ½ hours in traffic jams around Paris, but we got to our friends’ house at midnight and woke up to a rainy day in France, but they live on a huge farm, so we woke up to strawberries from their garden and eggs from their chickens and of course fresh baguettes.

Then on to our new house which is so French, no carpets obviously, shutters, silk wallpaper, no shower and 2 bidets!!!

The kids went on a tour of their new school on Friday and like it up till now, there are 6 English kids there already – all girls though – sorry Jacob.

Everything is so much more expensive over here, a kitchen bin is 40 Euros – ahhhhh.

I think I am going to love it here, the village is so lovely, small but has everything a French person needs, but maybe not an English person, I already have a long list of things to buy in the UK.

Content and happy but very tired, I think this is the start of something great, we have always wanted our children to be bilingual and experience life to the full and we have just made the first big step, how good does that feel.

We will have broadband tomorrow, so CocoCards as normal from tomorrow morning. Just with a french twist.

I forgot to mention in my last post, the most amazing supportive loving people in my life other than my kids and Jeremy of course, my parents. They have been so wonderful over the past few months and are such fantastic grandparents. This post is really for you, we love you and will miss you with all our hearts, that is the only down side of moving to France the fact that we will be so far away from you, as your grandchildren and I love you dearly.

New life

Not been near my blog in ages, incredibly busy with work , 3 kids and life in general. But hopefully things will get better now.

I am moving to France next week to start a new life with my hubbie and 3 kids and I cant wait, nervous but excited.

Dont worry CocoCards continues and will be even better as I have an employee now, a wonderful lady called Jean, who will be dealing with all the printing, packing and posting from the UK.  I will now be able to focus on my business - blogs, wedding stationery, marketing etc etc.

I have been through a very rough patch recently which I will not go into, but I believe in postive thinking and I have learnt a lot about human nature and by god people can be awful, but then others can be the most inspiring supportive people you could ever imagine  - allie and Gill you know who you are and thank you so much.

So in a month time when I am all settled in my beautiful French house in the most gorgeous little village in France, I will blog again.