Artwork from Alsace

There is a new piece of artwork in our kitchen that I didn’t show you in the “big reveal”.

When we were originally discussing paint colors, I told Chip I wanted to paint the cabinets gray. He kinda looked at me like it was not a good idea. I told him it would be a “French Country” look. That idea he liked. The idea of a French Country kitchen got him to thinking about using some photos from our trip to France last summer. We finally agreed on a photo to use! I thought I would first share other photos related to our new artwork. We may even get some more printed!

Here is a map to show you where the Alsace region of France is located. As you can imagine, France and Germany argued and fought for many years to see who got to keep the area. So, while Alsace is in France, there are lots of German influences.

We drove in to Alsace from Wittenberg, Germany. Wittenberg is about halfway between Leipzig and Berlin. Our car time was about 7 hours.  The scenery was breath-taking! Gorgeous vineyards and quaint little villages were everywhere.

Vineyards were not the only crops we saw. We came across a lovely cherry orchard. Alsace is crazy about cherries!

 

I loved the flower boxes everywhere.

These trees looked like they were straight from a fairytale!

Finally, we arrived at our bed and breakfast. Part of the home was built in the 1700s!!!!

The weather was lovely! Our hosts welcomed us with coffee and delicious coffee cake.

Here are a few pictures of the inside.

This is the view from our room.

The girls stayed in the loft attached to our room.

After a little time of resting and getting acclimated to our new digs, we headed out to find some dinner.

The first place we stopped was a little out of our price range. We had already taken this cute picture to remember where we had eaten! Then we didn’t eat there.

We did not get the group shot at our actual restaurant. To tell you the truth, we looked pretty tired in most of the pictures.

We were actually lucky to get to eat. The folks at this restaurant only spoke French. Fortunately, Megan had worked with a French language app before our trip. She was able to order dinner for all of us. We were all very grateful and she felt pretty proud of herself.

We did learn to order water without “gas”. Carbonated water is apparently a big deal in Germany and France.

The food was very good. The fried egg on the pizza was a little weird. I ordered that for the local experience. I do not plan to repeat that experience any time soon, however.

We had our dinner outside. Right next to our table was a lovely patch of lavender. We noticed something buzzing around in the flowers. Katie is a bit scared of bees, so I went to check it out for her. It looked like a tiny hummingbird! I tried and tried to get a good  picture. Look closely at the picture below, just left of center.

I did a little research on what I thought was a tiny hummingbird. It turns out that what I saw was a hummingbird moth! Here is some good old Wikipedia info for you. I thought it was cool and had fun trying to capture it in a picture.

When we got back to the B & B we decided to stroll around the little village a bit.

The currants were beautiful!

We stayed in Alsace a little while and took day trips to the town of Riquewihr and the Haut Koenigsesbourg Castle. Hopefully, I will get around to sharing those pictures one day, too!

As we left our quaint little B & B to head to Paris, we stopped to snap a few more vineyard photos.

The grapes were far from ripe. I’d love to go back during harvest time.

Oh, I almost forgot to share the artwork we had printed for the kitchen!

The canvas is actually a little larger than the actual window was! You can see the original photo above with the other photos of the bed and breakfast.

I liked this photo because it reminded me of all the window boxes we saw while in Europe! I loved them! This picture kinda felt like it was part of our kitchen. The wall in the photo kinda matches our cabinets. We ordered the print from a place called canvasdiscount.com. When we ordered it we had the option of ordering a hanging kit. We had not planned to order it originally. However, it was only a few bucks, and by ordering it, we were bumped into the category of getting free shipping. Ordering more saved us money!

Well, that is all for now. I’m ready to go back to Alsace!!

 

In a Nutshell

Life is busy.

This summer was VERY busy–went to so many great places, we ate so much yummy food and saw so many people we love.

There were also things that I didn’t do this summer–like write any blog posts! Gasp!

My poor little Pork Chop Tuesday has limped along thanks to a couple of popular pins on Pinterest.

I have had the cloud of “gotta blog” hanging over me since May.

Another one of the things I didn’t do this summer was attend the Arkansas Women Bloggers blog conference. As I read through everyone’s conference recaps and chased them on Twitter and Periscope I wished that I could have gone. Money was a little different this summer. Big vacation+First child off to college+Purchase of an additional vehicle…I decided adding a conference was not the thing to do. I came across one of my fellow blogger’s post about the conference. She spoke about keeping the most important thing the most important thing. What an inspiration! Here I was all worried about the fact that I had not paid my blog any attention all summer and sad that I didn’t go to the blog conference. All along one of the biggest take-aways from the conference was what I was living! I spent wonderful, quality time with family this summer–keeping the most important thing the most important thing!

I’m trying to pick up blogging again. Boy it is rough. I’ve forgotten how to edit photos. I’m rusty at the keyboard. I am too embarrassed to tell you how long it has taken me to put this post together.

So, there you have it, summer in a nutshell. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I’ll be relearning Photoshop and WordPress. I only have 1762 more pictures from our Europe trip to edit!