What I’m Into – May 2016 Edition

What an intense month May has been! I feel like it’s just disappeared and tried to take a few bites off me as it went. Busyness and loud children will gnaw at you that way and fray you at the edges sometimes. I’m joining in with Leigh Kramer as usual for a round up of all the things I’ve done this month.

What I’m Reading

Books about Business Strategy, French cookery books and free Regency romances for Amazon Kindle. Nothing is massively standing out as worthy of note to be honest but my brain is fried.

What I’m watching

iZombie and Outlander are my two main things on TV at the moment, I love both of these shows so much! They couldn’t be further apart in terms of topic and style but they are both so entertaining. Outlander in particular has been engrossing and emotionally captivating this season.

I tried season 2 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and couldn’t get into it; it’s totally on me, I keep expecting her PTSD to come out a bit more than it does. I enjoyed season 1 but it’s a bit too fluffy for my liking because of the subject matter. I keep wishing they would address the fallout of recovering from spiritual abuse (a serious, too often ignored reality imo) more fully rather than the unrealistic way that Kimmy seems to cope positively with just about anything (basically not enough fear and breaking down, which I admit, would make for a different show :-p), plus Jane Krakowski’s native american antics make me really uncomfortable. This said, Titus Andromedon is life itself.

I did watch ‘Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles‘ (A Very Long Engagement) with Audrey Tautou. I was a bit put off at the start because there was such a strong whiff of ‘Amélie does World War I’ about it that seemed jarring but thankfully it’s a very compelling story, with multiple character stories fully fleshed out, although I do wish we had more than the ending we were given, maybe a look into the future. The most astonishing turn was Jodie Foster who spoke perfect French, and I mean perfect, she spoke without accent and I could have listened to her forever pronouncing her perfect r’s.

I also watched ‘Populaire‘, which takes place in France in the late Fifties and is about a young secretary who is terrible at her job apart from being a very fast typist. She gets entered into the local typing competition by her boss, they fall in love, blah blah blah. Visually, it’s a wonderful spectacle; the fashion and locations are spot on. It’s a sweet story, but to be honest, I hated the rampant sexism. I guess it should be expected because of the time period in which it is set, but you are supposed to root for the two main characters and here you have the ‘useless young naive woman rescued by patronising older man’ trope; he calls her -his employee- ‘mon chou’, which is a pet name meaning my sweet bun/sweety, and basically bullies her into doing what he wants her to do ‘for her own good’. Why she would ever fall for him is beyond me and there is little in the film to give me a compelling reason (maybe also because I don’t find the actor particularly good leading-man material). But hey, it’s sweet and has a happy ending in a predictable way, and as I said it looks fabulous.

I also watched ‘Interstellar‘ with Badgerman and absolutely loved it.

What I’m listening to

I’ve been listening to a Spotify playlist ‘the most beautiful songs in the world’, which occasionally gets a bit too folksy for me, but has some nice piano and cello as well. Perfect.

Favourite photo

What I’ve been doing

At Home

• Mostly just life but I did make this enormous slab of chocolate cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries for a group of guys I was meeting with, and despite giving lots of it away it still took us days to eat it all.
• I learnt a lot about email lists and Pinterest optimization from following the Profitable Blogging Summit. I have absolutely no recollection of how I heard about this free training but it was fab.
• I sourced some amazing feminine business stock photos via Pinterest (it is so good, right?) seriously this is such a great list; my personal favourite is CityGirlSearching. Now to create some stunning post headers and more!

At School

I took a break from studying and I’m regretting it already. I’ve got a month to get an assignment out about Business Strategy, for which one of the task is to record myself do a presentation and post it on YouTube. I am not looking forward to this at all. And I still don’t know how I did on the finance assignment, which is bugging me big time!

At Home on the Blog

• The blog moved! I once was a free wordpress.com blogger, and now I’m a self-hosted technically-challenged blogger. It’s been a massive and time-consuming project but I’m finally here, ready to start thinking more seriously about what I want the blog to become, and my first post was a bit basic as you’d expect from a welcome post.
• My next big project for the blog is to create a nice little freebie for my readers. Suggestions welcome!
• I’ve had a difficult time speaking French to the girls in my attempts to raise them bilingual. This is a bit of a personal post. Obviously, I’m not a complete failure but in this area, yeah, not so great.
• I also shared my big love for clay face masks, which are a very traditional French beauty product and have been used for centuries (French clay is wonderful stuff apparently)
• I also put into words my thoughts on the soon-to-be UK referendum on whether Britain should stay or leave the EU, from my viewpoint as a French immigrant and a practicing Christian. It’s been a popular post.

And that’s it for this month! Be sure to click on the box to see the rest of the link-up for more recommendations and updates from the What I’m Into community.

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What I’m Into – Spring 2016 Edition

Spring has arrived in England and with it hail, snow, thunder, lightning and bright sunshine, all in the space of a day. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to join in with What I’m Into.

What I’m Reading

I’ve actually been reading about business finance and investment appraisal techniques since mid January so I’ve spent my leisure time reading free Kindle books in the fantasy, romance and paranormal section. My brain couldn’t take much more than that.

What I’m Watching

I finished Battlestar Galactica, and I still can’t believe I waited until this year to do so. It’s on a par with Fringe in how much I enjoyed the intricacy of this programme. It is so much more than a sci-fi show.

Other programmes I’ve watched/am watching: iZombie, Once Upon a Time, Outlander

What I’m Listening To

As I recently had an assignment deadline, I listened to a lot of playlists and instrumental music from Craig Armstrong and Ludovico Einaudi. I love how these two composers use modern technology to meld electronic soundscapes with classic piano. I’ve also been enjoying this song by Frances:

Favourite Photo

Family selfie

What I’ve Been Doing

At Work:

I started a new PA job at my local university in February. I love being back at work and I love the university environment. I have a varied and busy role in a friendly flexible team, I get access to the university’s library and online journals, to Lynda.com, I was set up with the entire Adobe Creative Suite when my Adobe Reader went wrong. My biggest challenge is the fact that it is a two-day role and I could easily do more hours.

At Home:

• It was my birthday in late February and our 7th wedding anniversary in April and we celebrated both with a Japanese feast.

• I spent the Easter holidays painting the girls’ bedroom and really enjoyed myself, whereas Badgerman found it not at all therapeutic. I guess that’s my job in the house from now on then, but I will leave all the prep to him!

• We went to the Foodies Festival and had a wonderful time scoffing delicious food, enjoying the sunshine, the blues and the gin samples.

At School:

• I completed my HNC assignment on Managing Financial Resources and Decisions. It was my most challenging unit to date, as I suspected it would be, what with the fact that there were calculations involved, and I worked flat-out for a couple of weeks to do this.

At Home on the Blog

I will spare you a rundown of all the posts I’ve written since the last installment of What I’m Into. Needless to say it has been a bit quiet since Christmas because of that big assignment but I did post a few things anyway.

• Not least on the list were my 2016 blogging resolutions, including having an editorial calendar, having a blog loge and going self-hosted. The good news is, I can now check one of these off the list (see below)!
• I shared a recipe for a typical French dish of sauteed potatoes with persillade (a parsley and garlic mix), which reminds me I should really make it again, yum.
• I linked to a website for expats, which is a fantastic resource whether you are looking to move abroad or are already there.
• A big spelling change was announced in France, which is a Very Rare Event, and people thought the end of the world was nigh.
• And finally, I’m about to embark on a new potty training adventure, and I’m dreading it a bit.

Big Announcement

I have been hard at work developing the new platform for this blog since going self-hosted (a spur of the moment purchase on 2^nd January this year) and the plan is to launch A Frog at Large under a new URL in the next couple of weeks! I will keep you posted, but be warned that you will need to manually re-subscribe by email or save the new URL as there will not be automatic redirection.

As always, I’m joining in with Leigh Kramer for this What I’m Into post. You can check out her link for better book and music recommendations from across a great range of well-read bloggers.

A Short Guide to French Music {day six}

 

I’ve talked before about my mostly but not quite hate-affair with French music. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t exactly have a great reputation around the world. Music doesn’t come up in the top 5 ‘best things about France’, and that is mostly, in my opinion, because  the French language doesn’t lend itself to simple lyrics, and simplicity pretty much defines most contemporary music. Instead it is all about poetry and emotions, so singing in French about being ‘in da club’ and what not, is just weird. French lyrics can be very intricate but tend to win over musicality, which doesn’t translate well into music that non-French people can understand. You get a lot of musical poetry, which is great if you understand French, but can be pretty uninspiring otherwise.

 

That’s not to say that all French music is bad, not by a very long shot, but you may not have heard of most of our most famous artists so today, let me introduce you to them by running through the last 60 years of French classics. All of the artists mentioned are famous and many have had enduring appeal in my home country, including some having reached national treasure status.

 

If you want to listen to any of these guys, you can check out the Spotify public playlist I’ve made for the occasion.

 

Note: Some of these artists have careers spanning many decades and I have ‘tried’ to categorise them by genre (if very specific) or by their most popular decade. It was a difficult one to judge so if there are mistakes, they are all mine. I have also had to miss a lot of very popular artists because there are just too many and it could quickly become overwhelming.

 

 Classic French Music of the WWII Years:

• Edith Piaf
• Charles Trenet

French Music of the 50s:

• Charles Aznavour (still going strong today at 91 yrs old!)
• George Brassens

French Music of the 60s:

• Jacques Brel
• Claude François
• Jean Ferrat
• Jacques Dutronc
• France Gall
• Mireille Mathieu
• Sylvie Vartan
• Françoise Hardy

French Music of the 70s:

• Serge Gainsbourg
• Véronique Sanson
• Michel Berger
• Johnny Hallyday (the Biggest French star ever)
• Sheila
• Michel Sardou

French Music of the 80s:

• Mylène Farmer (if you’re going to youtube her, she’s NSFW, guys, seriously NSFW)
• Jean-Jacques Goldman
• Vanessa Paradis (who made a come back in the 00′)
• Daniel Balavoine
• Téléphone
• Francis Cabrel

French Music of the 90s: (I grew up with these guys!)

• Patrick Bruel
• Pascal Obispo
• Zazie
• MCSolaar
• Celine Dion (seriously, her French albums are nothing like her English-speaking ones)
• Noir Désir

French Music of the 00s:

• Alizée,
• Calogero
• Phoenix
• M83
• M

French Music of the 10s:

• Stromae
• Indila
• Cats on Trees

International crossover:

• David Guetta
• Daft Punk
• Air

French metal/less mainstream stuff, as recommended by my husband Badgerman (He Who Knows His Stuff):

• Gojira
• Alcest

the ‘local flavour’ album: Brittany has been producing some rather unique stuff over the years, Manau was on the radio when I left France 15 years ago popularising ‘celtic rap’.

The ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about but it exists’ French Hip-Hop and Rap:

•  L’Entourage
• Georgio
• Guizmo

The bonus American but sounds totally French: Madeleine Peyroux

What I’m Into – June 2015

Summer’s here! I’m very excited, what’s not to like about sun and heat? Quite a lot, if you’re to believe 75% of the British population. Roads melting, trains not working because the heat is making the tracks buckle (but why? They have trains in hot countries, do they use different metals?), dogs dying in cars because people are stupid, take your pick. Anyway I love summer, even (especially) at 30 degrees when you can spend the evenings with open doors and eat lots of barbecued meat.

I’ve been wondering what I’ve actually done since March and the answer is: lots and lots of study. But I still carve time for non-work activities, otherwise I wouldn’t have much to talk about.

What I’m watching

Once Upon A Time, Arrow and Outlander have finished for summer so I’m watching a bit of Grimm (for reasons unknown, it’s OK but not mind-blowing). I’m also re-watching Fringe from the comfort of my own bed now that we’ve put a TV in our bedroom. I love it, both the show and the tv in bed. It feels slightly decadent.

What I’m reading

With all the reading I’m doing for my studies, I’ve not made much headway into my to-read pile. I’ve been reading a bit of Outlander (well, I’m re-reading book 3, Voyager), also Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist, and Greg Boyd’s Benefit of the Doubt. All highly recommended by me.

What I’m listening to

The new Matt Redman album, it’s a good worship album, and also I was at the Abbey Road Studios recording and I even have my signature on the album artwork (how cool is that), so I was always going to get it; and random stuff on the radio. I’m trying to think of anything I’ve particularly liked this month and nothing is standing out.

The Chemical Brothers’ Glastonbury set I watched on tv was epic but that Kanye West is a douche. I don’t care if he’s a misunderstood genius or wildly overrated. Seriously.

Favourite photos

What I’ve been doing

At Work: work is actually the easy bit of my life right now. Three days a week, I travel through country lanes to my remote work location deep in the Sussex countryside and spend a few hours completing admin tasks in good company. What’s not to like? it’s only short-term until Christmas and perfect for now.

At Home:

• We celebrated Luciole’s 2nd birthday, which was a rather subdued affair due to chickenpox! Little Girl had it first for a whole 7 days, and Luciole has just come out with it today, so I’m at home on unpaid leave for another week. Happy days! We did eat an enormous cake and Luciole loved her presents.

• We’ve been slowly working on the house, we now have curtains and blinds everywhere apart from the kitchen and office. The next bit project is tackling the office properly. Remember when it looked like this?

• Well, now it looks like this, which is barely an improvement, but I’m trying to organise the office papers and eventually it will look fabulous. Maybe. You know what they say: the more space you need, the more you want.

• We’ve had builders in to sort out a few issues with the house whilst it is still under warranty as new houses are. It was built last winter and as the timber is drying out in the heat, it is causing all sorts of weird things, all of which are only cosmetic so far, thank goodness.

At School:

Online studying is still school, right? I’m really pleased with the fact that I completed the first unit of the business course at the beginning of June and submitted my assignment on time. It was really intense for the last three weeks though. I was working every evening for 3 hours 7 days a week. I should know in the next couple of weeks whether my work is of the right standard, and if I have passed the unit. It has been fairly stressful and I honestly don’t know how I am going to sustain it. This brings me nicely to the next thing:

At Home on the Blog

What with everything that’s been going on, my presence online has been really sparse, and that’s really all I’ve been talking about.

• Finding a suitable work/life balance is my priority right now and is very much a work-in-progress. If I’m honest, I doubt I will be able to blog more than once a fortnight, but hopefully when I do, it will be decent content.
• My search for this elusive balance coincided with the release of the new 2015/2016 Erin Condren planner, which I discovered accidentally last year and put on my ‘one day’ list. I’m a big fan of planners and have used one for the last three years so I bit the bullet and bought one. I proceeded to write about why I like planners and this one in particular in my most gushing post yet. It’s a beautiful thing. Stationery lovers unite!

As always, I’m joining in with Leigh Kramer for this post. You can check out her link for better book and music recommendations from across a great range of well-read bloggers.

 

 

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What I’m Into – March 2015 Edition

Man, it has been an AGE since I last participated in What I’m Into!

Since then (wow, it was October…), I have: moved house, found a job, started the job, become a student again, settled into a completely new routine with the kids, bought curtains, had a terrible cold, caught up with lots of wonderful tv shows, ate my weight in curry with lots of girls from church, celebrated my 35th birthday (yikes), got lots of new books, and generally felt a bit overwhelmed by it all.

We had planned to have a house-warming party towards the end of the Easter holidays. I am now sitting on the sofa, thinking about the state of the house, the number of unopened boxes in the spare room and the lack of curtains and blinds in most of the house and I laugh quietly to myself. My younger self by 2 months was so naive.

So anyway, let’s rewind a bit a take a look at the interesting things I’ve done over the last few months.

What I’m Watching

I finished Parks & Rec and I’m now bereft of comedy in my regular viewing habits, as all the other shows I watch are really quite different: Once Upon A Time, Arrow and Castle. I’m watching season 4 of all of these. I’ll be honest, OUAT isn’t what it used to be and is dragging a bit. Arrow, though, is coming up to a belter of a season finale if the trailer is anything to go by! And then of course, Outlander is coming back.

I’ve not watched any films recently but I’m planning to take Little Girl to see Cinderella at the cinema. It will be her first ever cinema outing and I’m not sure she will cope with sitting through a full-length feature but we will try, and she’s beside herself with excitement, which is worth it.

What I’m Reading

Once again, I received Lots Of Books for my birthday, and I’ve been ignoring them all and re-reading Anne Of Green Gables from start to finish; it’s been a nice treat after the whirlwind of the last month. I’ve just started Windy Poplars and keep having visions of the film and Anne and Katherine Brooke’s hideously gloriously puffy hair-dos.

All my other books are still in boxes and will remain there until we have resolved the problem of ‘the office’. I should think that the pictures below are self-explanatory.

What I’m Listening To

I’ve not been listening to anything new of late. The news that Thrice were coming to the UK to do one date at Hevy Fest was enough to make me dig out Beggars, although I doubt I’ll be able to see them live. I hope this is a sign that they have got back together and may be working on a new album.

I’m very embarrassed about this, but I like a lot of the songs from the 50 Shades movie. Not because I’ve seen the film (and I never will, because whatever people say, emotional abuse is not sexy), but the songs have turned up on Spotify and get played on the radio a lot, and I just really like the songs from Ellie Golding, the Weeknd and the Beyonce Crazy in Love remix. They’re all on YouTube so I don’t have to buy anything, thank goodness.

Favourite Photos

Badgerman finally transferred his iPad pictures over and these ones are my favourite. the one on the left is so good for so many reasons: not only is Little Girl looking at the camera, she is smiling AND posing? What’s happened to my child the fake smiler, where has she gone to and who is this imposter?

What I’ve Been Doing

• I, ahem, made an Easter Bonnet for Little Girl.  I don’t understand the point of this, or why pre-schools have an ‘Easter Bonnet Parade’. Life in the UK doesn’t get quainter, or weirder, than this. The making of the hat was a last-minute, night before sort of job. The worst thing is I know it’s only the beginning, as British schools are in the habit of wanting kids to do all sorts of things at home that end up being a massive craft-oriented time-consuming task for the parents. I’m dreading all the World Book Days and nativities that require me to pretend I know how to sew.
• These last couple of weeks, there have been fevers and colds and I got coughed on quite a bit so now I can’t breathe or taste anything.
• My birthday was fairly uneventful because we moved house the week after and honestly, it was just all too much for me.
• I got given a car, and I don’t know what to say about it that won’t sound completely trite and underwhelming compared to this complete whopper of a gift. Our friends are amazing, wonderful, super generous and I totally don’t deserve them.
• I started an admin job three days a week, which has been fine apart from that one day I had to take off because Luciole was ill. Three weeks into a new job, way to make a good impression! My colleagues are good fun and it’s great to be out of the house and suddenly have something else to think about rather than just kids 24/7.

My ‘I Got The Job’ present. Basically all my favourite things.

• Because I’m a bit nuts, I have also started an online course in business management. It’s a proper degree (well, a BTech actually) but it’s meant to be worked around a full-time sort of life doing other stuff. We’ll see how that goes, won’t we?
• You might have noticed I updated the look of the blog, again. As much as I loved the featured post slider and will miss it (until I find a design I like that has one), I hated that there was so much block black colour on the page and I didn’t need the menu on the left hand-side.

At Home On The Blog

I haven’t really done a round-up since last October, so here’s what happened:

November 2014

• I wrote about bilingualism and language: we attended a really helpful session with a language therapist who put our mind at rest about Little Girl’s development. The best thing was the information sheet she provided on what normal speech development looks like.
• I reminisced about my experience of culture shock, homesickness and general emotional upheaval when I first came to England. There are roughly 4 stages people tend to go through and it turns out I’m pretty normal. This is one of these times where the motto of ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ is actually meaningful.
• I started participating in Five Minute Friday, in which you set your timer to 5 minutes and write on the day’s given prompt. It’s a nice little writing challenge. That week, the prompt word was Still.

December 2014

This is the month when the world exploded in activity. There was Christmas, I had a bad cold virus for much of the month and we were suddenly buying a house.

• I revived an old post for a Christmas craft idea for people who can’t craft: a magnet advent calendar for the fridge, which sounds pretty cool if you ask me, and is even cooler in real life.
• I shared our news that we were buying a house and what it’s like to be a first-time buyer in the south of England.
• There was another Five Minute Friday post, with a timely prompt: Prepare.
• As we drew nearer to Christmas, I shared some of my French Christmas Eve Traditions. Everyone who asks me about my French Christmasses ends up hearing about No Potatoes Christmas, which I will forever be bitter about.
• Wow, I really was in the Christmas spirit this year, because I also put our Christmas Day Menu up for inspiration, shock and awe.
• I mentioned in the Christmas Menu post that I would translate the recipe for my Raspberry and Lychee Chocolate Log, and so I did. It’s easy to make, promise.

January 2015

• Boxes, boxes, boxes everywhere! We drowned in boxes.
• The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo happened and I didn’t know what to say, until I did.

February 2015

• Five Minute Friday on Keep, again incredibly timely.

March 2015

• We moved! Just one of the few most stressful things you can do.
• There was an article about dating websites for married people, which made me sad about the world.
• French people are not immune to crimes against fashion, I should know.

And that’s all folks, we are all caught up!

You can check out what everybody is into over on Leigh Kramer‘s blog.