About

I'm Petra and this is the story of our family's move from the south west of England to a village in foothills of the Pyrenees, France where we hope to embrace a simple and slow paced life.

There's me, my partner Florent and our two wonderfully wild little girls and a house we are trying to renovate.

My challenge is to write authentically about all that comes up along the way, the moments of beauty and the moments of the mundane, the trying times and the happy times.

I hope you enjoy reading our story and looking at my photos.

 Cheers!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHEN FRIENDS ARE FAR AWAY...

Image
We've lived here for three months (and half of that was in a tent in some woodland out of the village) so I know rationally that it is fine not to have made friends yet. I know that just because I have not made friends so far, that it doesn't mean I will never make friends here. However, who considers these things rationally when they are missing their friends from home and life as a family of four needs some serious fresh air ? I am prone to emotional responses to most things in life, it's what led me sob whilst listening Nadya Hussein on Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago, as if I had forever forfeited the opportunity to bake cakes or reminisce about the Backstreet Boys with friends simply by moving to France. It was perhaps also the repetitive task of chipping plaster off a beam combined with a lunch of tinned mackerel that led to the emotional outburst but the bottom line is, if there's an opportunity for teary melodrama, I generally take it. When we first
Read more

TWO WHOLE YEARS OF FRANCE

Image
Spring this year has been a collection of storms and showers, swollen rivers and lush green. Everyone is waiting for summer’s heat to burst from the sky and the perpetual damp to steam heavenward. The house is filled with wet washing and waterproofs and wellies stuffed with newspaper after over enthusiastic river wading or splashing in the streams that race down our road when a thunder storm hits. This month Little I turned three. Our funny, happy, loving, energetic baby girl. I carry her less and less, more and more I find myself holding the hands of two little girls walking by my sides with no one in my arms, listening to the chatter reaching upwards. It’s a new phase of motherhood and all at once it is liberating and yet it feels as if time has slipped through my fingers and in the blink of an eye my babies are big. We bought ingredients for Little I’s birthday cake, lots of chocolate, and as we walked back along the road we looked up to see somebo
Read more

SPRINGTIME PART 1: DECLUTTER

Image
It feels very fitting to declutter in Springtime. Cleansing after the winter. The time of year when we shift from our 'inside' lives to the outdoors and it comes naturally to play more at floating celandine flowers in puddles, stirring them with sticks and filling buckets with mud than anything else. Since Linny was born I feel as if I've waged a battle against her toys ; the toys other people buy for her, the toys we have bought for her, the toys she has inherited that used to belong to Florent or I, the toys we have found, generously placed on garden walls to give away... There are a number of reasons for this battle ; I don't think children need a lot of toys. I think having mountains of things can be overwhelming for them and I think too many toys can begin to restrict their imagination. I hate unexpectedly standing on small pieces of plastic. I don't want to spend unneccessary amounts of time picking up toys and tidying them away an
Read more